Winged Deer Park contains one of the largest collections of naturalized bluebell flowers in Northeast Tennessee. In bloom for approximately 10 days, the best time to see this stunning cobalt display is early spring. David Miller talks with Connie Deegan, Park Naturalist, about the tours. More information available here.
Transcript:
David Miller: I'm David Miller for WETS-FM, and we have special guest today, Connie Deegan, and she is with the Park and Recreation Department here in Johnson City. We're going to talk about a special tour that is being offered to look at the beautiful bluebell wildflowers that are only out in the spring. Connie, welcome to the show.
Connie Deegan: Thank you so much, David.
David Miller: The Virginia bluebells, they are now in bloom. If you can, paint us a picture of what the bluebells look like.
Connie Deegan: They're an ephemeral flower. An ephemeral flower is a flower that has a strategy that works really, really well for it, and what it does is it shows up, leafs out, produces a flower, gets pollinated, then makes seeds, and goes back underground. And you will never know what was there, probably many of them by mid-July. They'll be gone, gone, gone. Sometimes some before. And they do all this now because the trees haven't leafed out above, so they have full access to any available sunlight. And that's really what an ephemeral flower is, and many of them are small and plain and no fragrance because they don't have to expend a ton of energy to be, you know, gorgeous and smell nice and beautiful because simply by showing up, they're going to get pollinated by the pollinators that are out there at this time. So it certainly isn't honeybees right now and it isn't butterflies. Many of our other pollinators, for example, mason bees, ants are big pollinators of ephemerals, I mean, some flies. So the reason that people love bluebells so much, I think, is because they are an ephemeral flower, but they are big. Instead of being, on average, five to six inches tall, like most of them are, these guys will get up to eighteen inches tall. They are blue, and that's another reason I think people love them because blue flowers are quite rare. And they're not rare, but they're, well, let's put it this way. There's a ton of white flowers, yellow flowers, even purple flowers, even red flowers, some pinks, but less than 10% of our flowers are blue. And not only are they blue, but their buds are pink. And I don't mean sort of kind of pink. I mean pink, pink. And they change color when they open up. They change to blue when they open up. So that's another neat thing. But they're just a very stunning flower. They're just beautiful. And they're, and they're among all these like limestone rock ledges, and they're running up and down these sinkholes on the back forty. That's what I call the area where they are at Winged Deer Park. They're just breathtaking.
David Miller: This particular tour, of course, started March the 22nd and will run through Wednesday, April the 2nd. So it's a very short time frame where folks can enjoy the Virginia bluebells.
Connie Deegan: That is correct. As a matter of fact, it's kind of a weird year because there are some ephemerals that aren't even up yet, but I am telling you, like right now, I can barely find any mayapples, but I bet in three days, there'll be mayapples everywhere. This happens fast. All of this happens fast. So all these flowers just show up, do their thing, poof, they're gone.
David Miller: Tell the listener how they can get involved with the tours and enjoy.
Connie Deegan: Okay, I think the easiest way to do it would be to access the Parks and Rec Facebook page. Scroll down a bit. You'll find some flyers on the, um, Bluebell Hikes, and they're all listed there. It is at 204 Carroll Creek Road. There's ample parking. That is the disc golf mountain bike parking lot, and that is right across Carroll Creek from the boat ramp parking lot. And then it will be obvious from that point where it starts.
David Miller: Connie, I appreciate your time. Thank you so much for breaking away and talking about the Virginia bluebells at Winged Deer Park.
Connie Deegan: Hey, David, thank you so much. Once again, that's Connie Deegan with the Johnson City Parks and Rec Department.