Q and A: Southern Lush

I came across a particularly lovely picture tonight, one worthy of standing by itself in a post.  I was looking to post on another closely related topic, that of how rivers affect their surroundings in terms of soil and plant life, but that's looking like it will be a huge undertaking in terms of the sheer pictures that need to be uploaded.  Instead, since I have been active on this here blog again, and a few questions have started streaming in, tonight we feast upon a picture and try to answer a question.

Q: Since you have been to so many places and lived in quite a few, where would be an ideal place to plant some roots if you had the option?

A: That is a very unfair, difficult question.  If money were no object, I would love to have multiple small places.  One which is already there, up north in Ontario.  One on the high plains, preferably eastern Wyoming or western Nebraska.  One in highland Mexico, in the trans-volcanic belt.  One in western New York or southern Michigan, where I would probably spend most of my time.  One in the coastal South... yes, especially that one. 

If you rephrase the question as "where would you like to live to be able to garden to your heart's content", it would still be tricky, as I have a fondness for northern species of trees, shrubs, and in the flower department, for the gifts of the prairie, but wow, the South has amazing native stuff like evergreen oaks, more azaleas than you can shake a stick at, pines upon pines, moss dripping off of it all, and... magnolias.  Not the hardy, Asian hybrid kind that flower before they leaf out, but the kind that never lose their leaves and flower in full green.  Needless to say, I do have a picture, and a natural one at that, of most of these elements put together:

Oh yes, that is truly lovely.  Sure, it comes with some price tags, notably brutal summers of heat and humidity, destructive storms for a much longer period than up north (including hurricanes), and much less of a thrill regarding the onset of spring, but... I mean look at that!  The tree on the left with the brown undersides to the leaves is a Southern Magnolia (Magnolia Grandiflora), perhaps the second or third most beautiful tree on the planet.  The tree on the right with the lighter green, almost maple looking leaves is a Sweetgum (Liquidambar Styraciflua), a tree that can be found from the tropical cloud forests of Central America to the Ohio Valley and New York City, one of the few trees besides the Red Maple (Acer Rubrum of our past maple sugar posts) and Baldcypress (Taxodium Distichum) to brilliantly light up the Autumnal southern canopy.  In the center stage below is a Sabal Minor or Dwarf Palmetto, the northernmost naturally occurring species of palm in North America, and in the rear, dripping with that incredible Spanish Moss (Tillandsea Usneoides) is one of those incredible evergreen oaks, the Live Oak (Quercus Virginiana).  Its a veritable natural stand of who's who in the Southern tree world.  When I found this thicket, growing so peacefully off the shores of Albergottie Creek in Beauford, SC, I stared for a good ten minutes, as if it were a holy icon.

Then I had to wonder why these trees, clearly more in love with being nice and dry, were so close to something so decidedly wet like a tidal creek.  Except for the palm, none of these species like to get their feet soaked for a long time.  Then I remembered that even a few inches of elevation change can make all the difference in an otherwise very low landscape such as this.  That's the special thing about river habitats, really, they have a strong influence on their immediate surroundings, but life goes back to something else once you get far and high enough away, as we will see in our upcoming river post.  At the same time, rivers have far more of an effect on us humans; while we love to use them to travel and fence in for aesthetic purposes, we sometimes also learn to give them a wide berth, what with the way flooding and erosion works.  In many places such as this, the "extended river" becomes a vessel of green and wild cutting through an otherwise cultivated and transformed landscape.  So, to be more precise about that question, something in the South near, but not on, a river.  To be honest, the mosquitoes are just a bit much to handle...

The First Underground Railroad

I know I have been on a kick about the Carolinas, Georgia, and Northern Florida lately, but the truth is that this region was an incredibly diverse and storied region until it fought for the wrong side of history during the Civil War.  Yes, here there was the hearth of the house of Southern elite slaveholders and their belles, but there were also the non-slave holding Second Born Georgians, First Born, Spanish, French (of both Hugenot and Royal varieties), long forgotten Austrians, and of course Black people which would soon, through economic reasons, come to outnumber all of these groups.  Needless to say, I also have long loved the majestic world of palm and pine which thrives here in an otherwise humid, bug-infested wild country.  When I recently began to read more about both the birth of slavery and its opposition among abolitionists and freedom-seekers here, I just had to share what a powerful crossroads in history this truly difficult land had become.

No one can argue against the fact that the Spanish colonizers were brutal and racist in their treatment of the First Born, and that they enjoyed watching their conquered subjects tend the fields for them.  That said, it was the English colonizers who were real pros at commercial exploitation of the new land and exotic peoples from just about anywhere on the planet.  The Spanish, you see, were plunderers less than merchants (they kicked out a good portion of their merchant class when they told every Jew in Spain to head out of town in 1492), and they were also enthralled by the concept of converting the planet to Roman Catholicism.  In contrast, the English also plundered, but on a smaller scale (except maybe in India), so as to better gradually set up favorable economic conditions for their cult of free-enterprise.  Oh sure, they had religion too, many Protestant varieties of it in fact, but their concept of spreading the faith was pretty much centered on trying to get freedom for themselves to contemplate and pray as they so wished, which they had to cross an ocean for in the face of Anglican and then Calvinistic and then lip-service Anglican successions of power.  They rejoiced when the First Born converted, but otherwise just regarded them as pagans who could either be helpful to setting up commercial security or harmful in trying to dismantle colonial progress.  The French were another story altogether, and that one takes a while to explain...

Anyway, the Spanish would not hesitate to bring over Africans for use as slaves, but seeing as how plantations of cash crops were but one of many different agendas behind the otherwise important gold-plundering and conversion game, race slavery never developed to the same degree that it did in the English colonies.  Again, this is not to say that it did not happen; many Black communities can be found in Cuba and the Dominican Republic, and a few traces of where African slavery did make inroads into Mexico can be found in Veracruz and Guerrero, the two important states of colonial landing of the Mexican coast.  The ban on a Spanish-run slave trade made importation of Africans difficult, if nothing else.  When they wanted slaves, the Spanish could run to the English or Dutch for their needs, which further compounded the general aloofness from the enslavement of Africans.  What's more, racial hatred did not develop in nearly the same way throughout New Spain than it did it the English colonies.  As I state in my post about the most important event in North American history, while the Spanish came as conquerors and extractors, they also often fell in love with the land and the people of the New World.  Mexicans to this day are largely Mestizos of heritage reaching back to both sides of the Atlantic.   Yes, you can find hatred towards the First Born in the Spanish-descended elite of El Salvador or Argentina, but by and large the rest of modern Latin America is a culture resulting from pure exchange rather than separation. 

