Great Allegheny Passage Bike Trail

Monday, November 9, 2026

Don Croner’ Wanders on the Great Allegheny Passage Bike Trail | Flora | Blue Violet

The Blue Violet (Viola sororia), a native of North America, appears from mid-April into June along forest edges, in meadows, moist stream sides, and the verges of the GAP, at least in areas that have not been mowed. The genus name Viola, the classical Latin name for the violet, was adopted by the ubiquitous Swedish botanical maven Carl Linnaeus and means simply “violet.” Carl Ludwig Willdenow, a Berlin-based botanist, added the species name sororia in 1806. In Latin sororia means “sisterly.” It is usually considered a reference to the plant’s close resemblance to its many look-alike relatives, or sisters. Some modern commentators have suggested that “sisterly” is a veiled reference to lesbianism, although this was almost certainly not Willdenow’s intention.

The Blue Violet has a storied history, dating back to at least the seventh century B.C. A European species of violet, Viola odorata, was mentioned by the Greek lyric poet Sappho (c. 630⁠–⁠570 B.C.), who lived on the island of Lesbos in the Aegean Sea, just off the coast of Turkey. Only fragments of her poetry have survived, but in several of them she wrote about Violets. In one she mentions the “many crowns of violets and roses” that one of her female lovers wore. The word “lesbian” is, of course, derived from the name of the island on which she lived.

Blue Violets would go on to become a symbol of not just Sapphic love, but romantic love in general, as well as a host of other connotations, including faithfulness, modesty, humility, early death, and mourning. Shakespeare mentions Violets numerous times. In Hamlet Laertes calls Hamlet’s love “a violet in the youth of primy nature.” Ophelia says her violets “withered all when my father died.” At her grave, Laertes says, “from her fair and unpolluted flesh / May violets spring.” Shakespeare also mentions Violets in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Henry V (“the violet smells to him as it doth to me”), The Winter’s Tale, and Sonnet 99. English poet Christina Rossetti (1830–1894) also waxed eloquent on Violets: “Keep love for youth, and violets for the spring”; “O violets for the grave of youth”; “The violets whisper from the shade / Which their own leaves have made: / Men scent our fragrance on the air,” and so on. The Violets mentioned by Sappho, Shakespeare, Rossetti, and other Europeans were probably the Old World species, Viola odorata. This species was cultivated and eventually became a popular garden flower in the United States. It is quite possible that it has escaped from gardens and is now growing along the GAP.

The American species of Blue Violet that grows naturally along the GAP (Viola sororia) was also deliberately cultivated as a garden ornamental. It is not clear which of the two species ended up playing a role in the 1926 Broadway play The Captive by French playwright Édouard Bourdet, which dealt with two lesbian characters, one of whom wooed the other with bouquets of Blue Violets. The play caused a public uproar, with some objecting to its frank portrayal of lesbianism, and the production was finally raided by police on February 9, 1927, and closed down. Supporters of the play, following the example of lesbian theatergoers at the original Paris production, wore violets pinned to their lapels to show their support for the play and the Sapphic relationship it portrayed. Far from creating a run on violets, however, the scandal hurt sales: New York florists saw demand drop, and Hudson Valley growers were still blaming the play for their losses years later. From this point on Blue Violets became known as “the Lesbian Flower.”

Long before the whole lesbian brouhaha in New York City, the Blue Violet (Viola sororia) was utilized for both food and medicine by both Native Americans and early settlers. Among Native peoples, the Cherokee have by far the best record of using Viola sororia specifically. Other groups, including the Iroquois and Omaha, used “blue violets,” but the sources don’t name the species. The Cherokee used a poultice of the leaves for headaches and a poultice of the crushed roots for treating boils. An infusion was taken internally for dysentery, colds, and coughs, and as a spring tonic. An infusion was sprayed up the nose to treat nasal congestion. An infusion was also used as a “blood medicine.” The Cherokee ate the leaves and stems of Blue Violets, parboiling them and then frying them in grease. Interestingly, the Cherokee soaked seed corn in an infusion of Blue Violet root before planting to repel insects. Early settlers also used the Blue Violet for coughs, sore throat, and constipation, as documented in Medical Flora; or, Manual of the Medical Botany of the United States of North America (published in two volumes in 1828 and 1830) by naturalist and botanist Constantine Samuel Rafinesque (1783⁠–⁠1840). The 1898 edition of King’s American Dispensatory describes near relatives of Viola sororia as “mucilaginous, emollient, and slightly laxative” but mentions our Blue Violet only in passing.

Blue Violet (Viola sororia) continues to be popular with modern herbalists. Infusions and syrups made from the leaves and flowers are used for dry coughs and sore throats and as a treatment for chronic lymphatic swelling. Poultices and infused oils of Blue Violet are also used for dry or chafed skin, abrasions, and insect bites. Most of these modern treatments are based on traditional folk medicine; there is little if any clinical research to back up these claims. Blue Violets are also popular with foragers. The young, tender, light-green leaves are used raw in salads, often mixed with other greens, and the older leaves are cooked like spinach. Flowers are also added as a coloring to lemonade, resulting in “violet lemonade,” which is apparently in favor among some segments of the foraging community.

