Spray zone community

Figure 12. Delicate plants grow in areas of lighter spray. (Photograph by Dirk Frankenberg. More about the photograph)

On the sides of the waterfall the spray community becomes more diverse than the algae that grows at the bottom. These communities are perpetually wet but are less exposed to the destructive torrents that crash down the falls in periods of extreme high water. As a result, plants that appear to be relatively fragile can grow here, including ferns and mosses.

There are three species of filmy ferns that grow in the gorges, with leaves only a single cell thick. One of them, the gorge filmy fern, is endemic — it occurs here and nowhere else that we know of. The Appalachian Filmy Fern is found in fewer than fifty sites, five of which are in North Carolina. Four of these five sites are in the Jocassee Gorges and Highlands Plateau region. The Dwarf Filmy Fern, another rare plant species, inhabits only eleven sites in the gorges. All of these fragile plants live in the most humid parts of Jocassee Gorges.

Rare mosses are also found in this habitat, including the Carolina star-moss and Pringle’s aquatic moss.

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