Sean Bloom photograph by Brian Gomsak
With its mustard yellow petals and narrow leaves — velvety on one side and rough on the other — the Schweinitz’s sunflower has an unassuming appearance. Nevertheless, Sean Bloom gets giddy every time he sees one: These federally endangered flowers serve as a bellwether for the health of Buffalo Creek Preserve in Mount Pleasant.
“This flower needs these open grasslands, which are rare [because of development] but used to be more common in the Piedmont Carolinas,” says Bloom, land stewardship director for Catawba Land Conservancy — Carolina Thread Trail. It took 10 years of prescribed burns and targeted herbicide treatments to return the 80-acre property — which had been clear cut for a defunct housing development — to its prairie roots. Only then did it become fertile ground for the Schweinitz’s sunflower.
The project to save the flower began in the fall of 2020, when five volunteers collected seed heads from a nearby roadside population to plant. “Anytime we can get them off a roadside and into a protected spot where they won’t be affected, that’s preferred,” Bloom says. The seed heads were sent to the North Carolina Botanical Garden in Chapel Hill, where they were dried out and propagated into 800 plants. In one day, volunteers planted the seedlings in 100-foot rows in full sun and partial shade. By fall 2022, 180 stems survived, and in 2023, there were 215 stems.
By protecting the habitat for the Schweinitz’s sunflower, the conservancy also is attracting other plants, such as the Carolina birdfoot trefoil; shrub- and weed-nesting birds, like the indigo bunting; and pollinating insects, including monarch butterflies — all signs of life that thrive alongside a rare yellow flower.
Buffalo Creek Preserve
7911 Malibu Road
Mount Pleasant, NC 28124
(704) 342-3330
catawbalands.org
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