Roses (Rosa spp.) symbolize love and beauty and come with a sharp reminder that often love and beauty can be painful. A rose by any other name will still prick your fingers, or so the old saying goes. Or does it? 

Roses can be found blooming all around us in the late spring and summer in Western North Carolina.

During the sunny mid-morning hours on the Tennessee border in Pisgah National Forest, a small group of volunteers at the Appalachian Trail’s rugged, remote Lemon Gap trailhead prepare for battle — not with litterbugs, poachers or vandals but instead with one of the many invasive plant species that threaten the region’s delicate natural ecosystems. 

Adam Bigelow of Bigelow’s Botanical Excursions is giving folks an opportunity to learn about botany while enjoying an adult beverage.

This fun and informative series of classes will be held at Sante Wine Bar in downtown Sylva over the course of six Tuesday evenings from 6-8 p.m. There will be wine service at the classes. Cost of the class does not include alcohol purchases. Classes will be limited to 25 people per session. 

The other day as I was sitting inside with cats on my lap, I heard the sound of a miniature helicopter go whooshing by the window behind my head. While it was the first time I had heard it this year, the sound was unmistakable. I knew the hummingbirds were back. 

I wasn’t surprised though, as the plants I like to call hummingbird calendars had already announced that their return was imminent.

Every year in early spring, I try to maintain some sense of normalcy and keep to regular schedules and rhythms of work and life. I try, but spring fever infects me each year, and I get caught up in the beautiful excitement of springtime. If this is a sickness, then I hope there’s no cure. 

Sometimes I have to leave Southern Appalachia in the springtime for work or family obligations. As much as I try not to, it does happen.

The North Carolina Arboretum invites everyone to join in the reawakening of a new season with Spring Into the Arb. Now in its second year, this series of plant shows and sales, science and nature activities and music and art is a wonderful way to reemerge and reconnect with nature. 

I don’t know about y’all, but I’m getting excited for the return of wildflowers.  

In Southern Appalachia, we’ve had a real winter this season with long, extended cold snaps and a couple of good, region-wide snow and ice storms. Now we’re looking at a few weeks of warmer weather ahead, and in mid-February that means the emergence and bloom of the first of the spring wildflowers. 

When you see a plant growing, flowering and fruiting in a garden, field, forest or pot you’re only seeing a part and not the whole. Much of the plant exists below the ground in the soil in the form of roots. It’s common to think that half of the plant is aboveground — stems, flowers and leaves — and half is below the ground in the roots, but this is not true across the board. 

When Drake Fowler returned to the North Carolina Arboretum after Hurricane Helene, the extent of the damage broke his heart. 

“We lost 10,000 trees over 80 acres,” he said.

However, as the initial shock of grief subsided, Fowler, the arboretum’s executive director, considered how to find opportunity amid destruction.

I think a lot about native plants. In fact, it is the subject of most everything I do, from the weekly wildflower walks I lead during the growing season, to the many classes, workshops and presentations I offer throughout the year. And I write about native plants in these columns that I produce twice a month. My focus is on plants that are native to the southern Appalachian Mountains and Western North Carolina.