♪ (Rudy)On this special edition of NatureScene , we invite you to join us for a look at the natural diversity in South Carolina.

We'll take you from the mountains to the sea on our first high definition television journey.

A production of... NatureScene is made possible in part by a grant from Santee Cooper, where protection and improvement of our environment are equal in importance to providing electric energy.

Additional funding is provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and by viewers like you, members of the ETV Endowment of South Carolina.

♪ Hello and welcome to NatureScene .

High above Lake Jocassee in the Blue Ridge Mountains of South Carolina.

I'm Jim Welch with naturalist Rudy Mancke, and this, Rudy, will be the beginning of a wonderful trip from the northern border all the way to the coast.

We talk a lot about the "mountains to the sea" aspect of South Carolina, and we'll be able to sample that on this show.

It's always exciting to come to the mountains, especially in the fall.

We'll probably see some colors.

South Carolina, though it is the smallest southeastern state, has a little bit of everything, a great variety of habitats, homes for plants and animals, and that gives us the great variety of plants and animals that we have.

The mountains, the piedmont, the sandhills, coastal plain, and even barrier islands offshore -- all of it's exciting, but when you come to the mountains, you think of continental collisions.

Really, as we turn around and look, these mountains are here because of a collision in the past with the continent we now call Africa, squeezing rock, fracturing it, forcing it up to form mountains.

It occurred way back in time.

Slowly but surely, nature has worn down those steep mountains to the beautiful rounded mountains that we see in front of us today.

(Jim)Jocassee Gorges gets the name from these sometimes 1- and 2000-feet deep areas between the uplifts, eroded down through time with so much rain, 75 inches or so each year.

(Rudy)Um-hmm.

The fractures in those rocks allowed rivers to begin to work and slowly cut away these deep gorges,valleys.

Then we do come in and dam up the rivers to produce hydro electric power and to use for recreational purposes.

The water really is low today in the lake, but you can imagine what it looked like in the past, the steep valley, the deep valley, that was right down below us.

(Jim)Today about 7,500 acres of water in Lake Jocassee and a very deep lake, about a thousand-foot elevation there, up here perhaps 2,700 or so.

(Rudy) Kind of an oak-hickory forest here, but as you get down on the slopes, you see the white pines that are popping out there.

A little bit of color just beginning to come in, the yellow on the tulip trees that are down there below us.

♪ (Jim) We have a beautiful fall day to continue our hike in the Blue Ridge, and more color here, Rudy, than we had up at Jumping Off Rock, and the most spectacular waterfall I've seen.

(Rudy)Raven Cliff Falls draws a lot of people here.

It almost looks like from here a series of waterfalls.

Look at it -- starting way up at the top, falling, then flattening a little bit, falling again, 400 feet down the side of that mountain.

(Jim)One of the tallest here in the Eastern United States at 420 feet, and actually from Matthews Creek way up on the top over a thousand-foot drop with water over different levels all the way to the bottom.

(Rudy) That name, Raven Cliff Falls-- ravens are in this part of South Carolina and nowhere else, and they often nest on these rock outcrops, so that's a pretty good name for the falls.

The color is here more brilliantly than we saw earlier, higher elevation, little bit of extra moisture.

A lot of red on black gum.

That's one of the first ones to change.

You see a lot of red in front of us.

(Jim)Fifty waterfalls here in up-country South Carolina.

This one is beautiful framed with such -- well, this Appalachian forest around it.

(Rudy)Yeah, nice mixed forest, hardwoods and conifers, and you see the same kind of forest from here all the way up into New England.

♪ (Jim)Beautiful October day in Jones Gap State Park, part of the Mountain Bridge Wilderness and one of the most pristine areas in South Carolina.

(Rudy)It's really nice here and with the middle Saluda River right in front of us, slowly but surely now rounding those rocks off.

I think you can see that clearly here.

Maybe not as powerful as water falling a long distance but you can still hear the sounds of water falling, rearranging the world.