So it was that when a few runaway slaves heading south from the Carolinas made their way into Florida, they were not immediately chained up and re-enslaved in their new home of Florida.  Rather, they were not only welcomed, but encouraged to keep coming.  Those who chose a more colonial existence in St. Augustine would be required to convert to Catholicism, but often times the Black refugees found a happy existence with the First Born of the area.  Further north, they often helped the refugees through to their freedom, which as usual was a very difficult and terror-filled trip to safety, but down here in the still-largely natural hot and humid subtropical lushness, they had the advantage of not being readily followed by the prone-to-malaria and easily sweat-able northern Europeans.  The Spanish authorities figured that they would be so grateful to make their way into waiting freedom and safety that they would rise up in arms with them, Black beside colonist, against English advances from Georgia.  They were not wrong. 

Some stayed in town, some even enlisted in the Spanish forces.  Others left to form new societies of their own in the wilds, and sometimes they came across the First Born and formed a new culture of this encounter.

Public domain.

You can read more and see some pictures here.  Actually, that website can tell you quite a lot about some of the Black experience I never knew existed.

The Garden Spaces of Charleston

In general, most gardens I saw in Charleston (or anywhere else in the lowcountry South) seem to have small elements of formal design which are allowed to burst beyond the boundaries and completely fill any available space with lush, vibrant life.  This leads to some incredible spaces which truly are retreats from the hustle and bustle of the urban environment, despite most such refuges being just a little off of the beaten path.  As is the case with any older North American city, Charleston is a place where space is at a premium.  Such restrictions, combined with the penchant for intense growth, give the city gardens which mystically combine the courtyard with the subtropical forests she is surrounded by.  I think that I will leave the rest of the post in the hands of the pictures, and provide us with a gallery of cultivated Charleston, captions provided for highlights.  To see how things got this way, read up on the previous posts in the last week.

Even simple alleyways here are bedded and then seemingly left to their own devices.

Washington Park in downtown features Live Oaks (Quercus Virginiana) planted in an orderly fashion, yet encouraged to sprawl in their own individual habits of growth, almost like a natural oak savanna.

Here the Live Oak is allowed to grow to its own pleasure, nearly covering the entire street and turning it, with help from small strip plantings in the side yards, into a garden of sorts in its own right.

Some home owners take full advantage of the really long growing season, mild winters, and powerful levels of moisture and go nuts with the subtropical plants.  Here it is very possible to have a pretend jungle in your backyard and just let things go without it looking entirely out of place.

Many gardeners do apparently try to occupy space in this fashion, with some choosing to maintain a basic level of formality with a tasteful balancing of free growth.

And for sure, some of those Old World formal influences do remain here, complete with Boxwood (Buxus Sempervirens) hedges, symmetrical paths, Italianate fountains, etc.  Nevertheless, things remain relatively well covered and the best word to describe this space is not "formal" so much as "abundant".

And on other places were are reminded that this is indeed a colonial city with pleasant Georgian architectural features like the arched courtyard entryways lit by those period scones.  That said, I doubt very much that a gentleman of 1770 would have let his entryway become so dominated by greenery.  No, I think like the case is with the picture above, we have a fashion of development that built on the old culture and merged with the growing power of the land and the unrestrained decorum of the passing generations.

Wednesday Filler: A Western Intruder

Rising above some hidden courtyard, along with some disturbingly modern architecture, is a Mexican Fan Palm (Washingtonia Robusta).  In the foreground grows the native and rugged Cabbage Palm (Sabal Palmetto). 

In Southern California and parts of Arizona and southern Texas, Mexican Fan Palms get planted so much that one would think them native to such parts of the world (they are actually from Sonora and both states on the Baja peninsula).  They feature prominently in street plantings, and often form an urban backdrop in Los Angeles and San Diego, even more so to the extent than how the Cabbage Palm is used in Charleston.  With two native palm choices that nearly grow like weeds already in Charleston, I was amazed to find one at all, but snickered a little bit when I saw how hidden away it was.  Next post, the promised look at the green spaces of Charleston.

Is It Racist To Like Southern Gardens (Or Anything)?

A little interlude before we head back to Charleston.  In fact, this sort of sets up that post, trying to look at Southern Gardening from a different historical background and responding to a very serious question/accusation that I received e-mailed to me about recent posts on the South:

Q: Surely you are aware of the intense racism and inhumanity that plagues your beloved Southern "culture", polite gardens or architecture or otherwise?  The South is an embarrassment on this country and you are exposing some personal racist tendencies toward history here.

The South has amazing agricultural and gardening potential.  The lowcountry affords a long growing season which can account for the vast majority of the year, while the backcountry offers moderation in the region's otherwise blistering summer sun and enough winter chill to permit northern delights to slip in the scenery.  Naturally speaking, there is so much of everything right in soil, sun, and moisture that nature can run rampant here given the chance to.  This can result in seemingly unstoppable plagues of kudzu, but it can also result in an incredibly potent power behind natural reclamation. 

American Voyages has thus far taken us on a tour of the landscapes of the South and the sentiment they have held for the region's inhabitants, both first and second born.  In some cases, the flora and fauna are beloved and considered quintessential to understanding the character of the culture which has developed here.  In others, such as with the many pines of the region, the backdrop has been simply wallpaper and, at best, a bonus feature.  Here, as in so many other places, exotic species often have taken center stage in the hearts and minds of those controlling the landscape.  And why not?  Especially in an age where so many pleasures are deemed to come best from artificial sources, reveling in biological beauty and charm is hardly something to be looked down upon, exotic or native model notwithstanding.  If I lived in the South, I would surely experiment would any number of palms, broadleaved evergreens, azaleas, amaryllis, hardy citrus, etc.  The attraction is hardly a new one, either.  Compared to the continental winters experienced in New England and as far south as Philadelphia, the Virginians and Carolinians found that when they had acquired enough security and basic economic vitality, they could start living dreams perhaps even out of the reach of their rank back in England. 

Of course, some of these dreamers did so at the expense of their fellow, enslaved, human persons, but there were also those who did not.  The ordinary Virginians and Carolinians, and certainly almost all of the Georgians found that while they might not have had the same amount of leisure time to devote to gardening as their richer social masters, gardens here could sometimes take off on their own with just a little bit of prodding.  Grand, cultivated estates of said social masters were concerned with mimicking the fancy Stuart-era estates back in England, complete with more boxwood hedge than is healthy, but these estates do not live on in modern gardens the way that the organic development of the common man's garden would.  As for the ranks of slaves which made the great estate grounds possible, they too would leave an indelible mark on gardens and agriculture, often in the work of very famous individuals like George Washington Carver.  Carver, in fact, was my first real exposure to Black anything.  Yes, there are Black Canadians, and in fact we even have national historic sites dedicated to Black Canadians over yonder, but I did not grow up in any particular part of Ontario where I came across a Black person short of seeing a film clip of Martin Luther King Jr. marching across the bridge at Selma. 

