Native Plant Rescue and the Return of Fire Pink

A year ago, I was on a native plant rescue along a greenway trail. We were tasked with digging up desirable plants from an area where the trail was being rerouted farther away from the unstable stream banks. The site was thick with Christmas ferns, mosses, trout lilies, and sedges. The rescued plants could be replanted in our own gardens or donated to public and private native gardens accepting contributions, but the goal was to save plants that would otherwise be lost to the impending construction. I joked that plant rescues were the perfect intersection of noble cause and guilty pleasure, scratching the itches of environmentalism and hoarding. We were asked, at minimum, to dig up one or two ferns for a public garden and leave them with the leader. I dug carefully around each plant to protect the roots and preserve some of the native soil, placing them into recycled grocery bags until my little red wagon was full.

On the hike in, I had spotted this gorgeous Fire Pink (Silene virginica) basking in the dappled light in between the trail and stream. It was electrifying, and it was in a spot that was slated to be disturbed. When I pointed out the plant to the group leader, she saw the desire in my eyes and sternly specified that it should go to a public native garden. I was a little disappointed but agreed. At the end of the rescue, we stopped back at the plant, and I dug it up for the other member who was taking it to the public garden she tended. A tiny little piece broke off in the process, and I was allowed to take it home with me.

I don’t want to go so far as to say there was gatekeeping on the trail that day — the leader telling me that the special plant should go to the special garden, but my head and heart did absorb the message that my little garden was not worthy of this treasured plant. Perhaps that is too strong a message. It was just that there was a more worthy candidate. I didn’t fight it, I didn’t protest, but I asked permission to take up and keep the scraps for myself. Honestly, I don’t know that the plant was even that special (it’s not listed as imperiled in North Carolina), or if it was just that it was currently enwrapped in the beauty of its blooms, but I’m sure my desire for it was written on my face. I would patiently nurture the remnants and hope they would grow for me.

Once home, I was horrified as I unloaded my bags of plants and couldn’t find it at first, but then I spotted it, delicately scooped it up and planted it in an old nursery pot with fluffy growers mix and set it in the shade with my other transplants. There it sat until the weather cooled in fall, and I transplanted it along the path behind the pond where it would get similar dappled shade to what it had along the creek trail.

This spring, much to my own delight, the Fire Pink emerged and bloomed.

As I photographed the exuberant return of the fire pink blooms to my own garden trail, I found the reflections and feelings of that day come full circle. Patience had been rewarded. Generosity bloomed from humble beginnings. Resurrection came from death — death of a slice of forest along a trail and death to a piece of my pride on that day. Ultimately, hope blossomed into a fleeting moment of beauty to be savored. While the bloom will be short-lived, the generosity of that fire pink rooted itself in me too.