(Jim)With this beauty, it's no wonder this was South Carolina's first designated scenic river.

(Rudy)This is beautiful here.

It's interesting to think about water flowing here, gathering with more water to form the Saluda River, moving across the piedmont, joining the Broad River, to form the Congaree River right at Columbia.

Congaree goes down across the upper coastal plain, joins the Wateree to form the Santee River.

That eventually dumps into the Atlantic Ocean at Santee Delta.

Water from here going all the way to the sea.

(Jim)Two-hundred-thirty mile journey downstream to the Atlantic.

(Rudy)Slowly but surely, this water will make it there, and that's what we're going to do too.

♪ (Rudy)We've come down from the mountains onto the piedmont, which translated means "the foot of the mountains," and rocks don't end where the mountains end.

They continue out under the piedmont, usually covered by some pretty nice soils but sometimes exposed like this.

(Jim)This is called Forty Acre Rock, owned jointly by the Nature Conservancy and the State of South Carolina.

Actually, just 14 acres of granite rock outcrop, very flat and worn.

(Rudy)On the piedmont, you mainly have metamorphic rocks, but every now and then you have massive amounts of igneous rock.

Granite is a good example of it.

Once deep within the earth, a liquid rock, probably a magma chamber of a volcano that slowly cooled, and now all the other material has been removed, exposing the rock, and look what happens.

(Jim)Depressions throughout the rock's surface caused by water.

(Rudy)Yep, there are weaknesses in the rock, it weathers away, forms these little pools that fill with water, and the water kind of comes and goes.

Vernal pools is the term for them, and look at the little plant communities that ease out into these pools.

A lot of mosses coming in pretty quickly, stabilizing it, and then some of the flowering plants moving in, and finally you get trees.

Red cedar dominates in here and a little bit of color there on the persimmons.

That's a tree that can grow about anywhere.

(Jim)Wonderful to visit here any time of the year, spring with the wildflowers and fall with changing color in the trees.

(Rudy)It's interesting the way this granite peels away, slowly but surely.

Exfoliation is the term for it.

Peels off almost like layers of an onion, and you can look off in front of us here and see the slope of the rock, as we said a moment ago, dotted with those little vernal pools.

Some of the rarest plants in South Carolina, some even in the world, grow in those little vernal pools on granite outcrops.

♪ (Rudy)Believe it or not, we're back along the Saluda River, Jim.

It's been dammed up here.

This is Lake Murray, still on the piedmont in South Carolina.

So many large lakes in this state.

(Jim)This could be called the crown jewel of central South Carolina.

It was a major project from 1927 to 1930 and when finished, created one of the greatest earthen power dams in all the country.

(Rudy)Hydroelectric power production is simply,you back up water and let it fallover a turbine.

Falling water releases energy, turns the turbine, produces electrical power.

That's been going on here for some time.

(Jim)Several farms and homes had to be covered with thousands of acres of water here.

Now tens of thousands enjoy the lake, not only as residential areas but recreation.

♪ (Jim)Granite here at the Saluda River is rugged and solid but can be slippery.

(Rudy)Yeah.

(Jim)Some's been quarried by the hand of man.

(Rudy)We're right at Columbia, so humans have had an effect on this part of the state for a long time.

One way to think about where we are is we're right on the lower edge of the piedmont, where the piedmont meets the coastal plain.

Hard rock of the piedmont, you see it out here in the Saluda River.

Then it meets the soft sediments of the coastal plain right here.

Scoops out that softer material, creating a line of waterfalls.

You refer to this as the fall line, or the fall zone, in South Carolina.

That's the connecting point between the piedmont and the coastal plain.

(Jim)It runs from the Georgia border across the state to North Carolina and beyond the southern states.

(Rudy)This is about as far up in a river as you could bring a barge, so that might be a good place to put your capital.

So many capital cities in the eastern United States are right on the fall line because of the rocks that begin to show up here and continue farther up in the state.

You can just get a barge in this far.

Interesting history-natural history connections.

(Jim)Beautiful stretch.