When I was 12 we moved to southeastern Michigan, but perhaps in preparation to understand my new surroundings, my parents took me to the Henry Ford Museum and associated Greenfield Village.  At the time, there was an extensive exhibit on the work of Carver, along with a very excellent actor portraying the man in the next best thing to his flesh and blood presence.  Together with some of the people also on the tour, who happened to have dark skin, I saw my first Black people, and my impression was that they were pretty amazing with plants.  Since that time I have come to learn that no small portion of the agricultural prowess of this nation is in part to the work of men and women like Carver, and many of them, White or Black or whatever, have brought us to where we are today.  In spite of poverty, slavery, and denial to expensive formal education, these people, many from the "horrid, racist South" delivered to the rest of us from their situations complete gems. 

That said, gardening and agricultural history is still an unfurling topic of discovery for me.  Perhaps I should have become an ethno-botanist instead of the direct variety, but I find myself hungry as heck for an area of ethno-botany that does not get a lot of press these days, that of the common people of the South.  Yes, there are giant confederate flags painted on top of gas stations near airports in Atlanta and Memphis.  Yes, there are people who think that the world revolves around their little patch of free, white Alabama.  Guess what?  Those types also live in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and even (gasp) Southern California.  We ought never to throw out the blessings of an entire region because of a few dull stars out there in the human firmament.  In the meantime, I'm going to remain interested in Southerners like Elvis Presley and Jackie Robinson who helped to kick the crap out of the underlying racism in this country.  I'm going to remain curious about settlement patterns of Mississippi and Alabama by ordinary settlers not intent on setting up huge plantations or killing any Creek or Chocktaw in sight.  Finally, to quote Janisse Ray, I'm definitely going to be interested in gardens with subtropical elements and growing seasons that I absolutely drool in envy over. 

The South, you see, was saved not by some post-bellum Yankee restoration plan or home-grown politician trying to reclaim a ridiculous sense of false inheritance, but by the White, Black, or Native person next door. 

The Palms of Charleston

In the last post we pondered the question as to how well palms were received for ornamental purposes in past eras, at least in the United States.  As noted, very few depictions of gardens, cityscapes, landscapes, or even individual botanical subjects include palms as a regular feature, even while we also know that the settlers of the Carolinas and Georgia were certainly familiar with their abundance in the wilds around their settlements.  The islands from the Charleston area southward do indeed have the mighty Cabbage Palm (Sabal Palmetto) growing in abundance among the pines, magnolias, myrtles, and all other sorts of wonderful Southern plants.  The Dwarf Cabbage (Sabal Minor) also grows here and north halfway up the coastal areas of North Carolina (in the west well inland to extreme southeastern Oklahoma).  Crepe Myrtles and various broadleaved evergreens are easily grown here, and considering what I had thus far seen of the new subtropical crazed South, I was expecting to see a few streets nicely lined with Cabbages, such as in the scene below:

Yes, it was humid, hence the blur.  Yes, like much of the eastern United States and Canada, everyone here seemed to be glued to a cell-phone, at least in the trendier shopping areas and business-dominated streets.

 But while there was some formality to the plantings as in the standard lined street above,the older sections of town seemed to focus slightly less on formal layouts than in fitting in vegetation wherever possible. 

That's a story for another post, but the theme of the finding is important in understanding how palms are simply everywhere here, almost like weeds.  Understand, Charleston is very groomed and formal.  Yes, some of the brickwork and paint could use some work, but the overall effect is more one of proudly displaying an aged antique.  Most of the people here have public dress which belies a concern for respectability and a sense of decorum.  Manners are refined even between people in rush hour traffic.  Once you get away from the hustle and bustle of the urban core, the cell-phones even disappear.  The backstreets have a quiet, reflective pace.  Again, this is owed another post, so back to the palms, but you get the idea.

They are allowed to grow to their own designs.  It seems wherever there is a little bit of room for soil and roots they are planted, and not necessarily to the exclusion of other trees and shrubs.  They do range naturally here, and probably spring up just as often wild as cultivated.

If this were so many other cities, the little one at the lower left would be groomed right out of existence!

But let's face it, the tourists like them, the locals have long since made them their floral emblem, and they are low demand trees.  I still question how long they have been this popular, but in some places where the overall formal lines do return, it is obvious that the Cabbage Palm has long since been a favorite of Charleston, the planned city with crooked edges. 

And really, they do look like they belong here, far more so than the imported cherries of Washington or the nearly-imported Mexican Fan Palms (Washingtonia Robusta) of Los Angeles and environs.  Though there are so many other reasons beyond imagination as to why one should pay a visit to Charleston, coming to see the palms is not exactly a bad thing in and of itself. 

Charleston, after all, is a special place where garden and building seemed to have been created for one another.  It's almost like a place that sprang into existence so that both concepts could be celebrated in unison.  Much like the modern lake shore of Chicago, Charleston looks as if it and the trees were trying to grow into one another.  Very few North American cities seem to make this much room for vegetation, at least not to the degree where the cityscape as a whole would be at a bit of a visual loss without it.

After all, the city owes its salvation to this wonderful tree, and the tree is etched into the human era of artifice because of that role:

Want to see more of Charleston's organic setting?  That's where I'm headed next.

Palms In The Carolina Landscape: An Historical Overview

When I recall traveling down to Fort Lauderdale back in the late 80's and early 90's for our annual winter romp from frigid Canada to tropical Southern Florida, I recall that I found narry a palm tree until one hit the Georgia-Florida border on I-95.  As if announcing that this was a truly unique land of eternal summers and palm trees even so far north near the rest of the country, palms suddenly exploded from the median.  Oh sure, Georgia nearby had a decent ground-cover of Saw Palmettos (Serenoa Repens) that emerged from the dense pinery around about Brunswick or so, but they had nothing on the veritable carpet of them that showed once one found high and dry ground past the St. Marys River.  One notable exception stood out, that being the Jelly Palm (Butia Capitata) which grew by two as a lovely frame to the entrance of a Fieldcrest towel outlet in Smithfield, North Carolina.  This was very, very much to the north of Florida, especially to the eyes of a child who liked to exaggerate distances.

This might, in fact, have been the occasion in which I started reading about trees, way back in either the second or third grade.  I was fortunate to have a mother who was wise to the concept of providing her offspring with as much book book book as possible, and no sooner did I turn to the palm pages in lovingly acquired Florida's Fabulous Trees than I found our friend the Jelly Palm, an import from exotic subtropical southern South America.  The block of text accompanying the delightful picture of the frosty-green fronds stated that the noble plant could be found as far north as Washington, D.C.  If this were so, and people liked palm trees so much, I wondered why I only ever saw the pair outside of towel land, and none more until far into the deepest reaches of Georgia.  Believe me, I looked!

