Details
Who: Adults only
What: Wildflower workshop with lecture and Blue Ridge Parkway hike
When: 7 to 8:30 p.m. Thursday, May 15 lecture and the 8:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Saturday, May 17 hike
Where: Catawba Science Center and Crabtree Falls on the Blue Ridge Parkway Transportation is provided.
Cost: $30 for science center members and $35 for non-members
Deadline to register and pay: Tuesday, May 13
If it rains: Organizers will schedule an alternate date.

By Ragan Robinson

Hickory
We see the bashful head of a nodding trillium, the fragile, puffed, pink heart of a lady slipper, the candy-colored buttons of a fat mountain laurel.
What we can’t see this time of year, the secret those shy wildflowers won’t betray when we stoop to inspect the delicate veins on their petals, is their mad dash to preserve the species. It is a silent action movie, a season of “24” with a growing tree canopy in place of an ever-ticking digital clock.
Naturalist Bruce Beerbower with the Catawba Science Center puts it this way: Wildflowers have to expand their leaves, grow their buds, open their blossoms and get pollinated so they can reproduce, all before the hardwoods waking above them can stretch their leafy arms far and wide enough to block the sunshine.
Maybe it’s a little more like “Rock of Love” without eyeliner or birth control. And prettier stars.
Beerbower didn’t say that part. He and Karen McDougal probably watch the real world more than reality TV. They team up this month for the Catawba Science Center and Hickory Metro Higher Education Center wildflower workshop and hike.
Don’t let the promise of a lecture keep you home for “Lost” May 15 when you could be boning up on your outdoor skills. Sure, there will be some Latin – the formal names for flowers such as coneflower and bee balm pop into the minds of Beerbower and McDougal before the names our grandparents used. That’s a necessity if you want to really talk wildflowers, given the proliferation of names for every variety.
But McDougal and Beerbower, who have been looking at and studying plants and flowers since they were children, have plenty of interesting information. Among the subjects they’ll touch on are what is edible and what is not, how wildflowers are and have been used, the mythology surrounding them, where to look for them and how they got those colorful names to match their colorful petals.
Ever heard of sarviceberry or serviceberry?
In the mountains, this bush got its name from the warm weather during which it blooms. The berry shows up about the same time of year the traveling preacher could get to the rural communities for services.
In coastal areas, the same plant is known as shad berry after the fish that come upstream to spawn.
McDougal and Beerbower have lots stories.
And you can’t Tivo spring.

What to bring
Water
Lunch
A snack
A magnifying glass
A fanny pack, small backpack or other bag to free up your hands
Sturdy shoes. No sandals
or flip-flops.

What’s the hike like?
The Crabtree Falls hike is 2.5 miles round trip and is semi-strenuous.