Mother Nature is putting on her annual May show in Hitchcock Woods.
The kalmia bushes are blooming, and the best place to see them is from the Kalmia Trail, which is on a hillside above the Horse Show Ring.
"This is the mother lode for it," said Dr. Harry Shealy, the chairman of the Hitchcock Woods Foundation's Board of Trustees, as he strolled along the narrow path earlier this week.
Below Shealy were numerous thickets of the evergreen shrubs, and their large clusters of flowers looked like big, puffy clouds. Many of the clumps were white, but a few were pink.
"There is one vista after another along here," Shealy said.
The blossoms are popular with the hikers and equestrians who enjoy visiting the forest, which covers more than 2,000 acres and is one of the nation's largest in an urban area.
"For some people, this is the one time of the year they come out to Hitchcock Woods," said Woods Superintendent Bennett Tucker.
Kalmia is a genus of about seven species of plants, which Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus named in honor of his friend, Pehr Kalm, who collected samples from the shrubs in North America in the mid-18th century. The one causing all the excitement in Hitchcock Woods is Kalmia latifolia, which is commonly called mountain laurel, calico bush or spoonwood.
The shrubs are native to the eastern United States, and they often grow on rocky slopes and in mountainous forest areas.
Shealy believes kalmia thrives on slopes in Hitchcock Woods because a layer of soft, white clay known as kaolin keeps water close to the surface of the sandy soil, providing a moist environment that the plant likes.
"The ones in the mountains are much bigger and maybe lusher than they are down here, but these are pretty nice," Shealy said.
Courtney Conger and Nancy Harrington created the Kalmia Trail.
"It was probably in the mid-to-late 1970s," said Conger, who is a Hitchcock Woods Foundation trustee. "We knew there was a hillside of Kalmia above the Horse Show Ring, but you couldn't get close enough to see it very well. We cut the trail by hand with clippers while we were riding horses. We worked off and on for about two to three weeks. The kalmia is spectacular there; and because of the trail, so many people are able to get pleasure out of it."
Dede Biles is a general assignment reporter for the Aiken Standard.