Since 1982, our local NBC affiliate, WBIR-TV in Knoxville, has been doing the Heartland Series, short segments about "a people and their land"--the southern Appalachians, specifically. At noon today the segment they showed was about William Bartram (1739-1823), the early explorer and horticulturalist who came through the mountains on the North Carolina side in 1776-1777. He was as talented an artist of plants and flowers as Audubon was of birds. The Native Americans gave him the name Puc-Puggee, the Flower Hunter, and his favorite flower was this one from the high mountains: the flame azalea, kin of the mountain laurel that blooms in spring.



They range in color from a startingly bright yellow all the way to pink, but the orange and red ones gave them their name. The photo above I found on photobucket; it was taken at Gregory's Bald in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

Later--we seem to have a storm moving in! Pray we get rain!!