Gholson Nature Park: Rare Plant Hikes Through the Seasons

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A photo of a dimpled trout lily set me on a path. For years, I’ve been seeing photos of rare plants at the Angus Gholson Nature Park in Chattahoochee, and I’d been wanting to wander through it with a camera. And now, here was a photo of a spring ephemeral in my feed, one of the first wildflowers to bloom in our area. A rare plant for our area, too. It occurred to me- why not make my first trip to the park now, and then return every few weeks as new flowers bloomed?

Gholson Nature Park is located in Chattahoochee, Florida, not far from where I’ve embarked on several RiverTrek adventures down the Apalachicola River. Chattahoochee was the birthplace and home of the park’s namesake, Angus Gholson. Gholson was a forester who managed the Lake Seminole Preserve for the Army Corps of Engineers. He spent decades helping researchers study the plants of the area, and became a renowned botanist after his retirement.

Aside from his time serving during World War II and attending the University of Florida, Gholson lived his whole life in Chattahoochee, at the head of the Apalachicola. This is the upper edge of the Apalachicola Bluffs and Ravines region, a biodiversity hotspot with the highest diversity of tree species in North America. It’s also home to many rare and highly localized plant species. Not a bad place for a botanist to spend a life.

One reason for the high plant diversity is the area’s ravines. Gholson Park doesn’t have steephead ravines like Torreya State Park or the Apalachicola Bluffs and Ravines Preserve (ABRP). Instead of a steephead stream, it has a small, spring-fed creek flowing through it. We start by heading for the source of the stream.

February 5, 2025: the lay of the land, and the first trout lily blooms

I’m always down to explore a new place, and I don’t mind getting lost. I get lost often. Luckily, though, when I first arrive at Angus Gholson Nature Park, I’m greeted by a Bob Farley. Bob is one of the park’s stewards, a volunteer with the Magnolia Chapter of the Florida Native Plant Society. The Park is owned by the City of Chattahoochee, and maintained by the Magnolia Chapter. Bob lives nearby, and is here today to remove an invasive chinaberry tree. Invasive plants are a major problem, he tells me. Unlike Torreya or ABRP, this is a city park surrounded by neighborhoods. There are many vectors for invasives to enter the park.

Waving his hands over the large map by the parking area, he gives me a few highlights and recommendations. The most important piece of information is that some of the further off trails depicted in the map have not been passable since Hurricane Michael. He also notes that since Michael, the trout lily population has expanded, perhaps due to a more open canopy in parts. That’s one hypothesis, anyway.

The first highlight Bob shares is a little bit of Chattahoochee history, and so I’m off in search of ruins.

A Spring-Fed Swimming Pool Built by the CCC

In the 1930s, the Civilian Conservation Corps built a bridge across the Apalachicola River. Part of that bridge remains near the current Highway 90 bridge.

To cool themselves off after hard days at work, they built a pool to capture the stream of a magnitude four spring in town. A small opening in a concrete wall around the pool allows the spring water to flow back into its run, a small creek that creeps through the park and into an Apalachicola River floodplain forest. They may well have followed a trail from the bridge to the spring that was walkable before Hurricane Michael.

As you can see, the pool is not currently swimmable, and their ruins add ambience to the trail.

Here is a closer look at the small spring trickling out from limestone rocks.

To the left of the spring, a stone staircase leads up, but there is no trail to follow up there. After I spend a little time by the spring, I double back and follow the creek.

A narrow trail at Gholson Park

The trail follows a small, winding creek. It’s so small that I can’t always see it past the edge of the steep slope, in its creek bed. The slope, though, is the attraction. Years ago, the Florida Natural Areas Inventory reclassified the habitat description for slope forests. This description used to encompass all hardwood forests around ravines, pockets in the Florida landscape where we find plants common in the Appalachian mountains. Many of those plants migrated to our area during ice ages; when glaciers melted, they slowly migrated north, but populations remained on a topography that felt familiar.

A few years ago, FNAI changed the definition of a slope forest to include only those in the Apalachicola Bluffs and Ravines Region. While we have similar forests in Tallahassee, only a slope forest will have Torreya trees and Florida yew trees. These are the two rarest trees in North America. Slope Forests are home to a host of rare plants and animals, and species that are otherwise only found in the Appalachians.

Look at this trail. You can barely see it in the photo. I love it. It’s narrow, and there are places where it’s hard to see where the trail leads. I get a sense that it was designed to disturb the ground as little as possible.

Trout lilies and trillium

It’s not hard to see why, when dimpled trout lily leaves grow from the edge of the creek up to trail edge, continuing above the trail. When I put my camera bag down to change lenses, I have to be careful to place it at the center of the trail to not disturb these state-endangered wildflowers.

