Bountiful Barrens

Natural History, Oct, 1999 by Robert H. Mohlenbrock

An array of unique plants thrive where outcrops of hard, shaley rock create clearings within a mountain forest.

THIS LAND: WEST VIRGINIA

During the spring of 1892, botanist John Kunkel Small was in southeastern West Virginia exploring Kate's Mountain (named for a local pioneer heroine). Emerging from a dry forest, he found himself on a steep slope covered with flat pieces of shaley rock. Vegetation was sparse, and only a few scraggly trees rose above small patches of wildflowers. His attention was drawn to a plant he had never seen before. It was about one foot tall, with narrow, cloverlike leaflets and round white flower heads more than an inch in diameter. Two years later, Small formally described this new species, Trifolium virginicum, and it became known as Kate's Mountain clover.

The steep, rocky slope on which the plant grew was a shale barrens, to use the term introduced by botanist Edward Steele in 1911. These habitats are found in eastern West Virginia, from Mercer County north to Mineral and Morgan Counties, as well as in adjacent areas of Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania. The botanist Edgar T. Wherry described shale barrens as places where hard, shaley rocks of Devonian age outcrop on steep hillsides and the ground is strewn with fragments created by the action of frost. He noted that the soil is sparse and that the loose flakes of rock (mostly of quartz and clay minerals), creep down the slope under the influence of wind and rain.

Shale barrens appear on slopes of at least twenty degrees that have a southern exposure, which makes them drier. The steeper the slope, the more barrens it usually has, while slopes of less than twenty degrees are most often forested. Robert B. Platt, another botanist, noted that from a distance, the most distinctive characteristic of a barrens is its expanse of brownish yellow soil, interrupted only by a mixture of scattered trees, shrubs, and herbs.

Most of Kate's Mountain, a 3,200-foot ridge south of the resort town of White Sulphur Springs, now falls inside Greenbrier State Forest. A road running north-south through the western margins of this eight-square-mile preserve provides access to a picnic area and other amenities. Along this route is a forest of hemlock and white pine. Harts Run, a crystal-clear stream, flows through it.

Several hiking trails of varying difficulty may be followed here. The Mabel Dowdy trail (a round-trip of two miles) samples the hemlock and white pine forest, a moist deciduous forest, an open meadow, and Hart's Run. The Rocky Ridge trail goes through dry forest up to the summit of Kate's Mountain, more than two miles away. The shale barrens are scattered through the dry forest, and a good place to look for them is on slopes northeast of an overlook not far from the high point of the Rocky Ridge trail. For nonhikers, this overlook is also accessible by road.

West Virginia botanists list fifteen species that are confined, or endemic, to shale barrens, fourteen of which are known to grow on Kate's Mountain. Three were originally found here. One of these is Kate's Mountain clover. Another is white-haired clematis, an upright species with undivided, coarsely veined leaves and solitary, nodding flowers that lack true petals but have four or five very thick, purple sepals. Its seeds have a silvery, silky tail nearly two inches long. This plant was recorded in July 1877 by the explorer Gustav Guttenberg, but half a century went by before Edgar Wherry formally named it Clematis albicoma. The third plant originally found on Kate's Mountain is the mountain pimpernel, discovered by Kenneth K. Mackenzie in August 1903. It has smooth leaves of three to five parts and bears several umbrellalike clusters of tiny yellow flowers.

When I visited Kate's Mountain one July day, I came upon a foot-tall plant with circles of three to five woolly leaves topped by tiny clusters of yellow flowers. This was shale barrens buckwheat. While the rest of the barrens plants are closely related to other nearby species, this buckwheat's nearest relatives are all in the western half of the United States.

HABITATS

Hemlock and white pine forest also includes American beech, red maple, mountain magnolia, and--with its wintergreen-flavored twigs--sweet birch. New York fern grows in dense colonies across the forest floor. Wild lily-of-the-valley, hepatica, and coltsfoot ginger commonly bloom in the spring. In July one may look for the robust black cohosh, with its spirelike clusters of white flowers.

Moist deciduous woods are well shaded by a wide variety of trees, among them tulip poplar, sugar maple, cucumber magnolia, striped maple, basswood, and white oak. Red-bud and flowering dogwood are abundant in the midcanopy layer. Maidenhair fern and marginal shield fern--along with such wildflowers as false Solomon's-seal, common Solomon's-seal, golden bellwort, wild ginger, and wild larkspur--grow on the forest floor. Here and there are large clumps of the shrubby wild hydrangea.

Upland forest trees are spaced farther apart than in the moist woods, allowing ample sunlight to filter in. This dry habitat contains scarlet oak, black oak, chinquapin oak, pignut hickory, white ash, and black gum. Chinquapin oak leaves resemble chestnut leaves; a true chestnut known as chinquapin is also found here, scattered in the shrub zone. During the summer, rough-leaved sunflower, whorled coreopsis, starry campion, and thimbleweed are in full bloom.