[The following article is from The Bulletin of the North American Rock Garden Society, Vol. 42 (1), Winter 1984.]

When Timmy and I heard, back in 1968 at the Winter Study Weekend East, that a large portion of the type site for Oconee Bells (Shortia galacifolia) in Pickens and Oconee counties of South Carolina was soon to be flood­ed by dams already under construction by the Duke Power Company, we determined to make an excursion there at blooming season.   Frederick Case, a highly competent student and photographer of American  wildflowers, who gave us the news of the power project also kindly supplied us with the name of an employee of the power company who could guide us in our search of the plants:  Charles Moore, in the Brevard, N. C. office of the Duke Power Co.

I wrote to Mr. Moore in January of the next year telling him of my interest in this beautiful plant and asked questions about its distribution, rarity, and possible color variations.  In the letter I also included a hint that I hoped sometime to be able to visit Shortia Country at the flowering season. Mr. Moore was prompt in his reply and rose nicely to my thinly veiled bait, "Why don't you come down to North Carolina and let me give you a conducted tour. The middle of March is a sure time to see the display.''

In his letter he also gave me refer­ences to a series of articles  about Shortia galacifolia by Dr. P.A. Davies of the University  of Louisville, which had appeared in botanical journals.  Mr. Moore had provided much infor­mation and assistance to Dr. Davis, based on his many years of amateur plant hunting , collecting, and observation in  the Blue Ridge and Smoky Mountains.

In  preparation for our projected foray into the home country of Oconee Bells , I followed up, in the Library of the New York Botanical Garden, Mr. Moore 's references, and others turned up in the course of my reading.  I found a considerable, and to me fasci­nating , history of this single American species.

Shortia galacifolia was first collected by Andre Michaux, the French col­lector and botanist, who, during the latter part of the 18th Century, had spent eleven years in the United States exploring for plants to grace the gar­dens of France . This was the great era of botanical exploration in the new country.

Shortia galacifolia, however, was not dispatched by Michaux as living plant material, partly, perhaps, because Michaux did not himself see the plant in bloom to recognize its charm. As a sound botanist, however, he gathered the best material available of all plants for his herbarium. This material was carefully pressed and placed in Michaux 's cabinets .  Among a group labeled Plantae Incognitae was a sheet of a single shoot of the plant with five mature leaves, three juvenile leaves, a portion of the rhi­zome with a few hair roots, and two flowering stems without petals. These stems showed the  five  sepals and small leafy bracts beneath and a re­maining pistil with elongated curved style.  The  label  accompanying  this specimen read: "Hautes montagnes de Carolinie.  Un pyrola spec. Un genus novum?"

There  is still  some question  as to just where and on which trip he col­lected the particular specimens that became part of his herbarium.

What we are sure of is that Asa Gray on a trip to Europe in 1838-39 found the specimen in Michaux's herbarium in Paris. In 1838 Asa Gray had  been appointed to a chair in botany at the University of Michigan, but  because the building to house the botany de­partment was not ready in  time for the opening of college, Gray was granted a year 's leave.  During  the year 1838-39 he traveled in Europe primarily to study in the various noted herbaria there, with particular atten­tion  to American  specimens.   There in Paris he gave careful attention to the Michaux material collected in America.

Piqued , I suspect, by the suggestion on the sheet containing the unknown specimen that it might be a new ge­nus, Asa Gray determined, after care­ful investigation and consultation, to christen the plant.

On April 8, 1839 Gray wrote to his friend and fellow American  botanist, John Torrey.  In the letter he reported: "But I have something better than all this to tell you.  I have  discovered a new genus in Michaux's herbarium - at the end, among  plantae inconitae.  It is from the great unknown  region, the high mountains of North Carolina.  We have the fruit, with persistent calyx and style, but no flowers, and a guess that I have made about its af­finities has been amply borne out on examination by Decaisne and myself. It is allied to Galax , but it is 'un tres distinct genus,' having axillary one­ flowered scapes (th.e flower  large and a style that of a Pyrola, long and de­clined).  Indeed I  hope it will settle the riddle about the family of Galax and prove Richard to be right when he says Ordo Ericarum.   I claim the right of a discoverer to affix the name."