Then this last year, when I made my way to a steamy South Carolina, I found palm after palm pop up starting with some lovely Jelly Palms planted beside a pool at a Days Inn off of I-26 exit 154 near Orangeburg, South Carolina.  Why yes, I do take botanical observation locations seriously!  Anyway, anywhere downstream from that location was awash in palms as part of the landscaping.  It seems that the last two decades have seen a flurry of palm planting as people are discovering the hardier species can take a few cold nights on an otherwise humid subtropical landscape.  Humorously enough, to the equal delight and chagrin of my traveling partner, I was worried that I had to stab very far south to see palms, either wild or cultivated, as common enough features in the landscape.  The truth was that they are EVERYWHERE in lowland South Carolina.  Again, I really do not recall this being the case back in my younger days, and believe me, I was every bit as botanically precise and insane back then as I am today.  This led me to question a few things, namely just how prevalent the mighty Cabbage Palm (Sabal Palmetto) was in older times.  Well, to start off with, the flag of South Carolina prominently features the lovely tree:

Thanks, Open Clipart!

This flag does not date back to Colonial times, but it does feature elements of one that does.  The blue field and crescent moon date from William Moultrie's original South Carolina military flag of 1775, a flag which flew over his fort to save Charleston from capture by the British.  Despite being in command of a tactically inferior force, Moultrie successfully defended the city from initial British assault.  He found that Cabbage Palm trunks are perhaps the most amusing and surprising military grade wood material known to exist on the planet.  Cannon fire from the British ships apparently bounced right off of the palm walls of his fortress, which is fairly believable considering as how the King's navy was unable to simply plow over the weaker Carolinian forces.  In 1861, when South Carolinians were getting ready to oust what they saw as Union invaders, the modern flag seen here was raised.  The Cabbage Palm, mighty defender of Charleston, was seen as a natural symbol of defiance against out-of-state invasion, and the newly-minted Confederate defenders of Fort Sumter declared themselves the heirs of the Colonial Carolinian defenders.

Like many state flags of the South, South Carolina held on to hers once Grant reminded them that their viewpoint was inappropriate, and in some cases, these flags are a sad reminder of the racism that belies a supposed continuing crusade for subsidiarity.  Don't get me wrong, I get the point of state's rights and all, I am a Canadian and therefore hold as sacred the intense power placed into the hands of individual provinces at the expense of anything not Ontari... er... you know what I mean.  Anyway, that is a post, indeed a blog and a lifetime of political and social upheaval unto itself.  Back to the point, this is one of those Southern Flags that can stand for something above and beyond what the flag makers intended, namely because it is cool enough to have an actual tree for a central figure.  Likewise, the intent of heroic defense symbolized in said tree has its greatest meaning invested in an older and far more morally-righteous rebellion.  In the north, they crowned an American Elm (Ulmus Americana) as Liberty Trees. and the economic symbol of American independence, used even on one of the first flags of the continental army, was the Eastern White Pine (Pinus Strobus).  Down here, in warm, lush South Carolina was the Cabbage Palm.  That's right, this country had trees for symbol before it had flag-dressed women or men, eagles, chopped-up snakes, or any other sort of symbol.

So if I don't remember seeing so many of them before the cold-hardy palm craze caught on, just how widely planted were they as a landscape feature for our Second-Born ancestors?  Did they tend to leave the small space trees alone when clearing their fields of otherwise broad pines and oaks?  Did they line their streets with them?  Art from the period does not really seem to show the city as being particularly gardened, at least not nearly to the extent that it is now.  Considering the relative sophistication and connections with Britain that the city did maintain in the Georgian era, one wonders why this would be the case.  Botany was extremely popular among the planters and merchants alike, and both got rich off of a thriving plant trade.  Perhaps palms did not get much press as most gardeners did not see them as being particularly hardy or useful in the place where most of the commerce was directed, rainy and cool England (unlike today where they have gained a bit of popularity).  The palms that did start catching on in Europe in Georgian times were mostly Old World palms, notably the dates and in particular the Canary Island Date Palm (Phoenix Canariensis), which saw container planting use at Versailles.  I can't say I blame them, the thing is pretty freaking cool looking, and can even be trimmed into, well, a pineapple.  Down in our yard in Florida I wanted one really bad, at least as a kid who knew nothing about the difference between plants native and exotic.  I can see the appeal for people in an age when the world was still largely being discovered by everyone and the backyard took a backseat. 

Very few Georgian era depictions of Southern life bring palms into view, however.  Magnolias appear now and then, as do moss-draped oaks, but by and large paintings of the era, in fact those up until the 1860's, seem to be Colonial versions of the romantic natural visions of John Constable.  American landscape art in general seems to emulate the dreamy, sweeping romanticism he championed.  On the one hand, the concept of broad, vast frontier wilderness is celebrated, but on the other hand, art and gardens alike seemed to want to give homage as well back to manicured England, which in turn wanted to be more flowing and open like North America, and yes, I seem to really be opening a slew of topics at this point.  I end the post with a question as much as a summary of the concept of historical overview: how were palms envisioned and used by early Americans, and where have they come today?

The View From (Part Of) The Boardwalk At Congaree

As I have said many times, Congaree and the rest of the lowcountry South is a harsh environment for comfort minded humans.  Whether you call it a floodplain or a cypress swamp, the fact of the matter is that the place is spongy and mucky even in drier times.  The grand pines and the gigantic Beech tree (Fagus Grandifolia) are blessed and able to grow to such dizzying proportions due to the abundance of water in this humid subtropical land, but even they don't like what lies just below the first significant set of steps one comes across on the boardwalk.  This is not to say that things resemble a true swamp right away, but water is certainly never far away, and small puddles let the high and dry walker know that they have entered the domain of the river.

And this is where things start to get truly magical, majesty of the pines and beech aside. 

The main players here are the amazing Water Tupelo (Nyssa Aquatica) and Balcypress (Taxodium Distichum) and they are both very annoyingly similar to the forest frolicker.  Because they like getting their feet soaked, they need support in the riparian muck, and this support includes swollen trunk bases.  As a result, it can be frustrating trying to pick out one from the other in a mixed forest of both:

In general, the tupelos seem to have the smoother trunk, and the cypresses look a bit more like fluted columns.  Up close, they are a bit easier to differentiate.  The tupelo are broadleaved, whereas the cypresses (not actually true cypresses) are needled.  If they were fully exposed and allowed to grow open, the tupelo would look something like an ice-cream cone in crown shape, almost as if pruned by a giant gardener.  Remember the backdrops in the Disney version of Pocahontas?  Those slender, vase topped trees growing along the James River look as if the artists involved were actually trying to capture pre-settlement Tidewater Virginia.  For some reason, however, popular imagination of southern river scenes does not otherwise include much focus on the tupelo, probably because of just how unique the cypress looks;  they are far more sprawling and fluid, reminding a northern or backcountry onlooker of a mature Eastern Hemlock (Tsuga Canadensis).  They also have a very cool ground feature which most other trees can't lay claim to: knees.

