#tassel rue

[vandaliatraveler]

Where it narrows and plummets through a steep gorge at Valley Falls State Park, the Tygart Valley River has broken the Connoquenessing sandstone through which it passes into massive, jumbled slabs. In the margins of these wrecked pillars, where sediment and fine sand wash out, a great diversity of life has sprung up. The river is both destroyer and creator, more powerful and relentless than any god man has dreamed up.

From top: royal fern (Osmunda regalis var. spectabilis), a water-loving beauty that clumps in the nooks between the boulders; the elegant tassel rue (Trauvetteria carolinensis), with its sharply-lobed, palmate leaves; yellow star grass (Hypoxis hirsuta), whose six-petaled flowers and delicate, grass-like leaves are quite attractive; American water willow (Justicia americana), whose creeping rhizomes allow the plant to form extensive colonies at the edges of streams and rivers; silky dogwood (Cornus amomum), a thicket-forming wetlands lover; and ebony spleenwort (Asplenium platyneuron), easily identified by its brown stem.

[vandaliatraveler]

Tassel rue (Trautvetteria caroliniensis), also known as Carolina bugbane and false bugbane, is a showy perennial herb that inhabits moist, shady woods and stream banks throughout Appalachia. A member of the buttercup family, the plant spreads aggressively from branching rhizomes to form dense colonies. Tassel rue’s flowers, borne on delicate corymbs and lacking petals, are quite distinctive, consisting of numerous white stamens extending radially from a mounded cluster of green pistils. The plant’s attractive, palmately-lobed basal leaves are deeply dissected into five or more coarsely-toothed segments. Given its fragrant, unusual flowers and ornamental foliage, tassel rue is well worth considering for a featured spot in a shade garden. The photos above were taken along the Shavers Fork River.

[vandaliatraveler]

Shavers Fork of the Cheat River is the highest river in the eastern United States. For most of its nearly ninety-mile length, it meanders gently through a trough formed by the Cheat and Shavers Mountains, bordered by the most extensive red spruce forest remaining in the Central Appalachians. The river is revered by trout fisherman and naturalists alike; two-thirds of the land through which it flows is publicly-owned and readily accessible by well-maintained national forest roads. During the Civil War, the mountains here played a pivotal role in controlling access to Staunton-Parkersburg Turnpike and ultimately to the Shenandoah Valley to the east. The earthworks of the Cheat Summit Fort are still visible on a bluff overlooking the river. In summer and fall, the Cheat Mountain Salamander, an excursion train named for an endemic, endangered amphibian, runs along the river into the remote heart of this beautiful, wild country. More selfishly, the banks of this river collect a treasure trove of wildflowers, including the gorgeous tassel rue (Trautvetteria caroliniensis), or Carolina bugbane, which was in bloom this past weekend.