The undulating strip opened an arrow-straight path that swept away from us toward a distant horizon.
It was a typical Sandhills summer day — 90 percent humidity coupled with a sweltering 96 degree temperature — definitely not my idea of a pleasant day for tramping around in the sunshine.Yyet, to my surprise, I was enjoying myself.
My two companions were botanists — Moni Bates, with the North Carolina Plant Conservation Program, and Bruce Sorrie, with the North Carolina Natural Heritage Program, who specializes in longleaf pine ecology. We had come to examine the rare and unusual in an unexpected place. Bruce has recently completed a survey of native plants in the natural areas of Richmond County and has found that power line rights of way are havens for many native plants that have become rare in more recent years.
The reason? Many of our region’s native plants evolved to thrive in the natural fire-maintained landscape of the Sandhills. Throughout years of fire suppression, these stripes of tree- and shrub-free power lines have somewhat mimicked the benefits of fire, creating havens for many native plants. To maintain power lines, electric companies either mow or treat the land with a special kind of herbicide, which is specially formulated to kill only woody vegetation (trees and shrubs). These are the same plants that would be killed by frequent fire. The result, Bruce found, is that many native herbaceous (non-woody) plants, now rare or endangered, due to the absence of fire, can be found thriving in some of these areas.
At first glance, the power line right of way appears commonplace, just a broad stripe of green flanked on each side by pine forest. It’s not a place you would expect to find anything distinctive or unusual. Even from a distance, however, you cannot help but notice the plump fingers of emerald green nestled in each dip of the rolling landscape. At the heart of these areas of emerald green are seeps, or streamhead pocosins, depressions where the clay layer, which lies below our sandy top soil, comes very close to the surface, causing groundwater to seep along the impenetrable clay, keeping the thin overlying layer of sand constantly wet.
Back before humans began to suppress it, fire was an important part of the natural landscape. The frequent thunderstorms of the Sandhills region sparked fires on a regular basis, especially in the springtime when vegetation is driest. When fire occurred in the upland, it would burn a short distance into the pocosin or seep before being extinguished by the wet conditions. In this area where the soil is wet, yet the vegetation is often burned, wetland herbaceous plants can successfully compete with shrubs. These plants quickly recover from fire because they re-sprout from underground rhizomes (elongated roots thickened with reserve food). The diversity in the plant life of areas like this is so great that it is not unusual to find over 100 different species of plants living in a patch of land that is 20 by 50 meters (or about 65 feet by 165 feet).
In the constantly moist seeps of these power lines, where the clay is closest to the surface and there are few nutrients, we found many carnivorous plants, for instance sundews and pitcher plants. Such plants have evolved to live in this mineral-poor soil by supplementing their diet with insects, which they catch in their attractive but sticky vegetation. The beautiful leaves of the tiny sundew, for example, are equipped with reddish hairs tipped in sticky droplets that sparkle in the sunlight. The unfortunate insect that chooses to sip nectar from this plant will find itself trapped on the sticky surface while the leaf slowly closes over the victim and digests it. The insects provide the plants with added proteins and other nutrients that are missing from the soil.
In wet areas where the topsoil above the clay was deeper, the plant communities changed. Here is where Sorrie found two different types of yellow-eyed grasses that are now considered rare in North Carolina. In this wet area, we also found the Sandhills lily, a newly discovered lily that is so rare that fewer than 300 individual plants have been found existing anywhere. In the upland areas of these undulating rights-of-way, we found blazing star and blue sage, two more plants that the state now lists as rare.
Along the fringes of the maintained area of the power line, where forest meets meadow, we found a healthy population of rough-leaved loosestrife, which is listed federally as an endangered species. This moisture-loving plant likes living on the edge, between sun-filled meadow and sheltering woodland, and is often nestled up close to shrubs.
The behavior of many of these plants can make them appear quite mysterious at times,for they may seem to disappear from an area, lying dormant for several years, and then when conditions are right, they will sprout new growth, blossom and reproduce. This kind of behavior also makes finding them quite a challenge.
Bates, my other botanist companion, was with us that day because of the many rare and endangered plants that Sorrie has found. The Plant Conservation Program that she represents works to preserve our rich diversity of plant life and protect native plants that are rare or endangered. She was excited during our wanderings that day. Both she and Sorrie were amazed to find a large number of rare plants in such close proximity to one another.
As we walked about in the hot sun, with high-tension electric wires snapping overhead, cricket frogs and green treefrogs serenaded us. Though the Pine Barrens treefrogs (another endangered species) were silent that day, we knew that they, too, thrived in this unexpected haven of diversity, for Sorrie had heard them on his last visit.
With the ever-rising intensity of heat on that typical late July afternoon, clouds were building, and rumbling thunder warned us that it was time to make our way toward the car. We trod back over the same arrow-straight right of way that we had stopped to scan earlier in the day. How different it looked to me on my return.
It is good to know that sometimes accidental byproducts of human enterprise, like the mowed stretches of power lines that crisscross our region, can provide our natural world with opportunity to take advantage of the right conditions. Many of the plants we found that day may have been rare, but fortunately, they are also resilient and enduring.
Judy Jessop may be contacted through the Sandhills Office of The Nature Conservancy at (910) 246-0300.
