Displaying items by tag: roan mountain
Vulnerable and venerable Appalachian lily is a beautiful sign of the times
Gray’s lily. Courtesy Appalachian Voice/Ben Brewer
Rare plants flourish on Tater Hill
This story was originally published by Appalachian Voice.
BOONE — For Gray’s lily, 2021 was both the best of times and the worst of times.
The vulnerable lily, which grows only in North Carolina, Virginia and Tennessee, is a species of particular interest at the Tater Hill Plant Preserve in Watauga County, North Carolina. Here nearly 1,600 acres of land, including a rare mountain bog, are devoted to the study and protection of rare and endangered plants.
It’s Epic: 7,500-acre Roan Mountain wild land donation largest in North Carolina history
CItizen Times: Roan Mountain donation will protect vast stretches of forest in Roan Highlands
Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney donated 7,500 acres to the Southern Appalachian Highlands Conservancy, an area described by an Asheville Citizen-Times reporter as “A high-elevation hideaway for birds, bears and salamanders, a massive piece of Western North Carolina’s famous mountains left unmarred, and a refuge for rare species in the face of climate change...
“The property includes the largest American Chestnut restoration project in the country, extensive boulder fields, rich coves, old growth forests, six waterfalls, and a system of rare heath balds,” according to Citizen-Times reporter Karen Chavez.
The land area is at least equivalent to the size of some highland state parks.