No one knows what they are really for, but the predominant theories ponder that the knees either help hold the giants up in the soggy ground or help with respiration for the roots.  I tended not to think about it too much when I got to see the knees for the first time in nearly two decades.  Instead, even as I dripped in the humidity and wished the mosquitoes would find a dragonfly to run away from, I just let the place speak to me on it's own terms, removed from science, from history, from names, from preconceptions.  I did not even make it that far into the place before the realities of the hot and humid South and a long drive back to Michigan loomed before me.  I definitely want to go back and see the water's edge, see the palmetto which I never imagined grew so far inland, and just see whatever nature wants to present to me.  I find that is what is best about places like Congaree, little remnants of Eden which act as natural icons to silence the busy mind and heart and allow for a gaze into something bigger than ourselves.  Visit the place, you won't be disappointed.  In the meantime, take a look at these pictures, which I figured could speak for themselves:

 

More information on Congaree can be found here:

http://www.nps.gov/cong/index.htm

They also have those fancy, new-fangled Facebook and Twitter pages. 

Wednesday Filler: Redwoods Of The East

While next post we take a look at the broader canvas offered by the boardwalk at Congaree, here today we can catch a glimpse at one of the defining features of the lowland experience.  Seen below is the trunk of a Baldcypress (Taxodium Distichum), in fact an extremely large and old one, at chest height, from about ten feet away.

Why yes, the camera has a rough time in 90% humidity.  The trees seem to enjoy it, though. 

There are other trees of vast scale in the east.  Live Oak (Quercus Virginiana) and Bur Oak (Quercus Macrocarpa) are massive sprawlers of immense volume that can dominate nearly every setting they can find enough crown room to stretch out in.  Eastern White Pine (Pinus Strobus) and Florida Royal Palm (Roystonea Regia) can both grow incredibly tall and dwarf a mature forest of some of the tallest eastern and northern Caribbean trees in their respective northern and Floridian/Cuban habitats.  For a lovely combination of both features, however, the Baldcypress certainly holds its own.  These things are massive in the western redwood family sense of the concept, and just as few of them remain, despite having a much broader range of acceptable native habitat. 

It's a shame we don't have more of recorded testimonies from the early European explorers about what they thought of such sights, and why people were so astonished by the western forests when the East put on quite the show for the centuries leading up to their Californian discovery in the mid-nineteenth century.  If Americans are more so impressed by frontier than the familiar, then what a wonder a frontier in the eastern backyard must have been.  Perhaps words failed so many times, and the redwood family got more attention because people started understanding how so many failing words had started to cause their frontier to disappear before the approach of the civilized world.  John Muir came to his botanical passions when growing up in Wisconsin, and fermented them on a long walk through forests such as these to the shores of the Gulf before he set off for California, and by ship rather than experiencing the heart of the continent the long way.  His loss!

And yes, I just said something bad and silly about John Muir.  Makes you want to pay attention to your backyard more, doesn't it?

2013: The Cool Wet One

2012 began with one of the mildest winters in memory.  Here in quintessentially southern Great Lakes South Lyon, Michigan we managed to see our lowest mercury reading a chilly 6 below zero Fahrenheit, but that was a brief adventure into a winter which saw January days well into the sixties and found March acting more like July, even giving us a tornado which we would not have expected until May.  This was followed by a July that acted more like we were in the desert Southwest, complete with 105 degree heat for weeks at a time and absolutely not a cloud in sight.  A sudden frost came in mid-September, rather early for this part of the Lakes, but it was followed by sixties well into December.  This all followed a 2011 which saw extremes of daytime highs in the thirties down as far south as Miami but also record breaking rains just about everywhere.  Not so 2012, which was bone dry and brought drought even to the entire length of the humidity factory known as the Gulf Coast.  Then too, there was Hurricane Sandy, a tropical-strength maelstrom of immense geographical scope; I witnessed the edge of the outer bands passing by here in Michigan. 

Then came 2013, a year in which extremes got altogether left behind, at least this far north.  Not so down south, where tornadoes were reported in January.  Up north we witnessed neither intense cold nor intense heat, but a lack of spring, a lack of summer, and a confused fall.  A killing frost happened in late May, but the growing season managed to last without a killing closer frost in mid-November.  My birthday and the start of the third year of this blog came along with much of my garden was still in bloom, followed by a deep freeze well below normal into the single digits, a freeze that we have risen above for only a few brief days thus far.  Out west single digits blasted the otherwise mild-winter Mojave desert, with St. George, Utah being buried under well over a foot of, get this, wet eastern-style snow.  Unlike in the storm of 2008, the snow stuck around for some time.  Again, however, the rest of the year was punctuated less by extremes than by moderation.  Much of July in southern Michigan was sitting in the upper fifties, ambushed here and there by a few days of summer heat.  Summer almost never came in the first place, with snow happening well into May.  This fall we had sixties from late August until mid-November, and unlike the previous year, we had little to show for it in foliage color.  The trees just seemed to give out almost instantly and without much warning. 

All the while we had the intense drought of 2012 beaten to a pulp in all but parts of California, Nevada, and a tiny corner of south western Oklahoma which has seemed to suffer intensely for the experience.  Rain kept falling, our Lakes seemed to rebound nicely, and the snow seems to have remembered that it belongs here this time of year.  Down South I certainly encountered rain, the likes of which fell in such intensity that I have never seen anywhere else.  This made for treacherous driving, a rather humid jaunt through coastal South Carolina, and a mosquito-empowered trip through Congaree National Park. 

While it is a floodplain, the swamp along the boardwalk in Congaree is not exactly a huge body of standing water.  In this wet year, however, things were very mucky even into June.

Which, by the way, we can continue down the boardwalk on now that the holidays are over.  My dear readers, thanks for continuing to visit us here and to discover more of the continent.  Despite my lack of presence over a good deal of the year, you made this the most visited thus far. 

Finding The North In Congaree

Today we take the first few steps onto the boardwalk at Congaree National Park.

One of the first things a northern type such as myself notices about the world between the uplands and the floodplain, as small as it may be, is how familiar the surrounding forest is.  Tall deciduous trees grow rather closely together, many species being the same sort of thing we have up north, if not similar in form to more northerly trees.  A Sweet-gum (Liquidambar Styraciflua) can pass for a maple at first glance, and there are even some Tulip Trees (Liriodendron Tulipifera) around to remind us that even this far south we are still passing through what can still be considered the Eastern mixed-forest.  Still, people expecting something more Southern lowcountry are hoping to see those amazing fluted bases of the cypresses or tupelos.  Instead, before we can even make it a decent portion of the way along the boardwalk, we find... a beech?!

