Island of the Morning
Nags Head Woods and Buxton Woods, Outer Banks, North Carolina, USA.
Photos and text copyright 2005 by Lorena Babcock Moore.

Barrier islands are one of the few places where significant geological change - and the consequences of human intervention - can be observed
within less than a single human lifetime.  Ocean currents, coastal rivers, wind and sun, ice storms and hurricanes shape the narrow ribbon of sand.
Specialized plant communities hold sand, gravel, and shells in place, create organic-rich soil, and allow the sediment layers to store rain water.
Over thousands of years, a small aquifer accumulates, a lens of precious fresh water resting on top of the deeper salt water, bringing more life to the islands.
Offshore, drowned Pleistocene beaches offer some protection from the heavy surf, and their chalky white fossil shells often wash ashore.
Very rarely, a low tide after a storm briefly reveals black remnants of Ice Age tree trunks in the breaking waves before the sand buries them again.
 

Unique salt-tolerant succulents and other desert plants protect coastal dunes from erosion.  This community survived Hurricane Isabel in 2003, when developed or poorly-vegetated dunes on both sides were blown out. Sea Oats (Uniola paniculata) are a familiar native grass. Yucca (Yucca flaccida) has a basal rosette of leaves that fray into tendrils at the edges, and dry capsule fruits (flowers also shown). Moundlily Yucca (Yucca gloriosa) has stiff, smooth-edged leaves on a treelike stalk, and fleshy fruits. Coastal Prickly Pear (Opuntia drummondii) is a small creeping cactus with slightly flattened joints that break off at a touch.

Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, faces directly into the sunrise.  Hooked like the blunt claw of a seabird,
the "Point" is an ever-changing whirl of birds, windy sunlight, and waves rolling over shifting sandbars,
vanishing and reappearing with the tides, constantly eroding and re-creating itself.
The Cape owes its strangely thickened, enduring shape to the succession of tangled roots that grip the sand.
Closest to the sea are the dune plants that grade into thickets of salt-loving coastal shrubs, then a line of storm-stunted oaks and pines.
Behind these, anchoring the crook of the barrier island, a forest grows on ancient sand dunes.
The fragile maritime woodland guards, nurtures, and survives on the island's secret and most precious resource:  fresh water.
This is Buxton Woods on Hatteras Island, the largest of several remnants of southern maritime forest on the Outer Banks.
A sister forest at Nags Head Woods hides freshwater ponds behind the 100-foot sand dunes of Jockey's Ridge, on Bodie Island, north of Oregon Inlet.
Smaller sanctuaries include Kitty Hawk Woods, a few miles north of Nags Head Woods, and Bald Head Woods, far to the south at Cape Fear.
These places are the same in many ways, yet each has its own personality and hides different wonders.

The namesake of the town of Buxton is a town in Derbyshire, England, that is famous for its holy wells and healing springs.
The Romans named it Aquae Arnemetiae, "the spring within the sacred grove", or "sacred spring under the trees."
Here on the Islands of the Morning, all waters are sacred - salt, brackish, and fresh - and the oaks grow upon holy ground.
 

PALMETTO (Sabal minor) reaches the northern limit of its range at Buxton Woods.

Nags Head Woods
Nature Conservancy: Nags Head Woods
Through ownership and agreements with the state and local governments, the Nature Conservancy protects over 1000 acres at Nags Head Woods
and additional land at the adjacent active sand dunes at Jockey's Ridge State Park that shelter the woods from ocean storms.
Buxton Woods
North Carolina Coastal Reserve:  Buxton Woods, Kitty Hawk Woods, Bald Head Woods, and others.  Site includes maps.
Nearly 1800 acres of wooded dunes, swales, and freshwater marsh are protected as part of the State of North Carolina Coastal Reserve System,
including agreements with the Nature Conservancy and the National Park Service.