''So I say, a this is a good No. American  genus and comes from near Kentucky, it shall be christened Short­ia, to which we will stand as godfathers.  So Shortia galacifolia, Torr. & Gr., it shall be.  I beg you to inform Dr. Short, and to say that we will lay upon him no greater penalty than this necessary thing - that he make a pilgrimage to the mountains of Carolina this coming summer and procure the flowers."

Dr. Charles Wilkins Short of Kentucky, trained in medicine, but active as a botanist and college professor of science, was known to Asa Gray only as a correspondent. Though he collected widely in the southern states, it is doubtful that Short ever saw the plant which bore his name as he died fourteen  years before  its rediscovery.

Despite his obvious excitement about the plant as indicated by his letter from Paris, Asa Gray himself did not make the rediscovery.  But it was not for lack of hunting.  Following the clue on the herbarium sheet - "Hautes montagnes de Carolinie" - and with  the knowledge from Michaux's journal that the Frenchman had visited the high country, Gray made a journey in late June 1841 with two friends, John Cary and James Constable.  They made their headquarters in Ashe County, North Carolina and visited most of the high country above 5,000 feet.  Gray wrote a  report of the trip in the form of a letter to Sir William J. Hooker of England, which was published in the American Journal of Science and in the London Journal of Botany.  This report includes the statement: "We  were unsuccessful in our search for a remarkable undes­cribed plant with a habit of Pyrola and the foliage of Galax, which was ob­tained  [originally] in the high mountains of Carolina. The only specimen extant is among the 'Plantae lncogni­tae' of the Michauxian herbarium, in fruit only: and we were anxious to obtain flowering specimens, that we might complete its history; as I have long wished to dedicate the plant to Professor Short of Kentucky . . . ''

A footnote to this passage contained the first published description of the new genus Shortia, assigning it  to the family Diapensiaceae in 1842.

Again during the summer of 1843 for three months, in the company this time of another botanical friend, William S. Sullivant, Dr. Gray explored for plants in the mountains from Maryland to Georgia, always with an eye peeled for the elusive Shortia.  Again the plant eluded him.  In fact the very existence of the plant became the subject of skeptical doubts among Gray's botanical friends and there may even have been a few with silent questions about the authenticity of the herbarium specimen back in the cabinet in Paris.

Before his two excursions to hunt for what he must himself have begun to think of as rare a chance discovery as Bartram's Franklinia Tree, never again to be found in the wild, he did consult Michaux's journal for further clues.  He passed over in the journal what has since, in the light of its eventual rediscovery, been interpreted as very clear directions for finding Shortia.  On pages 45 and 46 of the French text published among the Pro­ceedings of the American Philosophi­cal Society in 1889 is this passage:

''The roads became more difficult as we approached the headwaters of the Kiwi [now the Keowee] on the 8th of December, 1788 . . . There was in this place a little cabin inhabited by a family of   Cherokee Indians.   We stopped  there to camp and I ran off to make some investigations.   I gathered a new low woody plant with saw­toothed leaves creeping on the mountain at a short distance from the river..." (Michaud camped there for three days.   On the 11th he made a three mile foray into the hills.)

''I came back to camp with my guide at the head of the Kiwi and gathered a large quantity of the low woody plants with the sawtoothed leaves that I found the day I arrived.  I did not see it on any other mountain. The Indians of the place told me that the leaves had a good taste when chewed and the odor was agreeable when they were crushed, which I found to be the case."

For some time after the rediscovery of Shortia  botanists considered this to be the passage in Michaux's journal that pointed to the type site. And, in­deed, Shortia is abundant at the head­ waters of the Keowee.   However, it is likely that they were misled in think­ing that this passage referred to the Shortia, as, indeed, Dr. Gray probably realized when he read it.

