File:Bog-rosemary (201109615).jpg

I'm pretty sure this is in or near Shady Valley, in northeasternmost Tennessee. I'm going through photos from last year's trip to Appalachia, to supplement my writing up of the tale on my blog. Unfortunately, sometimes I can't quite remember where specific photos were taken, but given the timestamps and other photos, I'm sure Shady Valley or the valley just east, near Mountain City. I'm assuming Shady Valley for now, which means the view is to the east, toward the Iron Mountains. As was often the case during my roadtrip, there were nice views like this with no place to stop. So I have a lot of photos taken through the car windows.

I like the names of the mountains in this region -- Iron Mountains, Stone Mountains -- even though for such dramatic names, the land looks quite pastoral.

I first heard of Shady Valley as a "Pleistocene refugia" -- meaning ecosystems retreated to the region during the ice ages and some aspects remained to the present. For example, the valley is known for its cranberry bog ecosystems -- which are normally found much farther north. In fact, here is a bit of text from one of the places I first heard about Appalachian Pleistocene refugias:

"Cranberry bogs harbor a range of species that are normally associated with more northerly ecoregions such as cranberry (Vaccinium spp.), blueberry (Vaccinium spp.), bog rosemary (Andromeda glaucophylla), buckbean (Menyanthes trifoliata), northern goshawk (Accipiter gentilis), fisher (Martes pennanti), and black-billed magpie (Pica pica). Such bogs and glades are relicts that have survived with their disjunct populations of cool-adapted species since cooler glacial epochs." (from Terrestrial Ecoregions of North America)

The Nature Conservancy also has a webapge on Shady Valley and on Orchard Bog & Quarry Bog.