waxed philosophic as he stood beside U.S. Highway 52 South between the towns of Albemarle and Norwood. “It’s the way of the world.”
“It certainly is.” Dr. Margaret Lee, known to her friends as Peggy, stepped a bit farther away from the busy road toward the ditch that teemed with spring green plants growing under the power lines. “But not today, Mr. Jenks. Today, we’re going to keep this particular thing from dying. Are you ready?”
“They tell me that’s what I’m here for, ma’am.”
Peggy ignored his lack of enthusiasm. “You’re helping to preserve an ancient plant. Your grandparents may have eaten this plant’s tubers to survive a long winter. It may be why you’re alive today.”
“My grandparents were from the Poconos. I don’t think they stopped by here for a snack.”
“You don’t have much of an imagination, do you?” She waded down into the wet ditch, a burlap bag at her side to capture the roots of
“No, ma’am. They don’t pay me enough to have an imagination.” The burly man in the yellow hard hat and orange vest, with a red and white T-shirt peeking out above the faded jeans, followed her into the ditch with a shovel. “And I don’t see much good in saving a bunch of wildflowers. Sure, they’re pretty and all. But in the scheme of things, they don’t seem like they have much use.”
Peggy tugged on her orange vest. It was too big and kept sliding up, covering her face. A straggly piece of wild rose, just starting to green, caught at her mostly white/red hair. She untangled herself, pricking her finger, and moved forward again. “These wildflowers are part of the ecological chain. If we break one link, what will happen to the rest of the chain?”
“We put another pretty yellow flower in its place?”
“Hardly.” She sighed as she pulled down her vest again. It seemed a little useless to wear the vest in the ditch. What did it matter if drivers saw her down there? Surely they weren’t
It was hard enough to convince people endangered animals were worth saving. Most of the time the only people who wanted to conserve them were hunters. And even the hunters thought plants were almost useless, since there was no sport in shooting them. Peggy gave up. “Never mind. Let’s just dig up the tubers and get out of here.”
It was early spring, but it felt like summer. Outside the deep ditch that stretched back to a few thin jack pines, dogwoods, and some scrub brush, it was dry and hot. The smell of baking pavement scorched the air. But down at the feet of the sunflower plants they were moving to accommodate road expansion, it was cool, wet, and humid. She squinted across the road at a new field of cotton starting to grow. Stanly County was a big producer of the two
“Could you hold that bag a little lower?” Her NCDOT, North Carolina Department of Transportation, companion didn’t bother to hide his feelings about the job.
Mosquitoes buzzed around them, their constant whine filling in when the road beside them got quiet. They stayed away because of the insect repellent Peggy used, but they were annoying anyway. She supposed she understood, in principle, how her companion felt about the plants, since she felt that all mosquitoes should die. But she understood they, too, had a purpose, albeit a disgusting one.
Peggy was one of the North Carolina botanists helping out with the roadside removal of the Schweinitz’s sunflower to another location in the town of Davidson, about fifty miles away. The highway they stood beside was about to undergo a major growth spurt that would kill one of the few places the sunflowers were located. The sunflower only grew in about six counties in the state, even though it was a native plant. Many of them had been lost to other road construction before the federal government decided the plants were endangered and issued a protection notice.
They only grew in open areas, which tended to be under power lines and in right-of-ways. The electric companies sprayed herbicide to keep trees from growing under the lines and had a hard time understanding the difference between a tall plant and a tree. Many of the sunflowers were lost to that problem.
“Peggy!” Pete Delmond, a botanist who’d come out from the North Carolina Zoo in Asheboro, shook his head. “I can’t believe
“I know,” she yelled back, trying to get past the roar of traffic that whizzed by every few seconds on the busy road. No wonder they wanted to expand! “But here they are anyway.”
“I know! It’s wonderful! I think I see some smaller clumps down this way!”
Peggy watched him walk down the road with his own NCDOT escort. The truck to take these precious few survivors of man’s expansion to their new home was waiting. She held open her burlap bag a little lower and wider. The man beside her shoveled the new green stalks and tubers into the opening.
“How many of these do we have to get?” Jenks wiped mosquitoes from his chunky, sun-browned face.
“All of them. Someday I hope there will be plenty of Schweinitz’s sunflowers, bluegrass, and cardinal flowers in the new prairie areas we’re creating. For now, we have to save what we can.”
“Why create prairies in a state where there are only mountains and trees?”
“Because there used to be vast prairies here, just like in the Midwest. They were created by the native tribes clearing the land for agriculture. And by the elk and buffalo.”
“Elk and buffalo?” He laughed and pushed his hard hat back on his balding head. “No way!”
“Yes. Large herds. Nothing like the size in the western states, but plenty to go around.”
“That’s amazing! You do this for a living? This history stuff?”
“No. I teach botany at Queens University in Charlotte and run a garden shop in Brevard Court. Would you like me to spray some of this on you to keep the mosquitoes away?”
“Nah. I work outside all year. A few bugs don’t bother me.”