The key word here is ''I gathered a new low woody plant with saw­ toothed leaves creeping on the moun­ tain a short distance from the river.'' The fact is that Shortia is not a woody plant in the strict  sense, even though its growth habit is quite similar to Epigaea repens and Gaultheria pro­cumbens, both of which are classed as creeping shrubs.  Michaux was a trained  botanist  and if he gathered ''a large quantity of the low woody plants with  the  saw-toothed leaves,'' he must have observed its woody na­ture and even a large quantity of true Shortia would have provided him with nothing but herbaceous material.  Moreover, Michaux could hardly have been deceived into thinking that Shortia leaves have a good taste when chewed and an agreeable odor when crushed.  On the evidence of  the pass­age it would appear that he was des­cribing Wintergreen, except that it seems surprising for him to refer to Gaultheria procumbens as a ''new'' plant . Or was it to him?

We can be  almost certain, at any rate, that it was not on this December, 1788 trip that Michaux found the small herbarium sample of Shortia that Asa Gray located later among the French­man's Plantae lncognitae, because by December every remnant of the flower parts have disappeared from Shortia. The persistent style on the herbarium specimen suggests that it must have been collected not later than June or possibly early July.

Michaux was in the same general area the preceding year, at the head­ waters of the Keowee, arriving there on June 14.  Since he was heading for the mountains to the west, he records, "We remained there more than two hours to rest our horses and to eat strawberries which were there in abundance.'' There is no mention in the journal of his collecting the plant which he later labeled "un pyrole? Un genus novum?"  But it is entirely pos­sible that is was on this occasion that he picked up the specimen, not im­mediately identifiable, and it became part of the general collection of various plants he made later in the mountains to the west ; hence "Hautes montagnes de Carolinie ."

The first rediscovery of living Short­ia galacifolia did not fall to the lot of any of the botanists engaged in its pursuit, but to seventeen year old George  McQ. Hyams of Statesville, N.C.  in May of  1877.   He was,  how­ever,  unaware of the significance of his find. The occasion was later described by George's father, Mr. E . Hyams, in a letter to Dr. Gray.   "We were passing along the road and my attention was called to an elevated hillside that I could not ascend as being at that time rather exhausted, being sixty years old, requested him to ascend and bring whatever was in flower.  I have forgotten the locality, but he is fully known to it, as he lived within two miles of the place for sev­eral years.''
The elder Hyams was a purchasing agent and collector of medicinal plants for a Baltimore drug company and managed the root and herb warehouse for the Wallace Brothers in Statesville. Though familiar with plants of the region from years of collecting herbs this particular plant was quite new to him despite its resemblance to the common Galax, which he frequently gathered.  It was not until over a year later, however , that he dispatched a sample of the plant for identification to a friend in East Greenwich, Rhode Island, Joseph W. Congdon .

Mr . Congdon had  his ear to the ground in the botanical world.  With what must have been a stepfather feeling he wrote Dr. Gray announcing that he thought he had in his posses­sion a flowering plant of Shortia galacifolia.  The original godfather of the plant hastily replied, "Do send  the plant."

Asa Gray, himself by this time the American botanical authority, leaves us in no doubt about how he felt when at last he had on his work table a flow­ering specimen of the plant that nearly forty years ago had stirred him deeply in the Michaux herbarium in Paris.  Immediately he wrote to William M. Canby, a close botanical friend who had occasionally taunted Gray with sly remarks about the mythical Short­ia: "No other botanist  has the news.  If you will come here I can show you what will delight your eyes and cure you effectively of the skeptical spirit you used to have about Shortia galaci­foia.   It is here before me with corolla and all from North Carolina!  Think of that!  My long faith rewarded at last. "To emphasize  the  strength of his feelings, which might be missed des­pite the exclamation points, he con­fessed that the rediscovery of Mich­ux's  Shortia gave him a hundred times the satisfaction that his recent election to the Academie des Sciences of the Institute de France had done, though  this  election  was  one  of  the highest honors for a professional bot­anist.

Within  the  week  Dr.  Gray  sent off a letter to the elder Hyams warm in his praise of the discovery; and, re­flecting the importance he himself attached to it, lamenting with the father that he had not sooner sent the specimen so that the immortality of his son might have been assured by inclusion in the edition of Gray's Flora, which had just recently gone to press.  But he promised an early recognition by way of an article in Silliman's Jour­nal.  He concluded his letter by warn­ing Mr. Hyams that he and his friend, Mr. Canby, would descend on them the following May.

