The annual Wildflower Symposium showcases the rich natural and cultural history present at Wintergreen Resort. WMRA's Randi B. Hagi attended and filed this report.
[rain falling in the forest, birdsong, people talking]
Last weekend, botanists, mycologists, and citizen scientists gathered in the rain and mist for The Nature Foundation at Wintergreen's 41st annual symposium. On Saturday morning, one small group set out on the Highlands Leisure Trail to identify mountain flora.
JOHNNY TOWNSEND: Oh yeah, there's cucumber root right there!
Johnny Townsend led the hike. He's a senior botanist with the Virginia Department of Conservation and Recreation.
TOWNSEND: This is alternate leaf dogwood, or pagoda dogwood. … The flowers of this kind of dogwood are not the big showy things. In fact, this one has been stuck now in a whole different genus depending on who you talk to, but it has a whole cluster of small flowers.
Sessions ranged from educational walks to lectures on gardening, invasive species, and archaeology. Nathan Miller teaches horticulture at James Madison University and Piedmont Virginia Community College, and has a landscaping business based in Rockingham County. He gave a talk on edible native plants.
NATHAN MILLER: Pawpaws are one of my favorite fruits because the taste, to me, is unlike any other native plant. … To me, it tastes like a combination of banana custard, maybe a little bit of cantaloupe, and a little bit of mango.
This year's conference drew its normal attendance of about 70 people. Doug Coleman, a field botanist and the executive director of The Nature Foundation at Wintergreen, said that while wildflowers are the weekend's pièce de résistance, the symposium has grown to include many disciplines.
DOUG COLEMAN: We are so well-placed here to do an event like this, because the Blue Ridge reaches one of its narrowest points through here, and it is a very narrow link of diversity that's old in here. We're sitting astride 11,000 acres of Blue Ridge, and the potential for research, the potential for understanding these old, old ecosystems is all right here.
Carol Wise, a naturalist from Albemarle County, has attended for years.
CAROL WISE: There's a lot to learn! There are experts from a lot of different areas, and even though I've come to this many, many times, I learn things every time I come. … Today, it was Cole Burrell's walk on wildflowers. … The ferns are one that particularly interests me.
The resort's location in the Blue Ridge Mountains, parts of which boast higher annual precipitation than almost anywhere else in the state, make it a prime habitat for many types of salamanders – which were the focus of Herpetologist Walter Meshaka Jr.'s talk.
WALTER MESHAKA: Well, there's a variety of salamanders you could encounter, and it is all timing. The times of day, times of the year, et cetera. Did it rain? How cold it is.
Meshaka surveys salamanders in the Powdermill Nature Reserve in Pennsylvania. In previous years, he'd normally start in April – looking under boards laid out on the ground to attract the amphibians. But recently he's been finding salamanders present and active as early as February. I asked him if this altered behavior was influenced by climate change.
MESHAKA: Ultimately, the answer is probably "yes." Throughout history, there have been warm Februarys. It's the frequency at which this is happening – this is what's changing, and then overall it's getting warmer. … Under a worst-case scenario, they'll be coming out early, burning up very important fat reserves, which is like spending money when you shouldn't.
Other exciting finds on the forest floor include stone tools and shards left by the ancestors of the present-day Monacan Indian Nation. Archaeologist and James Madison University Professor Carole Nash led a tour to a site in the forest where people kept summer homes up to 10,000 years ago.
[birdsong, people walking through the woods ]
CAROLE NASH: The bigger sites and the more permanent sites are down below in the Rockfish River Valley and beyond, but the mountains were used by individual families who would break off from the villages below or the sites below, the camps, and come up here and spend the summer, spend part of the fall.
She asked the group – what might have attracted people to the mountains at this time of year?
NASH: They definitely were here for the game, no question about that, but what was really drawing them up here, late summer, early fall?
ATTENDEES: Nuts? Nut harvest?
NASH: Nut harvest, because of the chestnuts, because of the chestnuts, yes.
We fanned out in the woods to look for pieces of quartzite shaped by human hands. The ground's annual freeze and thaw is constantly unearthing more artifacts. I was poking around by a resort resident's firepit when I spotted a curved piece of white, crystalline rock a little bigger than a matchbook.
NASH: Okay you all, let's get back in the van. We're going to take you to another site.
HAGI: Could this be a thing?
NASH: Oh my god! That's gorgeous! Where'd you see that one?
HAGI: It was right over by the firepit!
NASH: Look at that! Look at that! That is a cutting edge. Oh my goodness, that is a knife right there.
HAGI: It's still kind of sharp!
NASH: That is a knife. That is absolutely a knife.
The unique topography at Wintergreen – a narrow, singular ridge flanked by basins amid the rumpled quilt of mountains, has long made it a congregation point – for the plants that thrive at high elevations, the ancestors who gathered chestnuts in the cool mountain air, and the naturalists who are still drawn to study its history and biodiversity.
Full disclosure – WMRA's operating license is held by JMU's board of visitors, and JMU underwrites programming on WMRA.
