Walking History: A Journey Along the Overmountain Victory National Historic Trail
November 4, 2025
A team of Conservancy staff and volunteers recently completed our annual survey of the endangered Schweinitz’s sunflowers at Buffalo Creek Preserve, and we’re happy to share that the population is holding steady. This population of the federally endangered sunflower species was propagated from seeds and planted at the preserve in 2021, which established the first recovery site for the species in North Carolina. Since then, our team has returned each fall when the plants are in bloom to survey the population and track its numbers.
This year, the group counted 102 clumps or groups of sunflowers, with a total of 215 individual stems, within the recovery site. We are happy to share that these numbers are roughly consistent with the past few years, which indicates the flowers are surviving well, even after our team conducted a prescribed burn at the site in 2024. We hope that once this population gets a little more established, numbers will start to increase each year.
In addition to surveying the plants on the preserve, we also survey the original population of sunflowers where the seeds were collected, to track its population as a reference. That population is located along a roadside near, but not within, Buffalo Creek Preserve. Based on the 2025 counts, the roadside population is still doing very well, with our team finding 182 groups of the flowers, including 503 individual stems.
Our team couldn’t have done this survey without the help of our volunteers, so thank you to everyone who helped out with the surveys!