Trout lilies have leafed out along a couple wide slopes, which should soon make for an impressive sight. I’ve seen a photo of a trout lily flower here, taken within the last few days. So I walk slowly, and I scan the ground. I do that anyway, if I’m walking somewhere with a camera.

Here’s a closer look at their mottled leaves. And here is a flower:

There are a handful in bloom on the slopes, giving us a preview of what is soon to come.

There are several trillium leaves among the trout lilies, and I finally find one in bloom right at the edge of the slope of the creek bed. Underwood’s trillium is the most common of our area trilliums, but this park also has the much rarer lanceleaf wakerobin. I don’t see any today, but it’s a goal to find it on my next visit.

Dimpled Trout lilies: an Appalachian wildflower in Florida

You can see how dimpled trout lilies are widespread in the Appalachian Mountains, and then less so in the southern half of Georgia. But then look at our area. If you zoom in, there are three major populations: at Torreya State Park, Angus Gholson Nature Park, and Wolf Creek Trout Lily Preserve in Whigham, Georgia. There are also a couple scattered around Lake Jackson in Tallahassee, which means keeping a closer eye on the ground in Klapp-Phipps Park.

There are a few plants here with a similar distribution, and I hope to photograph them all in my upcoming visits.

The trail devolves

Let me say again how much I love the minimalist trail here. At one point, I follow the trail away from the creek and almost lose it altogether, when I notice the orange flagging tape tied around trees. Where the trail is hardest to follow, they’ve marked trees more closely together.

When I reach a large pond next to a campground, I lose the trail. The park once connected to a trailhead at the Chattahoochee Boat Landing, where RiverTrek kicks off every year. That way has been cut off by Michael. On my way back, I see where the trail branches. Somewhere to explore another day, hopefully soon.

I take a different path back, crossing the creek on a couple of planks. There are also fully-built bridges here, but I like the feel of these. I wonder, are there Apalachicola dusky salamanders in this stream? There are many adventures ahead here, and I will keep adding them to this post. What will I see here by the end of the year, I wonder?

February 21, 2025: Lanceleaf wakerobin, crane-fly orchid, and more trout lilies

Today I return to look for species I know should be in bloom now, and to better familiarize myself with the trails. It’s the same with any place I visit regularly; I try to learn the loops, connections, landscape features, and where I might expect to see certain plants or critters. To help me with that last item, I consult a list of plant species in the park put together by the Florida Native Plant Society, Magnolia Chapter. It’s a large list, but they made it easy for me by marking the state or federally listed species, as well as the non-natives.

I made my own list from theirs. On it are the endangered and threatened species, the rare ones. I added these nineteen species to a spreadsheet, and looked up their bloom times. I familiarized myself with the handful that bloomed in February and March: these are my goal for the day.

Did I miss the peak trout lily bloom?

I follow Wolf Creek Trout Lily Preserve on social media, and have seen their slopes approach peak bloom this week. And that’s what I was hoping to see here. It dipped below freezing last night, and I wondered if that might affect them. If that was the case, I’d see dead flowers. I do see a few faded blooms, likely those that bloomed between my first outing and today.

I’ve also been told that their peak bloom time is between 1-4 pm. I arrive at noon, and it’s a cold day. Does temperature affect trout lily bloom times, I wonder? I will take a closer look on my way back.

Trout lilies blanket the slopes along a pair of creeks in the park, and while looking for their little yellow flowers, I see other wildflowers. Many more violets are in bloom today than were a couple weeks ago.

Many violet species have similar-looking flowers, and there are five species listed for this park. When identifying any closely related group of wildflowers, leaf shape is often more important than flowers.

There are plenty of trilliums in bloom as well, and I’ll share those photos in a moment. First, among the trout lily leaves, I find one of my target plants.

Crane-fly orchids emerge

Some people are plant nerds, and other people are data nerds. We live in an age where you can be both at once. Many of the listed plants in this park are widespread far north of Florida, but are rare here. When you look for information about these plants, sources often list common bloom times for northern states, or over the entire range of the plant. Ignore what calendars tell you when it comes to seasons; Florida is warmer than most states and flowers bloom here when other states have snow on the ground (let’s treat our heavy snow from our few weeks back as an anomaly – for now).

This is where I turn to citizen-science apps like iNaturalist or eBird. The data is collected by those of us who use the apps, but we also get to play with it. In iNaturalist, each species page has a graph showing when they have been observed throughout the year. You can localize that data to a state, county, or city. In Gadsden County, Florida, people have observed crane-fly orchids in February, March, and August. Clicking on some observations around the park, I see that it blooms in August, but we see leaves at this time of year.