Yes, that would indeed be a rather massive American Beech (Fagus Grandifolia), something one would expect to find at a higher elevation in the Appalachians or most certainly among the namesake Beech-Maple forests of the Great Lakes.  Here the thing is positively thriving, with a girth to it that I have never seen on a deciduous tree short of an oak or a Tulip Tree back northwards.  The upper branches themselves looked like they belonged on a mature tree!

That's what a long growing season and plenty of moisture can do down here, one supposes.  American Beech is not entirely a northern tree, as it can barely make it much into the Boreal forest and ranges slightly south into Florida.  Supposedly down that far it still claims title as a king of the canopy, being a tree that makes it all the way into the final stages of forest succession and is a true feature of the mature old growth deciduous canopy.

With love, USGS, with love.

Still, it is northern enough to have been fondly remembered as a regular feature of the forests of the northern Great Lakes.  Trunk after trunk there is marked by bear claw scratches, and most Black Bears (Ursus Americanus) that I have ever come into contact with were high up in a Beech looking down at me.  While the Beech disappear as the north shore of Lake Superior comes into view, they are certainly a regular feature of the edge of the Boreal world.  To see one of such grandeur in Congaree told me almost instantly that here we have a special place not only for the greater South, but perhaps even for the greater East.  Pretty soon, however, a few more steps along the boardwalk took me into that Southern world I was expecting...

Why Is Congaree National Park Special?

I have mentioned this place quite a bit in talking about the natural South.  Historically speaking it would not have been overly different from many other places in the lush bottomlands of the greater Southern lowcountry.  Yes, its location in the midst of South Carolina meant that it has played host to a number of significant historical events, not the least of which were the exploration of DeSoto and subsequent colonial ventures by the Spanish, as well as being a hiding place from which American nationalists would seek refuge from and use as a striking point against British forces during the Revolutionary War.  By and large, however, this land would just be considered more of what people were taking pains to avoid throughout the South.  People settled on higher ground where the floods could not reach and the land proved workable enough to not necessitate making an existence out of a swamp.  The mosquitoes alone would have sent me packing, as least as soon as summer came around!

Time pressed on, and with it came development.  The end of the antebellum economic system based on slavery meant that the a greater amount of industrialization came to cities like Columbia and Atlanta, along with railroads and a noticeable increase in population.  The swamps were still less than desirable to settle in, but as free and open land became harder to find, they too would fall before the path of civilization.  What's more, there were still incredible trees here the likes of which the first Europeans had seen when they landed on these shores centuries before.  Picture then the typical avarice found in your timber baron and it does not take long to imagine that the giants were seen wrapped in gift paper for the taking.  Baldcypress (Taxodium Distichum) grew this big, and had an even greater advantage to the consumer: extreme resistance to decay and rot.  What else would one expect of a tree that basically thrives when getting its feet wet?  When the forests of northern Michigan and Wisconsin started looking a bit thin of those equally valuable Eastern White Pines (Pinus Strobus) as the end of the nineteenth century arrived, northern millers also started turning an eye to new Southern potential.  With so many eyes on the scenery, it is a wonder that most of the riparian South held out as long as it did.

Congaree was fortunate, however, in having a rather broad floodplain which made extraction more difficult than in many places.  Even Chicago's Francis Beilder, one of the continent's most resourceful and determined timber barons, found that the logistics of extraction were just not economically feasible to make a clear cut of the place.  His company, which by the early twentieth century had purchased the land the park now sits on, left it alone.  Come 1969, prices for timber eventually caught up to the logistical difficulties.  Even as the Tar Sands of Alberta are now tapped for petroleum in an age when the costs of the process of extraction are cheaper than the raw material, so too then did the same reality come to nearly claim Congaree. 

The late sixties were a different sort of time, however.  Even as social upheaval changed the face of the continent and was putting a fight to sexism, racism, and a lot of different conventional ways of thinking, so too had come to pass a new environmental consciousness which had dawned in the wake of Rachel Carson giving everyone a reminder about the danger of our artificial domination of the biosphere.  By the end of the decade, a new appreciation for the science of ecology had awakened local fervor for such otherwise ignored sites like Hoosier Prairie.   What had once been viewed up as a typical Midwestern abandoned field was rediscovered as a true remnant of an otherwise glossed over tallgrass prairie.  In the South, the old bottomland finally got the same recognition, and the Sierra Club and others started to fight for Congaree.   By 1976, just as the locals back in Indiana got a taste and rush of feeling for something they had almost entirely lost, the locals down in deep South Carolina got the same thing for their majestic Congaree.  That's what makes this place so special, really.  Congaree is an amazing link back to the historical, indeed wild and primordial, South.  In an age when political divisions were already working toward the societal breaking point that they find themselves at today, you had all sorts of politicians suddenly drop camp, including even Strom Thurmond, better known for turning back the clock in other less than lovely ways.  All of a sudden people started looking at just how far we had come and just how much we were willing to throw away.

I mention the White Pine logging and Hoosier re-discovery in this post because of just how important Congaree is in relation to the rest of the, well, world conservation movement.  All too often national parks are thought of as areas that protect outstanding natural scenic beauty and little else, and while Congaree does boast incredible spires of trees in a nearly vanished virgin Southern bottomland, we really only see this now after the park has been in existence for a decade and has been officially protected since 1976.  People went nuts over the Sequoias as soon as they were found by us second-born North Americans; a swamp or a floodplain would take much longer to appreciate.  Hell, people still don't appreciate why Cuyahoga Valley got full national park status and probably will not for a long time to come; why be giddy over your typical Ohio low-relief ravine?  There is no towering cliff-face or even old growth forest there, it's just the natural backyard with a few historic trinkets... right?  Guess what, people thought the same thing about your background cypress swamp named Congaree.  People thought the same thing about Joshua Tree National Park until Minerva Hoyt spoke up on behalf of the Mojave.  People thought the same thing about the Everglades (a much better example for this soggy part of the world) until Marjory Douglas told the rest of us to give a damn.

Congaree got a reprieve, and in comparison with some other places like the tallgrass prairie or some bog somewhere on the Canadian Shield, it is easy to see why this place is special.  After all, the trees here are something amazing!  But like all those other places, what is most special about Congaree is how it keeps us connected not only with the wilderness, but with our connection to it.  I may constantly bring up the insane June visit I had among hordes of mosquitoes, but the fact is that this was a wonderful time to visit, to see just how comfortable this Northern Ontarian had otherwise become with the the ease of modern convenience.  It is easy to point out just how easily we can lose historical memory when we demolish a building or change a school curriculum to focus on more "practical" subjects, but it is even easier when do lose that "background" swamp, desert, prairie, etc. that we had to remind us what existence itself was like for those who brought us into our own.  So what does Congaree do for us that other parks do not to the same level of consciousness?

