Wildflower Season Inside the Park
Parks are amazing places providing proven benefits that improve our quality of life. Whether it’s an annual road trip to our favorite national park or revisiting a favorite local hike or nearest natural treasure, these are the soul-soothing places we seek to help us re-ground and decompress.
Our own Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park was established as an enormous step toward healing a confused and hurting nation years after the Civil War ended. Though necessary, it feels completely unnatural to not have access to these amazing places right now.
While CCNMP continues to follow the latest guidance from the White House and Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC), life inside the park is bursting this spring.
So, until we can enjoy all of these places in person once again, we thought we’d come up with a safe way to enjoy some of the unique natural features in the park, showcasing the wildflowers of Orchard Knob Reservation. There is no one better to ask to curate our virtual wildflower walk than Orchard Knob resident and park volunteer, Charli Wyatt. Charli runs the Instagram account @respecttheknob and since 2014 has been photographing and identifying the native species in the CCNMP’s smallest park unit. We asked her to share some of her photos that feature her favorite wild flowers around the reservation.
Identifying native plants is definitely a fun way to explore and get to know your national park. For our region, Charli recommends using the UTK Herbarium site and easttennesseewildflowers.com. (For those who like apps, our friends at Reflection Riding also recommend downloading iNaturalist ). These are great sources for the casual botanist, serious plant ladies, or for walking around your neighborhood helping your kids identify plants.
Although Charli said she doesn’t have a background in botanical science, she does believe knowing what’s growing has changed her relationship to the park. “I think it changes how you look when you can differentiate the parts of a landscape, and see how the landscape changes through the seasons.” Read more here on how her knack for noticing things led to a local discovery in the national park!
As we continue to miss being in the park, we hope you will enjoy this small gallery and virtual wildflower tour from Orchard Knob Reservation. Thank you, Charli, for sharing your passion!
Follow @Respecttheknob on Instagram.
Check out these 360 virtual tours of our National Park courtesy of American Battlefield Trust.
