Plants of Central Tennessee

Iris cristata, a photo by FreeManWalking on Flickr.

     Landscapes are the canvas on which we lead our lives. A life spent along the rocky coasts of the specific must certainly see the world through a different lens than someone who has grown up in the spruce and fir woods of the Rocky Mountains as they arch their jagged spines toward the Colarado sky. Simirlarly one who has spent his or her existence in the Red Rock country of the Four Corners area will see the world in a different hue than then cold-loving soul who has lived out their days amid the boreal forests and lakes of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Like most people I have walked the ground of many varied landscapes but I know that I am a product of the deep green hills and hollers of Central Tennessee. My mountains are rolling hills to many, my rivers not half so wild and furious as western torrents dropping thousands of feet through boulder strewn channels. But each landscape, whether dramatic or sublime shapes those who live there, filling each of us with our sense of place. On the rarest of days, when the sun hits our eyes just right and there is the sweet hint of a particular flower on the breeze we can feel at home, in a way that can only come from being in the landscape where our earliest memories were formed, where someone we loved pointed out a particular tree or hill or creek and called it by a name that we shall never forget.
     That is why this book is focused on the plants of Central Tennessee. Most of these plants are not special because they grow nowhere else (though for many that is the case), the majority can be found from Missouri to the Carolinas, Massachusetts to Alabama. What makes these plants special is that they have surrounded me throughout my life, having been tread under my boot on an explorative hike or examined up close with a hand lens during my more studious moments as a botanist. They have created my view of what I expect to find when the cold snow and drizzle of winter subsides and Springs trips up from the South and finally adorns Tennessee with its leafy green blanket of color and warmth.