The word “turkey” is associated with golf in several ways — in golfing lingo, a “turkey gobble” is the sound a ball makes when it drops in the cup. And three consecutive birdies is sometimes called a “turkey”.

But at the Smoky Mountain Country Club in Whittier, a turkey is just as likely to be a family of wild turkeys leisurely crossing the cart path ahead of you. Sightings of the large birds are fairly common according to owner Mike Cornblum who photographed this group last week.

While they’re easy to watch without the aid of field glasses, wild turkeys are easily spooked and will fly away if you get too close.

Each Spring, while Fontana’s lake levels are still rising, fields of grasses and wildflowers briefly appear, but their flowering season is short-lived. As the lake gradually swells to full pool, scenes like this patch of Purple Toadflax give way to the rising lake.

Photo by Scot Warf

If you’re a Trillium-lover, now is the time to head for the mountains. In the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, you’ll see them carpeting the wooded slopes along Newfound Gap Road (US 441), which runs from Cherokee to Gatlinburg. They are especially abundant near Collins Creek on the North Carolina side and Chimneys on the Tennessee side.

The Large Flowered White Trillium (above) is the most abundant of the Trilliums of the Great Smoky Mountains. The big, bell shaped white flower, which usually turns to a delicate pink with age, is on a stem 10 to 15 inches high. When started from seed, Trilliums take 6-8 years to have their first bloom.

Like the ubiquitous Bradford Pear, most of today’s early blooming tress and shrubs are non-native transplants. But in the early days, the Smokies’ first tree to bloom was known as the “Sarvisberry”. The blooms not only signaled the arrival of Spring’s first traveling preachers, they provided the year’s first decorations for weddings, funeral wreaths and Sunday church services. Thus the name “sarvis” — the colloquial pronunciation of “service”.

The serviceberry tree above is on the Zack Beasley homesite – now a pavilion on the old highway 288 Riverside Park where the Tuckaseigee becomes Fontana Lake.

Thanks to George Ellison for suggesting this week’s Postcard.

A Saturday walk along the Deep Creek trail revealed an indisputable sign that Spring has arrived in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park — a small cluster of Hepatica on a rocky ledge. Home to more than 1500 species of native plants, the Smokies provides an ever changing display of flowering plants throughout the Spring and Summer.

To learn more about Deep Creek and wildflowers in the Smokies, follow these links —

Hiking in the Bryson City area
Deep Creek’s trails and waterfalls (pdf)
Wildflower blooming calendar (pdf)