I looked over photos of the leaves for this state-threatened plant, and have an image in my mind. I find them in one spot, around trout lily leaves:

This plant will be much showier in August.

The leaves are green with red highlights, a similar color scheme to other leaves I see low to the ground.

Sarsaparilla vine is common on ravine and creek slopes in Florida, along with partridgeberry (Mitchella ripens). These are common plants we find in areas that also contain less common plants. I’m always happy to see them along a trail.

Trail damage at Gholson Nature Park

I’ve been walking along the blue line in the middle of the yellow loop. This is a connecter trail bisecting the Gholson Loop, the lower part of which I hiked last time. Both of these run along creeks, and have slopes full of dimpled trout lilies.

When the connector reaches the Muscogee Trail (marked in orange), I stay on the lower track rather than head further upslope. The next time the trails splits in two on the map, further to the left, there’s really only one way to go.

On my first visit, Bob Farley mentioned hurricane damage making trails impassable. I take the only path available to me, and head north. This section of what they call the Fitness Trail runs through a low-lying, wet area. Here, I might find some of my target species for the day.

Continuing along the trail, I notice how many trees have been piled to the side. I wonder what kind of effort it took to keep this part of the trail clear. When I revisited Torreya State Park a year after Hurricane Michael, I learned how hard it could be to clean up areas with topography. Heavy machines can’t operate in dense slope forests; it takes people-power.

After a tree dies, fungi start to break down lignins in the plant’s cell walls, softening the wood. A place with this many downed trees must have some fantastic mushrooms during a warm, rainy, time of year.

If you read the February 5 entry, this is where the trail was hard to follow without frequent trail markers. I somehow missed all those downed trees last time, but that’s no surprise. I can get hyper-focused when scanning the ground for plants or insects. This time I poke around a little more, and while walking around a large puddle, I find another target.

Lanceleaf wakerobin: a Florida-endangered trillium

This wildflower is listed as endangered in Florida and Tennessee. It is smaller than the more common Underwood’s trillium, with narrower leaves. After seeing one, it was easier to spot more both near and off the trail.

This has been a good day. The more I roam this park, the more rare plants I see. There are still a couple of other targets left on my February list, but they both bloom into March. They may just be getting started.

One day a few years back, I went on the Timberlane Ravine Trail with the intention of photographing trillium. I saw so many leaf shapes, variations in brightness and color, that I thought I had photographed two or three different species. iNaturalist recommended Underwood’s trillium for them all, and the top trillium identifiers confirmed the picks. The flowers at Gholson Park aren’t so varied, but I was thinking about this day as I scanned the slopes for lanceleaf wakerobin.

I have to get a child to swim practice on time, back in Tallahassee, so I have to turn back. Will I see any trout lilies in full bloom today?

The answer is yes

There are a few more than there were a couple weeks ago, but not the slope full of yellow I see at Wolf Creek. Maybe the Gholson population has a later peak than the slopes just to the north of it, but that doesn’t sound right. In my searching, I find a few sources that say it takes up to seven years for a dimpled trout lily to bloom after it first sprouts. Bob Farley told me that trout lilies here have spread in the years after Michael, and the seven year anniversary of that storm is coming up in October. We might see many more blooms in the years to come.

And I hope to see many blooms of other sorts in the months to come. There is quite a lot of green coming up out of the ground here:

March 19, 2025: Many checks on the Gholson Bucket List

Between starting a new podcast and finishing a documentary, I let myself not return here for over a month. Everything I know about the visibility and bloom times of my bucket list species came from sometimes scant iNaturalist observations in this area. In other words, I don’t know most of these plants all that well. Could I have missed something by waiting so long to return?

Part of my dilemma is that not every rare or listed plant is likely to be visible from the trail. This is a dense slope forest covering over 100 acres. Aimless bushwhacking is fun, sure, but perhaps not so productive.

Luckily, Bob Farley spots me while poking around a small, brushy path. 

He hurt himself while clearing invasive trees last week, and his doctor told him to take it easy. This is what he built near the trailhead while taking it easy:

I ask him a few questions, and before I know it, we’re off-trail looking for a spot where he planted a few Torreya seeds.

Baby Torreya Trees and Other Surprises Off-Trail

The Florida Torreya is one of the rarest trees in the world. Its native range is confined to ravine slopes in Gadsden and Liberty counties, on the east side of the Apalachicola River. A fungal blight has pushed this species to the edge of extinction.