I'm sure trout can survive in here because of the aeration of the water tumbling over rocks.

(Rudy)Yeah, and water levels, because of the dam upstream, go up and down.

Again, heading on down soon to join the Broad River to form the Congaree.

♪ (Jim)As we've traveled down and across the state of South Carolina, it looks like we've taken one big jump from the piedmont to the ocean.

With all this white sand,it looks like a Carolina beach.

(Rudy)It, in fact, was once a Carolina beach.

The ocean used to be in a lot farther in the past than it is today.

That's what created these sandhills right through the central portion of South Carolina.

White sand spreading all in front of us here, dominated by two tree species: longleaf pine, longest leaves, or needles, of any pine that we've got; and then the understory tree here, turkey oak, one of the common oaks, scrub oak, in the sandhills.

(Jim)A study in contrast with the scrubby oaks and the tall, stately longleaf pine.

(Rudy)Yeah.

(Jim)These other plants are reminiscent of what you find at the beach.

(Rudy)This one particularly, certainly is.

Rosemary is the common name for it.

If you go to the peninsula of Florida on white, sandy beaches like this along the Gulf of Mexico, that plant's growing there and doing well.

I think this plant has been in South Carolina since the ocean was here.

When the ocean went away, it stayed here and is still surviving nicely today.

Grains of sand, lots of sand grains, and we said earlier, where do these grains originate?

(Jim)From the mountains with the rock.

(Rudy)The rock on the piedmont in the mountains gets ground up, dumped into an ocean when it was here, kicked up to form these dunes, stabilized now by plants, and the ocean has moved away.

The coastal plain of South Carolina, in fact, used to be continental shelf.

That's a strange way to think about it, and when you've got wonderful white sand like this, it's easy to change that into glass.

There are lots and lots of sand quarries in the sandhills of South Carolina.

♪ (Jim)We have traveled halfway down the state into central South Carolina, and this area is so unusual to be so close to a large city like Columbia.

This formation,of course, is what makes it so special.

(Rudy)Well, the name Peachtree Rock comes from this formation, maybe the shape, or perhaps there was a peach tree growing on the top at some point.

But now we've been talking about sandhills, unconsolidated sand, and a lot of this is basically unconsolidated sand, but if you look up on the top, there is some solidified sandstone rock.

It's iron oxide that's stuck those sand grains together, forming a caprock, and that protects the softer material underneath.

It's interesting, too, when you reach over and rub it -- you don't want to do this much, but look how unconsolidated that is.

It just peels right away, so it's weathering much more rapidly on the sides than it is on the top, and it gives it this interesting shape.

We can hear water falling here.

This is a different forest.

This is not your typical sandhills forest, and the difference is made by water.

This is almost a northern forest.

It's this far south, yeah.

(Jim) It's ancient.

It is an interesting place.

(Jim)Hear that waterfall across the way here.

That's about a 20-foot waterfall.

It's the only one in central South Carolina that's natural.

(Rudy)It makes this sandhills area very, very different, just simply because of the humidity in the air and the flowing water that's here basically year round.

[ water babbling ] [ insects chattering ] (Jim)Just 20 miles southeast of Columbia, we have the Congaree Swamp National Monument, the largest expanse of old-growth bottom land forest found anywhere in the country, in fact the tallest canopy trees of anywhere in the world.

(Rudy)These species really do well on this flood plain.

It is the flood plain of the Congaree River.

We're on the upper part of the coastal plain of South Carolina.

I like to refer to it as the land of giants.

Not giant animals, but look at the giant trees that are here.

If you want to know what nature can do with a loblolly pine tree when left alone, this is what she can do.

It's amazing!

It'd probably take four, five,six people holding hands to reach around the base of this tree.

It is on a flood plain, but notice it's a little higher than other areas around it.

Elevational differences in Congaree Swamp National Monument make all the difference in the world, even a few inches.

(Jim)It does flood at least ten times a year from the Congaree River.

