A Guide to the Wildflowers of South Carolina

Castanea, Sep 2003 by Pittman, Bert

Porcher, Richard Dwight and Douglas Alan Rayner. 2001. A Guide to the Wildflowers of South Carolina. University of South Carolina Press, Columbia, South Carolina. 544 pages. 1-57003-437-0 cloth, $49.95; 1-57003-438-9 paper, $29.95.

Building upon the first author's Wildflowers of the Carolina Lowcountry, now out of print, Professors Porcher and Rayner have expanded and improved their Guide to cover the entire state. Over 680 color prints illustrate species and communities, many of which have not been well-shown before.

The authors guide the reader logically and handily to various wildflower species by outlining the state's major physiographic regions. Physical factors and the vegetation structure are discussed and illustrated for each of the 47 different community types. How these natural groups or plant communities sort themselves out across the Carolina landscape is surprisingly well circumscribed by the states' underlying landforms, geology, and soils. For example, the Fall Line Sand Hills is a well-recognized and prominent physiographic province of the Midlands, and is home to several related but distinctive plant communities: longleaf pine-scrub oak forests, Atlantic white cedar swamps, and pocosin community types. Sand, drought, the evergreen habit, and fire are discussed as factors that help adapt these communities to our sand hill landscape.

Although the ecological orientation and discussions are strong and useful throughout, the authors remain true to their subject-wildflowers. Take for instance one of my favorite native wildflowers, Macbridea caroliniana (Walter) Blake. Latin scientific names often discourage the enthusiastic amateur. But, the authors have conveniently included a Latin pronunciation guide, which includes the basics of phonics and spelling. Also given is the common name; and in the case above, the Carolina bird-in-the-nest, is illustrated with its uncommonly large, showy mint flower subtended by a distinctive cup-like calyx. As readers will discover, this rare plant species of federal concern grows in bald cypress-tupelo gum swamp forests in the coastal plain. From the author's very fine summary of the state's botanical history we further learn that this plant was named for Dr. James McBride, an accomplished physician-naturalist from the Low Country, by one of America's earliest and most respected botanists, Thomas Walter, who first applied the Linnaean system of binomial nomenclature in his guide to the plants of the Carolina Lowcountry in his Flora Carolinana in 1788.

Porcher and Rayner take their Guide beyond typical wildflower books and suggest to the reader where one may locate, observe, and appreciate these communities and their typical wildflower species all across the state. By region and county, they describe over 50 federal, state, and private natural areas open to wildflower enthusiasts, and give location directions. Their book is thus a compendium of some of the state's most important wildflower refuges.

Also included are indexes for scientific names, common names, and a general index, as well as a comprehensive bibliography to the scientific botanical literature of the state, addresses to the state's major herbaria, taxonomic keys and natural history of select groups of plants of special interest such as the trilliums, carnivorous, and poisonous plants, and selected topics in plant community classification. I found the book with its many plates and figures to be exceptionally well organized, with simple color-coding of major subject heads and sequential numbers of all figures and photographs. All the various plant biology and ecological concepts are introduced and described early on under the subject head of "Natural Wildflower Communities," making this work a suitable textbook for a general course on field botany and natural areas.

Although the emphasis of this book is on wildflowers, those readers with a general interest in natural history, nature-tourism, local history, natural landscapes, archaeology, and human impacts upon the Palmetto state will find this book useful and informative. So, the next time you are trying to take the back way to Myrtle Beach through the Pee Dee by way of US 378 and are craning your neck for the old (and venerated) sign for the "Stop and Blow Drive-In" restaurant, take a copy of this book along. You won't regret it. (Edited version, used with permission; originally published in the Newsletter of the South Carolina Native Plant Society.)-BERT PITTMAN, S.C. DEPARTMENT OF NATURAL RESOURCES, PO BOX 167, COLUMBIA, SOUTH CAROLINA 29202.