A Walk in the Woods
Inside, under the trees, the forest itself does not feel endangered.  It has weathered hundreds of years of ice, gales, and thunderstorms.
Wind and waves pound the beach during an October nor'easter, but the green twilight of the forest remains undisturbed.
It creeps and hums and glitters with diverse life.  It is bigger that it looks from the outside, and is thick enough to get lost in.
Ancient dunes, crowned with old-growth hickory, oak, and holly trees, shelter precious freshwater ponds and swamps.
The wind in the high pines sounds like the surf that is less than a mile away.
The ground smells of red bay leaves, pine needles, acorns, swamp water, and ever so faintly of seaweed.

Southern Leopard Frog Rana sphenocephala	Green Frog  Rana clamitans

Freshwater Tupelo Swamp
Nyssa sylvatica var. biflora:  Swamp Tupelo, Swamp Black Gum
This coastal swamp variety has narrower leaves and larger fruits than the Black Gum or Black Tupelo of the piedmont and mountains (N. s. var. sylvatica),
and smaller leaves and fruits than the Water Tupelo (Nyssa aquatica).
Its curved pale trunk has a swollen hollow base and a network of exposed roots to help the tree "breathe" even when submerged.
The tupelo swamp cradles a dreaming silence and creates its own spacious glow, as if the moon were shining even in daylight.
 

High waterline shows on the trunks in a seasonally-dry tupelo swamp at Nags Head Woods.

Wild Berry Garden:  In October the vine curtains and shrubby tangles are bright with colorful fruits.  Photos below were all taken on the sme day.
Greenbriers were abundant but not photographed, including: Smilax bona-nox, S. auriculata, S. laurifolia.
 

Yellow Passionflower Passiflora lutea	Muscadine (Scuppernong Grape) Vitis rotundifolia Summer Grape (V. aestivalis) has smaller fruit.	Virginia Creeper Parthenocissus quinquefolia

Beautyberry  Callicarpa americana A southern coastal plain shrub.	Wax Myrtle  Myrica cerifera An important salt marsh shrub.	Alternate-Leaf Dogwood Cornus alternifolia	Persimmon Diospyros virginiana

Lichens:  The southeastern coastal plain, like other well-defined physiographic regions, has its own unique lichen community.
Shady hollows between forested dunes preserve large old-growth American Holly (Ilex opaca)
that are nearly covered in several species of lichens growing on or even within the smooth gray bark.
Some of these obscure crustose lichens are members of genera that are more abundant in the tropics.
Pine and oak bark hosts Usnea, Ramalina, and Parmotrema species, and a few lichens even grow in the sandy, salty soil.
 

Graphis afzelii (top, olive) Pyrenula cruenta (center, red) Pertusaria xanthodes (bottom left, greenish gray)	Graphis scripta One of several bark species that look like mysterious writing. Graphis Lichen Oracle	Parmotrema perforata on a fallen pine branch. Distinctive holes in the brown apothecia.	Southern Reindeer Lichen, Cladina evansii, on the ground under oaks.

Red Bay (Persea borbonia) in Nags Head Woods under an ancient Live Oak (Quercus virginiana). Bay leaf with Loblolly Pine cone, leaves and seedball of Sweetgum (Liquidambar styraciflua), red berries and evergreen leaves of creeping vine, Partridgeberry (Mitchella repens).		Spanish Moss (Tillandsia usneoides) is a  bromeliad related to the pineapple. rows in Nags Head Woods & Buxton Woods. Photo taken near Manteo on Roanoke Island.

The Sound:
In the muddy shallows, freshwater sedges and rushes yield to a maze of salt marsh grasses and salt-tolerant shrubs.
Sprouting acorns and broken oyster shells tangle in the eelgrass strandline beside tracks of deer and heron.
Warblers search for insects among the oak leaves that hang over the water, while jellyfish, crabs, long-nosed gar,
and diamondback terrapins swim under the exposed roots of gnarled trees that are older than they look.

Marsh Crab  Sesarma reticulatum

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