This week for Flora and Fauna Friday it’s the floral oracle of the solar aura, Carolina Rockrose (Crocanthemum carolinianum).
Carolina Rockrose is a tiny wildflower adapted to the barren sandy soils of our Longleaf Pine savannas in the Lowcountry. It exists for most of the year as a rosette of hairy leaves, barely two inches wide, clinging to the open sands below a savanna. Out of sight and paid no mind by all. Yet, approaching the threshold of spring, a burgundy pedestal for petals is lifted. Atop this silver hair lined stalk a bloom broods. On the doorstep of a dew-soaked daybreak a golden glow, small and low, syncs in step with the cracking of dawn. Petals unfurl as sunlight shatters the shadow of night. A reflection of the magnificence of the morning sun, mirrored in miniature upon the land, mere inches above the sand. Carolina Rockrose greets the day this way, emulating the sunrise, as if in ritual, to dispel the shadows of winter and welcome the warming of spring. Five radiant yellow petals display a ring of golden anthers at the core of the flower, the ball of fire in its glowing sky. Standing no more than ankle high, this compact flower is nonetheless a beacon for bees.
Carolina Rockrose is one of our fire dependent species, not just adapted to tolerate, but relying upon frequent fire on the landscape to survive. Although some landowners have begun to replant, no natural Longleaf Pine, the cornerstone of out Southern savanna, survives on Edisto Island. Yet, remnant dependents, like Carolina Rockrose, still cling to life on our Sea Island. In corners and crevices of stabilizing, equalizing chaos, it is sheltered from the loss of the long shadows of the savanna, an ecosystem now shattered and scattered into islands in a sea of smothering stagnation. These relic pyrophytic plants have been facing the day, for decades on centuries, keeping hope for the fires of change to sweep through with the warmth of a new day, a spring of salvation. The recent revitalization of efforts to return Longleaf Pine, fire, and native plants to the Lowcountry landscape offer hope for us to rekindle a spark and return some of the native ecosystems we once had to the Sea Islands.
