 |
Tangle of Yellow Floating Heart leaves
at Lake Cheston, Sewanee, TN |
I wish that I had a dollar for every walk I've been on that
involved a hunt for plants. My friend, Victoria, a botanist who is
world-renowned for her work with Eupatorium,
a white flowered weed that has no utilitarian value in the human world (that I
know of), often asks me to accompany her on ventures into places that are close
to nature's heart and, sometimes, places that bear the signage: "Posted,
No Trespassing."
Yesterday, the plant hunt centered around bodies of water
near Sewanee, Tennessee that are called lakes. I use the word
"called" because to me, the ones I saw were more like ponds. I
understand that there is a lot of uncertainty about what should properly be called a lake, and some simply define them as larger versions of ponds, or as bodies of water that are at least five acres or more in area; while others
define them as twelve to twenty acres in area. I've read that in the state
of Wisconsin almost every pond is called a lake; whereas in Newfoundland, every
lake is called a pond.
Whatever the ecologists say about the appropriate definitions of lakes and ponds, we walked the perimeter of Lake Cheston on Wiggons Creek yesterday, and I think that we must have
covered close to two miles, sometimes walking over rough terrain where matted
tree roots made the going difficult for an aging tenderfoot like me.
We were trying to collect a water
plant called the Yellow Floating Heart (Nymphoides peltata), a yellow-flowered
species of plant that somehow got here from its native Eurasian habitat, was established in
Quebec, and now occurs from New England southwest to Texas. We could not get
close enough to the water to pluck a specimen so we stood on a bridge,
attempting to "catch" a specimen with a long stick we had found on
the trail. The floating heart-shaped leaves, with long petioles, grow so thickly that
they form a network almost impossible to disturb with a stick. After numerous
attempts, the botanist said, "I'm going in," and I shuddered because the
ground around the lake's edge looked mushy enough to absorb a human up to the
knees.
As this particular botanist has been touted as someone who
walks on water, often wading in marshes around south Louisiana to demonstrate
to students how a plant can be captured in boggy areas, I was surprised when
she turned back and decided that the Yellow Floating Heart wasn't worth the
effort.
 |
| Beached Yellow Floating Heart |
We continued to walk the perimeter and as we neared the
beach area, I spied more of this water lily-like plant. However, again, we were
too far from the plant, and, again, the botanist gave up the catch, sighing
heavily. As we turned to climb the hill where the car was parked, I looked down
at the grass just beyond the lake's edge and at my feet lay a perfect specimen
of the plant, its yellow face smiling up at me. "Eureka!" I
said. "A floating heart. It
followed us." I felt like I had found a Swamp Candle in a south Louisiana
swamp or a wildflower in the crack of a city sidewalk!
Readers may think that such finds are not so momentous, but
I am proud to write that I've finally attained the title of "Amateur Botanist,"
with a specialization in the field of Yellow Floating Hearts.
Photographs by Victoria I. Sullivan
