Wild Flowers Photographs as ART With Free Verse Poems For Each Picture

The nine flower collage above is composed of Native Wildflowers photographed in the Spring of 2023 in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park near the East Tennessee Townsend entrance to the United States most biodiverse Park.

I grew up about 20 miles from the nation's most visited National Park and still live here with a scenic view to see the layered ridges. While in college at Tennessee Wesleyan College during the mid-1970's I had a Vascular Plants in the spring where we had to make a pressed and dried spring wildflower collection. Students had be able to identify 85 out of 120 specimens selected by our professor for our lab practical final. 

This course began my love of these Southeastern wildflowers which I still have to this day. My first photography using a Pentax SLR camera began in 1987 and I have always enjoyed and loved finding and taking photographs of these spring beauties to this day. 

Enjoy each of these images which are personal "Moments in Nature" that I preserve with the images and free verse poems, as I attempt to enhance my personal connections to Nature with words.  

Redring Milkweed Flowers

Wildflowers So Different 

Photos And Blooms To See 

Summer Woods Walk For Me

June 1, 2023 Fort Loudoun State Historical Park, East Tennessee, USA

Mountaintop pink delight

Flowers from Appalachians

Catawba Rhododendron

June 13, 2023 from Mount Pisgah on Blue Ridge Parkway, North Carolina USA

Last of the Tall Ironweeds 

        That I happened to see

                On October 12, 2023

                        Summer purple glory

                                Now slowly fading away

Cherokee National Forest Southern Appalachians in Polk County, East Tennessee Mountains Oct 12, 2023

Red Columbine

Delicate Bloom

Gracefully Here

Beneath the Stem

June 15, 2023 at Mount Pisgah, Canton, North Carolina, USA

Purple Lobelia Flowers

After A Recent Rain

A New Sunny Day

Water Drops Sparkling

September 11, 2023 from Cades Cove in Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Tennessee, USA

Explosion of Yellow Color

White star like filaments

All past the recent blooming

Ragwort Daisy from June 8, 2023 in Cades Cove in Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Tennessee USA 

Sun and shadows

Glowing in the sun

Flower blooming delight

Hidden in the darkness

Leaves and stem beneath

Purple False Foxglove

September 11, 2023 from Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Tennessee USA 

Shiny slick green leaves

Bright orange flowers

Looks like many flames

Against the dark greens

Beautiful Flame Azalea

June 8, 2023 from Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Tennessee USA

Such A Beautiful To See Fall Bloom

Like The Yellow Sun Shining Bright

A Beggertick Or Spanish Needles Plant

Member Of The Yellow Sunflower Family 

Choosing To Brighten This October Day

Alcoa, Tennessee, USA on October 29, 2023 

Three Flowers On The Ground

Blown From Above By Recent Winds

Blooming High In A Towering Tree

How They Still Survived The Fall

Is A Question Only They Can Recall

Still Beautiful To See Are These Three 

Tulip Tree or Tulip Poplar is the Tennessee State Tree 

Photo taken in Cherokee National Forest, Monroe County, Tennessee, USA on May 21, 2023.

Purple and yellow stars 

But one with many tears

What is making it sad

When the beauties cry

Recent nightly dewdrops

Sparkling drops not tears

I feel joy in these blooms

Purple Asters Cherokee National Forest Southern Appalachian Mountains East Tennessee, USA

THIS POST IS STILL UNDER CONSTRUCTION WITH MORE IMAGES AND POEMS TO BE ADDED SOON