(Rudy)It's a bit higher here, and then this massive tree, look at it going up above us, totally different environment at the top than it is down below.

Look at the vine that climbed up along the side of the tree.

That's poison ivy, doing nicely this time of year, leaves just beginning to change color.

(Jim)Many of these tall loblollies, 150 feetup there.

(Rudy)That's an amazing plant.

Again, the canopy and then the understory, great variety of levels in a forest like this.

♪ (Jim)Twenty-two thousand acres, eighteen miles of trails and about two miles of this boardwalk loop give us a great look at the swamp.

(Rudy)It gives you another perspective.

You're up from the bottom of the ground itself.

When it's flooded,sometimes you can get to places you couldn't get otherwise.

I love floodplains, though, because of places just like this.

Oxbow lakes,they're called.

Little pieces of rivers or streams that get pinched off as a river or stream snakes, or meanders, around.

When you've got water on a flood plain in this part of the state, these two trees pop out.

I love bald cypress.

I think that's a great tree.

You see,it is a conifer.

There are the rounded cones on it that are very, very clear.

Those needles eventually will be shed all at one time.

It's the only conifer that does that.

Then the big-leafed tree with some fruit on it too -- you can see fruit hanging down -- that's water tupelo.

The cypress-tupelo swamps that you hear about, and you talk about, well, this is one of them, basically, associated with an old oxbow lake.

(Jim)This is an international biosphere reserve, with visitors from all over the world because of the diversity here.

(Rudy)Yeah, and it's interesting.

Look in the distance.

You can see the way that is a curve.

You see that bowing that's very, very clear when you look at it.

A little meanderer of a river that got pinched off, maybe hundreds, maybe even thousands, of years ago.

♪ (Jim)We're on a boardwalk on the coastal plain of South Carolina, Woods Bay State Park, one of 50 or so state parks, but this one is most unique because of the Carolina Bay that we're in the middle of.

(Rudy)Carolina Bays are really amazing features, elliptical in shape, oriented northwest to southeast.

Dark water usually accumulates in them, and lots of plants that we call bays are found here, so Carolina Bay is a pretty good common name.

Still, though,very mysterious, but you see the plants that pop in here.

More cypresses, smaller ones here.

Pond cypresses seem to dominate.

Again, leaves changing color this time of year.

Then all of these evergreen shrubs just scattered all over the place.

Ericaceae shrubs, they are referred to.

These Carolina Bays are amazing.

Some of them still have water in them.

There's also a sand ridge on the southeast corner, like the sandhills as far as plant communities.

(Jim)Very shallow depressions.

(Rudy)Yes, and perfect places for reptiles and amphibians.

Look at the turtle out, one of the cooters, sitting on the downed cypress tree, and everything out of the water there.

Look at that, all of the legs pulled under the shell and head turned to the side, listening to us probably and looking at us.

That's an animal that can find food, plant and animal material, here very commonly.

(Jim)Very popular state park, Rudy, with 1,541 acres, a lot of wetlands, a good place for the American alligator.

Yeah, and that animal has made a comeback on the coastal plain of South Carolina.

When you think coastal plain, you also think of one species of air plant in the pineapple, or bromeliad, family.

Spanish moss,common name, draped over these cypresses.

That, I think, adds a little bit to the mystery.

♪ (Jim)We're at Colleton State Park near Walterboro on the coastal plain of South Carolina.

This is our smallest state park in the entire system.

(Rudy)It's a nice one.

There's a lot to see here, though it is a small space.

What I like so much about it is, it is by one of my favorite low-country rivers, the Edisto River.

Dark water,slow moving, lots of tannins and lignins from the leaves in the water, and that gives it the color.

(Jim)A great river, the longest free-flowing black-water river in all the world.

(Rudy)I noticed as we were coming up-- look at the modified roots, and that's very clearly a root with these little knobby projections coming up.

It's a cypress tree.

We've been talking about those off and on.

You can see the exposed root here.

The river's gotten up and taken away the soil.

See the little, knobby, knee-like structures coming up.