The Atlanta Botanical Garden has been breeding different Torreya strains to see if one is resistant to the blight. Bob and other volunteers have planted seeds in secret locations throughout the park, where several baby Torreyas are currently growing.

At one of these spots, Bob asks if I’ve seen woodland spurge at the park. It’s on my list, and I haven’t seen it yet. Until now:

This plant has distinct leaves and flowers, which bloom at this time of year. I like my rare plants to look rare. Woodland surge is listed as endangered in Florida.

Also in this little off-trail clearing, Bob points out the leaves of a federally endangered wildflower: fringed campion. That’s not on my March list, because it won’t flower for another couple of months. Luckily, I’m with someone who knows what its leaves look like:

Both woodland spurge and fringed campion grow in calcareous soils, and we’ll soon see the source of the calcium in the soils here. Campion has a range only slightly larger than the Florida Torreya. Weren’t we on the way to find some of those? So many distractions here.

At long last, the Florida Torreya

The trees we’re looking for aren’t very tall, and Bob has trouble finding them right away. There’s always a chance that some animal has grazed or otherwise damaged the babies. Fallen trees are everywhere, but most of them have been here since Michael. 

Finally, I spot a sallow-looking sapling:

Once we find that one, Bob knows where to look for a couple of others, which despite having been planted at the same time, are larger and greener than the first. We see about half a dozen in all, all far from the trail. 

We may be decades away from knowing if one of ABG’s genetic strains is blight-proof. Perhaps my grandchildren will walk under 40-foot tall Torreyas.

Closer to the trail, we find one of the park’s lone remnant trees. These older Toprreya trees die back and resprout from their roots. This one has some growth atop a bare trunk and has several sprouts shooting up from its roots. It’s an odd-looking tree, and I’d never have noticed it if it wasn’t pointed out to me.

Atamasco lilies/ Solomon’s Seal/ Croomia

Back on the trail, I see another plant on my list: the Atamasco lily. They’re blooming now, wanting to be photographed along the trail next to the creek. I’m following Bob now, and I ask about stopping to get a photo. No, not here, he says. 

He leads me up a trail I haven’t taken on my first couple of visits, up the branch of the Muscogee trail that leads to the Fitness Trail. Here the trail moves away from the creek and gets rocky. We walk a long while, and I see flecks of white in the distance, on the other side of some fallen trees. 

To think, If I was by myself, I would have snapped the photos by the creek and considered this plant checked from my list. Would I have found this field without Bob?

Time works differently when you have a camera in a place like this. I have no idea how long we’re here before Bob calls me over to see another plant on my list. And another.

Smooth Solomon’s seal is widespread at the edge of the lily field. They will bloom soon, if my info is correct; small white bells hanging from the stem.

And this is Croomia, which should bloom in the coming weeks as well:

Taking a Closer Look at the Downed Trees

Bob looks for something he had seen here before: Solomon’s seal growing on a vertical face, on the underside of fallen tree roots:

He has paid more attention to the tip-ups than I have, and he even has a favorite. Many of their roots have ripped up chalky white chunks of rock. 

This limestone is the source of calcium in the soil here. Before I started exploring here a couple of months ago, I had no idea how different it was than other locations within the Apalachicola Bluffs and Ravines region. The region is a biodiversity hotspot because of its topography: slopes and ravines jam-packed with rare plants, or plants more common in the Appalachian Mountains. 

At the southern boundary of the region is The Nature Conservancy’s Apalachicola Bluffs and Ravines Preserve. Ravines here cut into deep sandhills covered with longleaf pine/ wiregrass habitat. Those are ancient beach dunes, pure sand, over a hundred feet deep.

Soils here overlay limestone. This park shares many plants with ABRP, but it has rare plants that could never grow there. There are rare plants there, like Apalachicola rosemary, that could never grow here.

Flame Azaleas in Full Fiery Bloom

I ponder this on the way to our next stop. Angus Gholson Nature Park, Torreya State Park, and the Apalachicola Bluffs and Ravines Preserve. Each is diverse in a similar enough way to define this region, and yet distinct. ABRP lies on the Cody Escarpment, and to the south, the land flattens. This is the Apalachicola Lowlands Region, home to a high diversity of carnivorous plants, and Tupelo swamps. How little I knew that first time I kayaked down the Apalachicola River on RiverTrek.

Earlier I said I liked my rare and listed plants to look like rare plants. I like a plant that is quirky-looking, and easily missed. Here is a state-endangered wildflower that is neither quirky-looking or easily missed.

Azaleas are blooming all throughout Tallahassee now in pinks of various shades. Attractive plants imported from Asia. Flame azaleas are commercially available, and native, but for some reason, this color palette hasn’t caught on in the same way. 

