A Longing for Fire and Sunlight
The Southeast’s Vanishing Grasslands
This week, we’re sharing a feature from our Fall 2024 issue that offers a glimpse of the Southeast’s vanishing grasslands through Tom Poland’s words and Philip Jurus’ art. Below, read an excerpt of the feature that links to the full story and view a new painting by Georgia artist Philip Juras that offers a rare glimpse of what was once a prairie in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, followed by Juras’ reflections on what inspired him to paint this particular piece.
Print subscribers: We expect our first shipment of magazines in the next week and will drop your copy in the mail to you as soon as we receive them!
Haven’t subscribed to Backroad Portfolio yet?
A Longing for Fire and Sunlight
Story by Tom Poland • Paintings by Philip Juras’
Imagine an unsullied Southland with vast tracts of sun-filled, grassy woodlands, open glades, and even the occasional prairie sweeping from horizon to horizon. Accustomed as we are to shady forests, farm fields, and urban sprawl, that's not an easy thing to do. Native grasslands once existed in the Southeast, yet, like other natural systems, humans destroyed them out of necessity and ignorance. But those folks might have been a bit less voracious if they had better understood nature.
The next time aloft over the Southeast, note the crazy quilt below of croplands, forests, fields, and pastures. You’ll see towns and cities connected by linear deserts we call highways. You’ll see black wastelands we call parking lots. Grasslands’ demise began when European settlers stepped ashore with their fire suppression ways, axes, and plows. Manifest Destiny and something called progress began to bite, chew, then gobble native grasslands. The appetite was insatiable and today native grasslands are a ghost of what they once were. Think of them as remnants. Until the colonists set foot here, however, flower-filled grasslands had long staged a show. Witness this majesty through the eyes of another.
Reflections from Philip Juras, the Artist
In this view–let’s say it’s the year 1491–we stand at a high point of what today is called the Shuffletown prairie remnant in Charlotte NC. Our view is to the west across the wooded lowlands along the Catawba River toward a continuum of prairies, savannas, and woodlands. Spencer Mountain, and beyond that Kings Mountain lie on the horizon. Like other large southeastern grasslands, thousands of years of frequent burning caused by lighting, and even more so by American Indians, have balanced this vast landscape in a beautiful state of suspended succession. Forests are restricted to fire-protected slopes and drainageways, while occasional oak groves hold out on rocky upland sites where there is little fuel to carry fire. Prairies and savannas cover everything else. This is one of many grasslands in the Southeast that have been forgotten, but in my imagination, and after about 10 hours of painting, it is now remembered as a September view with Schweinitz sunflower and other prairie flora lighting up the greensward.
It is hard to imagine this scene in today’s densely forested landscape, but in the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries, European explorers described vast grasslands in the upper Piedmont of Virginia and the Carolinas. Among them, 325 years ago, John Lawson wrote about the area south of Charlotte:
“We travell’d, this day, about 25 Miles, over pleasant Savanna Ground, high, and dry, having very few Trees upon it, and those standing at a great distance. The Land was very good, and free from Grubs or Underwood.”
This painting is based on such accounts as well as my recent visit to Shuffletown Prairie, a small, degraded prairie remnant on the northwest side of Charlotte. The remnant lies in a narrow corridor beneath high tension power lines with dense forest on either side. The soil on this hilltop site is thin and rocky. The exposed boulders appear to be of mafic or ultramafic origin, as I’ve seen elsewhere in the Carolina Slate Belt, so the soil chemistry is probably restrictive for plants. Useless for agriculture, I imagine this poor, rocky, grassland site was used for pasture in previous centuries. This would have kept shade trees at bay and allowed sun loving prairie plants to persist.
Amidst the tangle of blackberry and honeysuckle that cover much of the site, on my visit I recognized kidney leaf rosinweed, obedient plant, goats rue, flowering spurge, wild quinine, and other grassland plants. Two federally listed prairie plants; smooth coneflower, which I didn’t see, and Schweinitz sunflower, which I did see, are found in this “Natural Heritage Site of National Significance”. Schweinitz described this sunflower 200 years ago in a historically similar grasslands in New Salem, NC, another place I’d like to depict.
Shuffletown prairie is completely hemmed in by the suburbs of Charlotte and as far as I could tell, there’s no obvious point of public access. Like so many grasslands remnants, it’s badly fire-suppressed and under siege by invasive plants. It’s a miracle it exists at all. Thanks to its purchase by the Trust for Public Land and transfer of ownership to Mecklenburg county it is at least legally protected. While sweeping views of vast grasslands may never return to this neighborhood of Charlotte, a little love in the form of prescribed fire and invasive removal would go a long way to maintain this important connection to the region’s rich (and gorgeous) natural history.
More of Juras’ Work
Below, we include a selection of Juras’ paintings of vanishing grasslands and savannas. To learn more about these paintings and others not shown here, read our full feature about him in our Fall 2024 issue.