The Flower That Came Back From the Dead

The Tennessee coneflower is proof that much of nature might yet recover — if we commit ourselves to change.
By Margaret Renkl

NASHVILLE — Certain old-fashioned words from fairy tales and storybooks still cling to me from childhood. Moor. Vale. Bog. Glade. For a child, such words conjure magical places — untouched, holy lands where fairies might live and animals might speak in ways I understand. Not long after I moved to Tennessee, I heard the term “limestone cedar glade” for the first time and immediately thought again of magic. But I’ve been here almost 32 years now, and until last week I had never visited the site of one of conservation’s greatest success stories: the Tennessee coneflower.

This unassuming purple flower is a member of the genus echinacea. It grows in a tiny ecological niche — the limestone barrens and cedar glades of Tennessee’s Davidson, Rutherford and Wilson Counties. In limestone cedar glades, rock formations lie so close to the surface that soil is too shallow for the kinds of trees that grow in the deciduous forests surrounding them. Instead, this hot, stony land supports vegetation more typical of grasslands or deserts, including uncommon wildflowers: limestone fame flower, limestone glade milkvetch, cedar gladecress, glade savory, glade violet, glade bluet and a host of others.

The star of the cedar glades of Middle Tennessee is the Tennessee coneflower. First identified as a distinct species in 1898, it was for decades assumed to be extinct. In 1968 it was rediscovered by Elsie Quarterman, a legendary Vanderbilt botanist, who immediately went to work to protect it. The Tennessee coneflower became one of the first plant species added to the Endangered Species List.

Through the combined efforts of Dr. Quarterman, the Tennessee chapter of the Nature Conservancy, the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation, the National Park Service and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, as well as many private and corporate donors, the Tennessee coneflower population rebounded. It was removed from the endangered species list in 2011. Dr. Quarterman attended the delisting ceremony at Cedars of Lebanon State Park. She was 101... (continues)