George  Hyam's name appears  as collector on the herbarium sheet which Dr. Gray made of the first flowering specimen of Shortia galacifolia now resting in the Gray Herbarium of Harvard.    A further measure of immortality is assured him in the botani­cal literature in Silliman's  Journal, which announced the happy redis­covery of the plant.  Young Hyams must have felt considerable pride in the spring of 1879 when he guided an illustrious group of botanists to the station of his find, though too late in the season for blossom.   Yet despite the early plant collecting trips  with his father and the notoriety he re­ceived by way of Shortia galacifolia, George Hyams did not pursue a bo­tanical career; instead he became proprietor of a general store and post­ master of Old Fort, North Carolina. There he resided until his death in 1932.

In the group that descended on Statesville in June 1879, besides Dr. Gray and his family, were the botanist William M . Canby of Wilmington, Delaware; Dr. Charles S. Sargent of Brookline, Massachusetts; and J.H. Redfield of  Philadelphia,  Pennsyl­vania.  Both Gray and Redfield published accounts of the trip:  Gray in the American Journal of Science and Redfield in the Bulletin of the Torrey Botanical Club.  Redfield's account records the occasion with some added information about the trade in native plants for the drug market:

''Being now in McDowell County, the Shortia locality was visited under the guidance of Mr. George M. Hyams, the actual discoverer.  In the secluded and well protected station, well overshadowed by Rhododendrons and Magnolias, was seen the little colony of the plant, so long sought and by many so long doubted.  Its com­panions were Mitchela repens,  Asarum virginicum, and Galax aphylla.  The space over which the plant ex­tended was perhaps 10 feet by 30 and in all there may have been 50 to 100 plants.  As the plant multiplies by stolons it is remarkable that its area should be so restricted and since in the struggle for life of two allied plants the weaker 'must go', Dr. Gray suggested the possibility that its stronger cousin, the Galax, had crowded out the Shortia.  And here indeed, in what may be the last foothold of the rarity, Galax appeared to be actually doing so.  Yet the plants, though comparatively few,  were vigorous and healthy.  Other stations may be looked for; but they must be hard to find.  When we consider the long search which has been made for this plant, how all the mountain region of the Carolinas and Tennessee has been examined by the sharp optics of Buckley, Rugel, M .A. Curtis, Dr. Gray, Canby, LeRoy and Ruger, the Vaseys, elder and younger,  Chickering  and others,  it is very certain that if there be other localities they must be few and far between .''

It is rather curious that Shortia galacifolia was first rediscovered in North Carolina in the Catawba River headwaters where it is relatively rare, much rarer than in its major center of distribution in Pickens and Oconee Counties of South Carolina.  It was in this latter area that plants were found in 1886 when Dr. Sargent was search­ing for the Magnolia cordata men­tioned in Michaux's journal.  In Dr. Sargent's party at that time were the young Boynton brothers, natives of the area.  For the next few years they continued the search for other possible sites of the elusive Shortia.  In 1889 Frank E . Boynton published in Garden and Forest an account of the trip he and his brother Charles had made in the spring of that year.

"We camped the first night at the White Water Falls, which alone are worth a considerable journey to see. The Jocassee Valley, our destination, is at the mouth of White Water Creek, or rather at the junction of White Water and Devil Fork.  I wished to see if Shortia was growing  as high up in the mountains as these Falls, which are at least 1,000 feet above the Jocas­see.   No Shortia was found, however, until we reached the valley, which has an altitude of about 1,200 feet and here it grows by the acre.  Every little brooklet is lined with it.  Most of these little water courses are in deep narrow gorges where the sun hardly penetrates, except during the middle of the day.  All these steep banks are literally covered with Short­ia. What is comforting to the botanist is that it can hardly be exterminated.  It is on land too steep to be cultivated and there is such an abundance that no amount of collecting can ever effect in strenuously. Our party took away bushels of it, and no one could tell that a plant had been disturbed, so thickly it is growing. No idea of the beauty of this plant can be formed until it has been seen in its native home. The mass of glossy green and white, once seen, can never be for­ gotten."