Let's head north for a little bit.

In Canada our national parks got to the same start the way that yours did.  We had our pre-Carson conservationists who had a sense of the overall importance of nature for the soul, you know, like your Roosevelts or Muirs or such.  They saw Banff and made a park out of it (yes, there is more to it than that, but you get the idea) just as down here you had Yellowstone and realized what a unique natural place it was and did the same thing.  After this, though, the Canadian concept of national parks changed.  Perhaps starting as early as 1893 when Algonquin was made into a (then) national park in an otherwise fairly typical section of southern Canadian Shield highlands, park makers got to thinking that in addition to protecting the outstanding areas, perhaps we should start protecting some of the more pristine or exemplary areas of particular biomes across the country.  Today we thus have a place like Point Pelee National Park set aside to show us what is so special about the southern Great Lakes and the Carolinian (eastern-mixed) forest, a place which aside from being a bird-watcher's paradise would not otherwise be seen as significant in the national or continental scheme of things. 

Back South now.

In Congaree we have an amazing park which does this very same thing, celebrating not just the lowland South Carolina landscape but that of the riparian South in general.  In essence, Congaree is amazing not just for its incredible forests but also because it is perhaps the first "regional" park of its kind according to the Canadian concept.  It has been joined recently by a California Chaparral version, Pinnacles National Park, which gives me hope for the future for the central prairies and other "background" scenery.  Yes, there have been many parks created for different purposes in the past which could easily fit into this line of conservation theory (Great Basin National Park really stands out in this regard), but Congaree strikes me as being a huge victory for this idea in general, and it helps that the place is downright beautiful and even a little savage.  Want to see what I saw?  Take a trip down the boardwalk with me next post, but in the meantime check out some of their amazing pictures at their various websites.


Main website

Congaree National Park Facebook Page

Congaree National Park Twitter Page

Wednesday Filler: The Coolest National Park Entrance Sign

Entrance signs for national parks are wonderful things to see.  Even for people who pass them by and don't otherwise give the place a second look, they have an effect on reminding the onlooker that this is a special place set aside by the nation (it takes an act of Congress to create a full park) for reasons of national significance.  Some signs are cooler than others though.

Many parks don't even put a small spray of local flora or even exotic bedding annuals at the base of their sign, but Congaree sure does.  I was expecting just another sign that I would get really exited over, but instead I found palm trees (Sabal Minor), something I never expected native this deep inland in even South Carolina.  And yes, they and other wonderful truly Subtropical things do happen to grow here, and there are a hundred other reasons why you should be thrilled when you see this sign.

The Reality Behind Paradise

Be they Spanish, French, or English, the first colonizers of the incredible coast stretching from Virginia to Louisianne found before them a land of unexpected beauty.  They were greeted by towering trees which stood like the columns on a portico alongside numerous, easily accessible waterways that often flooded the surrounding lowcountry to further enrich some incredible soil the likes of which they could only dream of back in fallow Europe.  The winters were also quite pleasant, those further south being hardly what one would call a winter except in coastal and southern Spain.  Life looked promising, especially in comparison to the deserts which the Spanish found north of Mexico, the extreme vacillation of seasons which the English found in New England, and the Platonic form of winter which the French got schooled by in Quebec.  Then, of course, there was the summer...

Even the baking wastes of Extremadura had nothing on a bad summer in this place.  Heat worse than that of the tropics, humidity to match, and either torrential rainstorms or an oven-like drought would complete the idea that maybe this new paradise was an illusion.  Even the promise of refreshment from the Atlantic seemed far away under the bath-like summer conditions provided for by a generous Gulf Stream.  And then, worse than the weather, oh, much, much worse... mosquitoes.  Let me tell you a story.

Picture a 30 year old, say, from Northern Ontario.  Imagine he is on the botanical thrill ride of his life exploring a region he had not seen since he was a young teenager, about to step into what he considered to be one of the most amazingly underrated national parks anywhere in the world.  A cypress swamp, old growth even, awaits him.  He sees a sign by the start of the boardwalk which will take him into this emerald cathedral, a sign which has a warning:  "Mosquito alert: War-zone".  He laughs!  What are mosquitoes but annoying insects he has grown up with in the Canadian Shield wilderness.  Up there, every June, there are swarms of them, and worse yet, swarms of black flies which seem to block out the sun!  These Southerners surely jest, for just as they make this "sawmill gravy" which they consider to be something special even in the face of superior Poutine gravy, surely they wish to think that their mosquitoes are worse than any in the world.  So there he goes, walking on, admiring the trees.  Then he starts to realize that things are much hotter and stickier than they were back in pleasant Charleston.  He swats a few bugs. 

And then from the maw of hell itself comes the mother swarm of all mosquitoes! 

His friend starts racing back to the safety of the higher ground and the high and dry pines.  He himself admits defeat and stares longingly back into the majestic buttresses of a forest that is sometimes on land, sometimes pretty much in water, and for all the tolerance he has thus far given to this beloved land of his, he has found that this is a climate alien to his own native specifications.  He has been humbled by Congaree National Park, and by extension, the rest of the lowcountry South.  Doubtless to say, many more before him probably were as well.  The South was the slowest to find colonial domination by any foreign born people, probably because the reality behind the lushness and beauty naturally occurring here is that of a rather thick climate.  Yes, every region does have its ups and downs, so this place is no different really, and the trade offs of vegetation, insanely wonderful length of growing season, etc. are totally worth the price of admission, but it does serve as a potent reminder that as in much of North America, preindustrial existence here took determination and a respect for the living world to be possible.  That said, even while June might not be the most comfortable time to visit, it may just be the most fitting, akin to seeing the Mojave during the heat peak in late July. 

But hey, what's so special about Congaree, and why do I keep bringing it up?  Let's find out in our next full-length post. 

The South-Eastern Forgotten History

Most people assume that anything east of the Appalachian divide and south of Quebec was once strictly the domain of the Thirteen Colonies.  Never minding that one cannot help but run into a Dutch name in any given mile of the Hudson River Valley, or that the lower Delaware was once the going concern for a Swedish colonial venture, the fact remains that Atlantic North America was a pretty busy place for Scotland (careful now, the parliaments were not joined until 1707), France, and Spain.  Until the 1750's, anything north of New England (except for half of Newfoundland), meaning even Maine, was pretty much Francophone, and everything from Jacksonville on South until the early nineteenth century was a very interesting frontier world of Spanish and First Born cultures that never really managed to dominate one another.  Long before England became a dominant power even in Virginia or Massachusetts there were colonies and missions set up by the other two major European players on the continent.  Ultimately, mostly due to wars between them and the remoteness of these settlements from their main colonial ventures making logistical support very difficult, the other colonial ventures failed and receded into the fog of history.

