George Ellison. Artwork by Elizabeth Ellison

Wretched Sedge (Carex miser Buckley 1843; C. misera Small 1903);
endemic to 13 counties in the Blue Ridge (TN, GA, NC); clumps of
narrow pale-green grass-like leaves up to 16 inches droop forlornly
from crevices in shaded seepage cliffs underlain by dry pale-brownish
hair-like tussocks of older leaves resembling the headpiece a Cherokee
woman in mourning … of a certain disposition … might have deemed
suitable to mark the occasion as she danced and whirled around the
funeral pyre … alone at last after all those years … bare feet hovering
above the indifferent soil … forlorn leaves masking her dull cold eyes

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Artist and paper-maker Elizabeth Ellison has exhibited at NC Arboretum, NC Botanical Garden, Schiele Museum and numerous other facilities. She is the owner-operator of Elizabeth Ellison Watercolors on the town square in Bryson City NC and prepares the artwork for the weekly Nature Journal column she and her husband, George, contribute to for the Asheville Citizen-Times. Contact and see more of her work at www.elizabethellisonwatercolors.com.

Writer and naturalist George Ellison was the winner of the Wild South Ashe-Roosevelt Award for environmental journalism in 2012. That same year his Permanent Camp was one of three finalists for the Southern Independent Booksellers Association award for poetry, and his Blue Ridge Nature Journal had previously been a finalist for SIBA’s non-fiction award. He writes columns for Smoky Mountain News, Asheville Citizen-Times, and The Newsletter of the Southern Appalachian Botanical Society. Contact him at www.georgeellison.com.