Mt. Mitchell State Park

    The famous Blue Ridge Parkway of Virginia and North Carolina is the high road, and Mt. Mitchell is the highest point of all. In fact, this iconic mountain is highest peak of all the mountains east of the Mississippi River. If you are lucky, the clouds hovering about the mountaintop will part to reveal expansive views of the Appalachian Mountains. But even if the weather is fickle and the view hides away, Mt. Mitchell's peak is not short on magical things to see. Just beside the main overlook are shadowy red spruce and Fraser fir forests speckled with red russula mushrooms and glistening green ferns. It is a damp, quiet world of rolling mists and forests so different from all others in the Appalachians. The landscapes of the mountain change fast as you descend, but the strange and mysterious peak holds on to its own silent beauty as an island apart, high in the sky.

Orange Amanita Mushroom

Bonnet Mushroom

Russula Mushroom 

Many call these forests “boreal”, but this term is not scientifically accurate. During the late Pleistocene, about 18,000 years ago, the northern part of America was locked in ice. Spruce and fir trees shifted their range southward from Canada to what are now called the Black Mountains of North Carolina. When the glaciers eventually retreated in the Holocene era, these trees moved to Southern Appalachia's highest peaks. Some historians call this event "the great tree migration." Now it has been thousands of years since the trees’ migration and now many of the species here are unique to Mt. Mitchell. (Perfect examples of Darwin's theory of evolution in action!)

Pink Turtlehead

These flowers are called Turtleheads because the upper lid of the flower overlaps the lower, just like a turtle’s beak.

Red Raspberry 

Red Raspberry (leaves)

Annual Fleabane

Fraser Fir

The needles of firs are flattened, while the needles of spruces are sharp and stiff.