Roan

Coming up on our last week at Konnarock and its difficult to believe how quickly time passes. The temporal is ever so swift.

I had the pleasure of being in the high country these last two weeks. We just returned from Unaka Mountain in Tennessee, finishing up a long relocation that is now the newest section of the Appalachian Trail. The Tennessee Eastman, the maintaining hiking club that worked aside us and treated us to a wonderful dinner, were thrilled to finally conclude this project they have been whacking away at slowly for years. They were great to work with, very experienced and friendly.

The previous week we worked with them as well, this time atop Roan Mountain, an island in the sky. I am smitten with Roan and its bald meadows. A lovely, lovely place close to 6000 ft elevation at places.

We saw the Turk's Cap Lilly, one of the tallest flowers on the trail.






And we got to stay at the Barn, aka Overmountain Shelter, the largest shelter on the AT with an amazing valley view.



Nice place to wake up.




The fog rolled in thick two days while we were on Roan. Awesome experience.



Pretty phlox



Overseeing some trail building






Indian pipe. The Ghost Plant. The ghost plant is a pretty cool story. As you can see from its color, it isn't very green. It lacks chlorophyll, therefore it cannot produce food and energy from the sun via photosynthesis. It actually gains its energy indirectly from the sun though.

A Mycorrhiza relationship is a symbiotic association between a plant's roots and a fungus. For example, an oak tree may have mycorrhizal fungi on its roots. The fungus has access to food from the roots, and the tree has better access to absorption of water and minerals it may otherwise have trouble getting from the soil because of the fungi's mycelia, their means of getting nutrients.

So the Indian pipe gets its energy from the mycorrhizal fungi that is living off of another plant. A crazy example of parasitism, but interesting and more proof of the layers of interconnectedness. I always love seeing this plant out in the woods.