Probably involved in gas exchange, to one degree or another.

The other side of the river, look at it, very, very clear.

Even some color in those cypresses with the leaves dying this time of year.

Good mix of hardwoods in here, too, on this flood plain.

♪ (Jim)We're nearing the end of our journey across the state of South Carolina, from the mountains to the sea, in the Francis Marion National Forest, on the coastal plain again, and this is a 250,000-acre forest, in fact, of special habitat in many places.

(Rudy)Yeah, and big chunks of it are dominated by longleaf pines, now not with turkey oak underneath as we saw in the sandhills but much more open.

Fire is very important in keeping it open.

Interesting plant communities.

All you've got to do is look up in a place like this.

You see the trees have been marked.

Red-cockaded woodpeckers live here and nest in these living trees with all the sap running down the sides of them.

Pretty obvious,isn't it?

(Jim)Still an endangered bird but it's making a comeback.

(Rudy)Yeah.

It's an endangered speciesbecause the habitat is also in danger of disappearing.

That's why it's so important to protect special places.

♪ (Jim)In all four seasons in South Carolina, it's always a good time to be outdoors on a hike, but on the coastal plain, with a light breeze in the fall, this is a grand time to be here.

(Rudy)This is a marvelous time to take a look at the variety of habitats in South Carolina.

This one really is best referred to as maritime forest.

It's a forestby the sea dominated by the state tree of South Carolina, cabbage palmetto, scientific name Sabal palmetto .

There again is the derivation of the common name.

(Jim)A few oaks mixed in with palmettos.

(Rudy)Lots of live oaks, red bay,wax myrtle.

All the white fuzz on the other side is fruit on Baccharis, or groundsel-tree, a typical understory plant in situations like this.

Sometimes even close to ocean you've got standing fresh water, totally unique habitat.

But, again, it's a wonderful thing.

This maritime forest is special, unique and right along the lower coastal plain of South Carolina.

(Jim)Look up in the sky.

That's a sight we're seeing more often these days in South Carolina.

(Rudy)Our bald eagle is back.

Look at the white on the front, white on the tail, and easily moving through the sky on those wide wings.

♪ (Jim) Rudy, this, too, has become one of NatureScene's favorite places in South Carolina, here along the Atlantic at Cape Romaine National Wildlife Refuge, Bulls Island, where our state meets the ocean.

(Rudy) Yeah, this is the most dynamic part of South Carolina, and we've got a chain of barrier islands along much of the coast, piles of sand that are easily moved by wind and water.

The boneyard beach here is a perfect example of that.

Look at all of the skeletons of these trees that used to be on high, dry ground, slowly but surely eroded out by the ocean action.

Of course, hurricanes have a great effect here too.

(Jim) Bleached white roots and trunks, a wild and scenic stretch that really is, perhaps, part of the prettiest stretch of beach in South Carolina.

It is very special, and certainly in South Carolina the Atlantic Ocean has had a major effect, not only on the edge but also a bit of the coastal plain.

You can see the wave action doing work here.

You can imagine it with storm surge added to it, and then there are longshore currents also working, constantly rearranging the world.

[ waves breaking ] (Jim)South Carolina is truly a beautiful and very special state.

About a five-hour drive from Jocassee Gorges Natural Area here to the Atlantic Ocean and so much diversity in a great state.

(Rudy) Yeah, and it's small enough to take it all in.

That's one of the wonderful things about South Carolina.

It is the smallest southeastern state, but mountains, piedmonts, sandhills, coastal plain, barrier islands, and even continental shelf offshore that we cannot easily take a look at -- that much diversity in a small space.

What a special place it is!

(Jim) Made up of so many pretty places right here in South Carolina.

Thanks for watching.

We'll see you again on the next NatureScene .

♪ NatureScene is made possible in part by a grant from Santee Cooper, where protection and improvement of our environment are equal in importance to providing electric energy.

Additional funding is provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and by viewers like you, members of the ETV Endowment of South Carolina.