''The home of Shortia is a strange mixture of North and South.  As a rule it grows under the shade of rhodo­dendrons and tall kalmias . . . . To see Shortia in blossom and in its glory one must get there about the 20th of March, not later than March 25."

The spring of 1969, when Timmy and I were guided into Shortia country by Mr. Charles Moore, was cold and late.  Even in the final week of March, to which we had delayed our visit on Mr. Moore 's advice, few blossoms were open. We were therefore unable to hunt for color forms that had been hinted at in one of P.A. Davies's papers on pollination of Shortia. ''Corollas are normally white but color variants are frequent. Using the Ridg­way Color Standards (1912), the colors varied from light rosolane purple to pale forget-me-not blue.''

We did see great sheets of Shortia foliage on the shores of the Horse­ pasture and White Water Rivers; and along one small side stream on ex­posed rather sandy, high banks we found swarms of young seedling plants, which Charlie Moore encour­aged us to collect as it was within the area to be flooded by the Duke Power Company 's Jocassee  Dam.

All of these rescued plants travelled successfully back to Millstream and and are still thriving here.  A few have a slight pink tinge to the corolla.  Seed­lings from these plants have self­ sowed along the woodland paths where they are established.  Perhaps one day there may be a blue flowered seedling.

I cannot resist the temptation to speculate a bit about the evolutionary history of Shortia. There is some fossil evidence that Shortia was fairly wide­ spread in the mesophytic forests during the Tertiary, at least in eastern Asia and North America.  During the Ice Ages of more recent times much of it was eradicated in the northern part of its range and the remnants found refuge in the mountain valleys south of the ice. In addition to the remnant population of Shortia galacifolia in the never glaciated southern Appalachians, there are at least three other species of this genus in Asia:  In the Japanese uplands is Shortia uniflora, admittedly more beautiful than our native.  Almost identical in leaf pattern and growth habit, though not as widely stoloniferous, it has somewhat  larger bells more deeply fringed of a pale, but definite shell pink.  Also from Japan is Shortia sold­anelloides, formerly placed in its own genus in which it was known as Schiz­ocodon soldanelloides. This species is of a more clumping growth habit, though the leaves are quite similar to those of S. galacifolia and S. uni­flora. The flowers are smaller than those of the other two but of a rich old rose, somewhat paler at the deeply fringed edges of the bell and shot with reddish streaks and scintillations with­in. There is a rare and exqusitely lovely white flowered form as well. These bells are carried in campaniles of up to six at the summit of the four to six inch scape above the mound of polished deep green leaves, which frequently retain their glowing red bronze winter coloring through flower­ing season, which is about a month later than that of Shortia galacifolia and S. uniflora. Their seed also ripens later, usually not until fall.  There are a number of varieties of S. soldanel­loides based on leaf form:  var. ilicifolia (holly-leaved) , and var. macro­phylla, with leaves nearly twice the normal size with more prominent toothing, being the best known. There is also a diminished alpine form, smaller in all its parts.

There are in addition to the above species other Shortias or shortia-like plants which have been variously classified as Shortia and Shortiopsis from the Taiwanese mountains  and the Himalayas . (See Roy Davidson 's article in Vol. 37, p. 188 - 192 of the Bulletin.)

It is somewhat puzzling that during the ten thousand years or so since the retreat of the last ice sheet Shortia galacifolia has not spread north again from its refuge in the southern Appa­lachians.  It certainly is adapted to growing far north of its present range. When transplanted to Connecticut and Massachusetts it will thrive if given proper conditions .  It can  endure the cold of a snowless winter and the heat and even occasional droughts of our New England summers and will self sow in suitable sites.  Why then, we wonder, has it not slowly self-sown northward out of it Blue Ridge refuge?  One likely explanation may lie in the combination of its site preference and the brief viability of its seeds.

By  experiment it has been fairly well established that only very fresh seed will germinate.  Seed ripens in our area about the middle of June and if sown immediately will germin­ate within two weeks.  Following germination the seedlings, of very tiny dimension and slow development, will not persist unless they are kept reasonably moist.  A brief period of drought will annihilate them.

