Hello Gardeners, I’m Amanda McNulty with Clemson extension and Making It Grow.
When we finally reached the sweet gum tree with galls that marks where you turn off the sandhills trail to enter one of the two Carolina bays at Savage Bay Heritage Site, it was like stepping into another world. The dominant tree was pond cypress, which has a buttressed base and distinctly swirled needles, as opposed to the ranked leaves on the straight bald cypress. The woods were very open with the only other woodly species growing directly in the ground being pondspice, litseaaestivalis, a shrub of concern . Other plants, red maples and laurels members, grew in the debris that accumulated on top of pond cypress stumps. Giant plume grass infloresences added beauty and the ground was predominantly covered with redroot, which gets its names from the bright red rhizomes that anchor it in those damp soils.