36 years before the foundation of Jamestowne, in fact, there were Jesuits who tried to set up camp among the Powhatan of the Chesapeake.  These southern Algonquins did not think much of or against the newcomers in any way, mainly because the Jesuits had by even this early adapted a missionary style that tried to learn about the cultures they were going to evangelize in; such an effort took a lot longer to set up than the approaches favored by other orders such as the Dominicans.  They never had the chance to get to know them; the priests were killed by Paquiquino, a Powhatan man who was claiming to be in league with them.  Far from being a true betrayal, Paquiquino was responding brutally to brutally being kidnapped and culturally assimilated by Spanish conquistadors nearly a decade before.  Needless to say, the Spanish had already been in town before the Jesuits ever tried to set up shop at their mission of St. Mary's.  No trace remains of this mission, nor do we even have any record of where it was specifically located other than somewhere between the York and James rivers.  We do know a bit more about the conquistadors, however.  They set up the earliest European settlement inland in eastern North America, Fort San Juan.

Like St. Mary's, we are not entirely sure of the location of San Juan, but we do know that it was deep into North Carolina, possibly even within a few dozen miles of Asheville.  We tend to think of Spanish ventures in the South as being limited to colonizing parts of Florida and De Soto making a complete ass of himself in his explorations, but Spanish ambition was a pretty huge thing.  An empire had thus far been made extending from Peru to Cuba.  Size was not a problem for a Spain that wanted more and more, and the possibility of success by Protestant rival England and the better chefs known as the French meant that whatever gold lay in store for the taking in mysterious North America could no longer remain behind the veil of a northern mystery.  The French and English, in turn, saw what was happening with Spain in the South and started to get an idea that maybe a future was to be had in settling these lands; in fact as a result I consider the Spanish incursions in this part of the continent to actually be one of the most important events in North American history.  But why this far inland, why in the heart of the Blue Ridge mountains?

Truth be told, this is a story still being written and read, and close to home at that.  Researchers at the University of Michigan, of all places, are trying to figure out just how far the Spanish were trying to go.  One thing is certain: they were pretty serious about the whole affair.  Whenever the French would set up shop, be it at Fort Caroline (the, ahem, secret French origin of Jacksonville, Florida) or Charlesfort on Parris Island, the Spanish would practically come to try and devour whatever had been achieved.  Part of this might have been religiously inspired, as many of the French colonists in these places were Hugenot refugees.  Regardless, the Spanish won and evicted France from ever having more than a commercial and exploratory presence on the Atlantic coast.  The French retreated north to where they had been fishing and trading with the Micmac for half a century, and would later return to ply the rivers of the South from a base in Louisianne.  But the Spanish...

They wanted colonies here.  They founded a few down in Florida, most notably St. Augustine, but they also liked the paradise that the French had found among the Sea Islands south of modern Charleston.  To this end, they founded Santa Elena, built on the ruins of Charlesfort of Parris Island.  They knew, like the French did, that having an outpost so far afield from the main ventures was going to be difficult.  As such, attempts were made to connect the whole thing together overland to Mexico, and Fort San Juan was part of that concept.  This was still the northern land of mystery, however, and not even a mental map of directions had thus far been conceived.  When in doubt, as so many explorers in North America would later find helpful, the Spanish followed the rivers.  The First Born, after all, had for centuries used the waterways to pass goods from coast to coast, and the newcomers were well aware of this.  As the visitor center of Congaree National Park delightfully points out, De Soto did indeed pass through the breadth of the land this way, and those road-dreamers who founded San Juan after him took to the Congaree and associated rivers as part of the first leg of their journey to possibly connect with the Tennessee and then Mississippi and further western waterways. 

But then they left behind that land of mild winter that is the Lowcountry South and hit some heavy snow in the Appalachians, their first true taste of a winter that even northern Europe was unlikely to provide.  This, combined with the sheer distance they had now put between themselves and even the nearest part of their empire in Florida meant that the Spanish would follow suit to the French and go back to more familiar territory.  Were it not for English initiative in the following century, however, they might have been back in force.  They certainly did just that in Tejas, Nuevo Mexico, and Alta California, roughly at the same time that the Carolinas were getting underway in the early 1700's.  Were it not for the threat of war and the serious competition that England was capable of, the South might have looked very different.  As it is, Carolina came and even divided into two Carolinas.  Georgia, designed as a buffer, became a true colony in its own right.  Even without these developments, the aggressive expansion and political culture dominated by almost constant warfare that has come to encapsulate British and American history means that these places would have become part of the United States anyway.

But imagine if the cultural foundations had been... from someone else.  Florida still has a historical memory of being something New Spain, just as Louisiana still has French-speakers.  There might have been more than just a museum or visitor center pointing out that such places once had different flags flying overhead...

The multi-cultural South... not what we expected, eh?

Fitting Big Trees Into Small Spaces

This can be done!  Now, yes, one should plant in favor of letting nature do its thing and not confine the wild to something as ignoble as pot, but when you don't have the room and want to dwell among more than just concrete, well, there are trees that can do that.  Even better, there are native trees that can adapt oh so well.  Take this lovely creature, since we are talking about the South and all:

You know, in most places they would try to clip the thing into a fine topiary to keep it off the windows.  Not here.  This was taken on Broad Street in Charleston, South Carolina.

 This is a Balcypress (Taxodium Distichum), a tree that around this part of the world gets very wet feet and often stands at the edge of rivers and lakes in actual open water.  Here it was, however, in the heart of Charleston growing practically out of the sidewalk.  It was not alone!

For those wondering, the palm is a Cabbage Palm (Sabal Palmetto), which can be found in almost every viewpoint in the city.  I think this was taken on Church street, but I am not entirely sure.

Here we have a Live Oak (Quercus Virginiana) forming a rather broad crown with such a tiny base.  Granted, the base was filling out its growing space rather impressively.

That adorable little palm growing next to it is a Dwarf Cabbage (Sabal Minor).

Clearly the people of Charleston, even with such limited space, preferred their skyline to be a mixture of artifice and nature.  Except for the some of the major streets, it seemed as if every plausible inch of the city was planted and then on a grand scale.  I have always noticed this a lot about any urban area in the South older than the past few decades; our winter home in Fort Lauderdale had a backyard featuring two seventy foot tall Royal Palms (Roystonea Regia) and a sixty foot Slash Pine (Pinus Elliottii) graced the neighboring yard.  The climate is just going to ensure that a giant scale is the default setting, and the locals don't seem to be too quick to put a stop to growth.  This is not to say that the North is lacking in such a mentality, but just that places like Charleston seem to promote a more organic approach to the city landscape.  I could probably write loads more on the topic, but I figured I would let the pictures do the talking here.