In the Blue Ridge, Shortia blooms early, the last part of March and the first part of April, and ripens its seed in May. The seed is very light and could easily be blown up out of the moist draws and stream sides where it grows under Kalmia and Rhododen­dron maximum or on the steep eroded slopes along tributary creeks.  Some of the thousands of seeds produced an­nually must reach locations where the substrate and moisture are suit­able for germination, but following germination the minute seedlings that sprouted in the well drained up­lands above the moist, deeply shaded coves, which is Shortia's accustomed habitat , would be at the mercy of the high temperatures and droughts likely to occur in mid-summer. This is a possible explanation.

Young plants, if they can be brought through the critical period of infancy, may have a tiny rosette of four leaves by fall, still only half an inch across.  During the second year, if conditions are favorable, and by now it has be­come more tolerant as the feeding roots strike more deeply, the plant will make appreciable growth of new foliage larger in the leaf blade and longer in the petiole.  By the third season it may even develop in the center of the now husky rosette a flower bud.  From then on the plant will make offsets by extending under­ ground stolons until it forms a size­ able carpet.

At the end of each runner is an over­lapping arrangement of leaves, a few long petioled  and up to three  inches in the blade, and at the center many smaller    leaves.  In autumn among these smaller leaves are produced pointed buds from which arise the flowers and new stolons. The flowers are very rapid to  develop in the first warm days of spring and though deli­cate in appearance are remarkably resistent to frost or even a covering of late snow.  These  blossoms, up to three from a bud, are carried singly on a naked reddish scape with two or three small colored bracts just below the five parted calyx. The five sharply pointed sepals are a glowing pink, a color strong enough to show through the petals. The five petals, generally pure white, but occasionally pale pink   or, by report, pale blue, are slightly fringed at the flaring tips and united below to form an open bell. The five golden stamens, alternate to the petals and attached to the lower rim of the corolla, surround the three­ lobed stigma on an elongated style, all forming a most elegant design of pink, white and gold.
These handsome flowers are not as transient as their elegance might suggest.  Because there are few in­sects flying when Shortia flaunts its inviting flowers, fertilization is fre­quently delayed for many days. Though I can find no references to the actual agents of fertilization, I suspect that the work is carried on by small flies or in desperation by self-pollination.  I do know that every flower that opens sets seed.  When fertilized, by whatever means, the united corolla falls away carrying with it the attached stamens, to leave the still beautiful cluster of pink sepals and bracts around the swelling pear­ shaped capsule with long pistil persistent.  The greeny-white capsule rapid­ly enlarges and itself takes on rich tones of reddish brown before, in June it begins to split longitudinally into three segments exposing a myriad of small, yellow-brown gran­ules adherent to the ovary. That is the moment to collect seeds and to sow them immediately.  It is possible that their fertility might be prolong­ed if they were refrigerated.

For quick easy propagation a clump of Shortia may be lifted after flowering and divided into as many parts as there are off sets at the ends of the runners. Each runner will have sent down many fine feeding roots as it advanced the previous season.  For assured success it is wise to treat these separated runners as recently rooted cuttings.  By all means pot them up and keep them moist and shaded, or coddle them until well established if planted out in a per­manent  site.   Large divisions with plenty  of  roots establish fairly readily in acid, leaf-moldy soil in shade.

Shortia will endure and flower in quite dense shade or will succeed in a fairly open site on a north slope, where in fall it will color more bril­liantly than in deep shade. The color­ing of the foliage does not, however, appear to be entirely related to amount of light. There may be a soil factor also or, on the other hand, it may be genetically controlled.

Because a considerable portion of the small natural homeland of Shortia galacifolia has now been cleared of vegetation and is within the impound­ments of the Duke hydro-electric development, it is fortunate for gard­eners that this rare plant has been introduced into horticulture and has proved amenable to cultivation.  Special credit should be given to Mr. Charles Moore of Brevard, North Carolina, who has long been a student of the distribution of Shortia in the wild.  When he, as an employee of the power company, learned of the plans to flood large segments of the plants' native home, he alerted gardeners and botanical gardens and guided many afficianados into the remote area to rescue the plants from inundation and established large clumps in his own  fascinating garden of wildflowers.