A botanist living here in the sunny South sometimes feels the urge to tease his Northern counterparts once it starts getting to be cold. Way up north, it always snows a lot in the winter, and all the plants are frozen. All the botanists will be tramping inside out of the snow, taking off their boots and furry parkas, settling into their time in a nice warm herbarium, poring over the specimens they collected during the growing season, which is something like May through August, and dream of a flowery landscape.

Of course, I’m just kidding. The study of natural history has no seasonal limits … mostly. The advantage of being a Southern botanist, though, really does come from a mild winter, during which plenty of field work can and should take place. Of course, there are not as many flowers to see. On the other hand, some plants have evolved a blooming time during the winter. Here is one that is spectacular.

Blooming in the cold months of the year must be risky, but perhaps there are some advantages to it. Presumably, late- or winter-blooming plants don’t have to compete for whatever pollinators (if any) are still out there buzzing around on a relatively warm sunny day. Or, there may be additional biological strategies involved in winter blooming that we haven’t figured out yet.

This plant is a perennial herb, blooming from October well into December, sometimes as late as January. It is a resident of pine savannas and sandhill ecosystems on the Atlantic Coastal Plain. Its distribution is somewhat odd: most of its populations occur from northeastern South Carolina (north of the Santee River) through North Carolina, and into the southeastern corner of Virginia. Then the plant reappears in scattered areas of Delaware and southern New Jersey. It comes up from thick roots, producing slender stems and smooth, very narrow leaves. The plants are very inconspicuous unless they are blooming. Usually one flower, sometimes two or three, will open at the top of a branch, one of the most charming flowers there is. Between each pair of the fused petals will be a prominent pleat, or infolding. The corolla tends to be a brilliant blue, varying from sky-blue (or “flax” blue) to darker, somewhat purplish shades. The interior of the corolla is heavily speckled, with plenty of little green dots.

Although not extremely rare, this species does occur in threatened habitats. Pine barrens and savannas of the Atlantic seaboard have been devastated over the years by timbering, draining, urbanization, and the prevention of natural burning. Our Mystery Plant is one of the premier indicators of various pine-dominated habitats, and also one of the showiest, a beautiful surprise on a chilly winter day.

(For more information on pine savannas and related ecosystems, and a fascinating account of southeastern landscape diversity, consider “The Natural Gardens of North Carolina”, by B. W. Wells, published by the UNC Press.) (Photo by Will Stuart.)

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John Nelson is the curator of the Herbarium at the University of South Carolina, in the department of biological sciences. As a public service, the herbarium offers free plant identifications. For more information, visit www.herbarium.org or call 803-777-8196.