Bob built a bench for people to enjoy this patch of flame azaleas. Across a small creek, on the opposite hill, is Chattahoochee River Landing Park.

Spring Ephemerals Gone to Seed

I’ve seen much more than I expected to see today, and Bob is taking me to see one more flower of interest: bloodroot. It’s a spring ephemeral that blooms slightly after trilliums and trout lilies, and Bob saw a large patch of them last week while clearing invasive trees.

The spot is high on a slope, and far off trail. 

One fun thing about spring ephemerals is that if you blink, you miss them. One week later, this population of them has made seed capsules.

So have the dimpled trout lilies. The dimple in their name comes from this capsule, actually.

I saw a lot today, and have a few more things to see in the coming months. Maybe these photos make you think you’ll come here and see nothing but rare and imperiled plants every step of the way. No, it takes some work, and some patience. And some care, if you decide to wander off trail. We don’t want to trample the habitat, or step on a small, endangered plant.

And rare plants aren’t the only ones to enjoy here. I’ll leave you with a few photos of the other wildflowers I saw today:

April 30, 2025: A quick visit to see Fringed Campion, Baldwin’s Milkvine

Today had to be quick. I have multiple blog posts to write and a podcast to produce, all related to the May 8 premiere of the new WFSU Ecology documentary: Secrets of the Seep. My dilemma was that I committed myself to seeing all of the rare plants at Angus Gholson Nature Park, 45 minutes from Tallahassee, and one of the rarest was (hopefully still) in bloom. It was in bloom last week- or was it the week before?

I haven’t I missed the fringed campion bloom, have I?

Bob Farley showed me a few pre-bloom campion plants on my last visit, so I know where to head. I almost don’t find the trailhead. There’s no mistaking that it’s growing season now, at the end of April, and the plants want their trails back. It feels as if no one has been here since my last visit in mid-March.

I am immediately greeted by abundant woodland pinkroot flowers along the trail.I’ve seen them on the Garden of Eden Trail, but always before or after their peak bloom. This is a good start.

A good start gets better quickly.

At least I’m not highly allergic to poison ivy. I am, though.

Another federally endangered plant here at Gholson Nature Park. I missed its peak bloom, but, thankfully there are still flowers for me to enjoy, and photograph.

It didn’t take long to locate, and that’s a good thing, because mosquitos are tearing me up. My fantastic luck continues when, just a hop down the trail from the campion, I find a state endangered plant in bloom.

Feeding monarchs in the slope forests of the Apalachicola River

This vine is related to milkweed, and will host monarch butterflies. Speaking of monarchs and milkweed:

I’ve also seen redring milkweed on the Garden of Eden Trail and on the Overstreet Trail at Maclay Gardens State Park. Both were in shady hardwood forests along ravines.

For a migratory species like the monarch, there’s an obvious advantage to having larval host plants in as many different habitats as possible. Redring milkweed and milkvine grow here in the slope forest. Sandhills milkweed and butterflyweed grow in arid sandhills, while aquatic and pink swamp milkweed grow on the edges of waterways. When I visited the mesic (wet) flatwoods at the Coastal Plains Institute’s Apalachicola Lowlands Preserve, I saw fewflower and Micheaux’s milkweed growing not far from pitcher plants and butterworts. A butterfly making a multigenerational voyage will fly over quite a range of different habitat types.

Common flowers are cool, too

I walk for an hour. The mosquitos leave me alone when I’m moving, but I’m here to photograph flowers.

Beardtongues aren’t rare, but I like when I go to a place full of rare plants and I see a flower that is currently blooming in my yard.

I thought this was cool because I’ve been reading about plant and insect evolution lately. Flowers likely first evolved in the Cretaceous Period, when dinosaurs still roamed the earth. Flowering plants (angiosperms) caused an explosion of insect diversity, as plants and insects evolved together over a hundred million years.

Flowers kept evolving new enticements for insects, and orders of insects evolved to seek nectar. Magnolias are an ancient lineage, predating bees and butterflies. The first pollinators were insects with other niches who were drawn to a new food source. Magnolias have had a relationship with beetles that goes back to when Tyrannosaurus Rex and triceratops battled it out.

(Kinda gross) Postscript

Within an hour of posting the April 30 update, I found a tick on my belly. Not a lonestar tick, but a tick nonetheless. Today was a little hot and filled with mosquitos. May is just a day away, and several of the plants on my list bloom in the coming months. I want to see and photograph these plants, and that makes certain conditions worth the trouble for me. If you’re a person with only a casual interest in rare plants, it’s something to think about.