The Blue Violet is popular throughout the country. It is the State Flower of Illinois, New Jersey, Rhode Island, and Wisconsin (Pennsylvania has opted to go with Mountain Laurel, Kalmia latifolia), and it is one of the signature flowers along the GAP from Spring into early Summer. Although most GAPers are unlikely to utilize it for medicine or food, lesbian GAPers who encounter “the Lesbian Flower” on the GAP may want to stop and swoon over this beautiful flower, which along with its sisters has excited the passions of poets and playwrights down through the ages.

Blue Violet

Tuesday, November 3, 2026

Don Croner’s Wanders on the Great Allegheny Passage Bike Trail | Flora | Wild Yam

GAPers may be excused if they at first do not notice the humble Wild Yam (Dioscorea villosa). Yet this slender, twining herbaceous perennial with its inconspicuous leaves has played not only an important role early American healing traditions but also in 20th-century pharmaceutical history—the compounds extracted from its roots were instrumental in the development of the Birth Control Pill.

Wild Yam belongs to the family Dioscoreaceae, the true Yam family, and is the only native Yam species widespread in eastern North America. The genus Dioscorea is named after the first-century Greek physician and botanist Pedanius Dioscorides (born c. 40 A.D.), author of De Materia Medica, a five-volume guide describing medicinal plants and other substances, which became a major reference on medicines for more than a thousand years. The specific epithet villosa means “hairy” in Latin and refers to the pubescence, or fine, short hairs, found on some forms of the plant.

The slender vines of Wild Yam wrap themselves around supporting vegetation and can range in length from three to eighteen feet. The mingling of its leaves with those of the plants it has entwined can make it even harder to spot. Despite its inconspicuousness, it is quite common along some portions of the GAP, occurring in moist woodland borders and forest edges, especially where deciduous forests transition to open areas or stream corridors. It grows best in partial to full sun with moist to well-drained soil, favoring sandy to rocky loam. It tolerates considerable shade but grows most prolifically at woodland edges receiving several hours of direct sun. The tiny, inconspicuous pale green to cream-colored flowers bloom from early June through July, with the male and female flowers occurring on separate plants. The underground portion consists of long, horizontal, branching rhizomes growing twelve to eighteen inches below the soil surface. The tough, woody rhizomes are pale tan externally, whitish internally, with a distinctly bitter, slightly acrid taste. This is the medicinally active portion of the plant.

According to ethnobotanical records the Meskwaki people who lived in the great Lakes Region used the root of Wild Yam to relieve menstrual pain and ease childbirth. Wild Yam also figured prominently in the Eclectic botanical tradition of the 19th and early 20th centuries. It has its own entry in King’s American Dispensatory (1898), the bible of the Eclectic Movement, which calls it “a specific in bilious colic” and lists it as a treatment for “nausea and colicky pains,” “paroxysmal abdominal pain,” “sharp abdominal pain, made worse by motion,” and other assorted ailments.

Wild Yam entered modern pharmaceutical history when Russell Marker, a Penn State chemistry professor, figured out a process (later called the “Marker Degradation”) for converting plant steroids known as sapogenins into progesterone, the hormone essential for pregnancy and menstrual regulation. He first worked out the process on sarsasapogenin from sarsaparilla, and in 1940 he applied it to diosgenin, a steroid he extracted from Wild Yam roots. He soon found that the Wild Yam (Dioscorea villosa) yielded too little diosgenin to make full-scale production of progesterone feasible. Marker spent the next few years looking for an alternative, testing over 400 plants, until he discovered a species of Yam growing in Mexico with enormous roots weighing up to 200 pounds each that were rich in diosgenin. In 1942 he smuggled a 50-pound root out of Mexico back to his lab at Penn State and was able to extract diosgenin in significant amounts. He tried to sell his discovery to American pharmaceutical companies, but they were not interested. In 1944 he and two partners, Emeric Somlo and Federico Lehmann, founded their own company in Mexico—Syntex, S.A.—which by the late 1940s was mass-producing progesterone from Mexican Yams, crashing the price from roughly $80 a gram down to a few cents per gram over the following decade. This cheap, Yam-derived progesterone became the essential raw material for two major pharmaceutical breakthroughs: cortisone (via an oxidation process) and oral contraceptives.

The contraceptive angle was pursued by Syntex chemist Carl Djerassi, who in 1951 used diosgenin-derived progesterone to create a synthetic compound known as norethindrone, which would become the active ingredient in the first practical birth control pills. Syntex, however, couldn’t sell drugs in the U.S. It was a Mexican company that produced bulk steroids. It had no labs or factories in the States and no American sales operation, so it licensed norethindrone to Parke-Davis, a well-known American company, which won FDA approval in 1957 to sell it as Norlutin for menstrual disorders. Fearing a boycott of its other products by Catholics, many of whom opposed birth control, Parke-Davis refused to market it as a contraceptive. Syntex’s norethindrone finally reached the market as a contraceptive in 1962 as Ortho-Novum, made by Ortho Pharmaceutical, a division of Johnson & Johnson. In 1964 Syntex was able to market its own version of the Pill, known as Norinyl. By then Parke-Davis had realized that no significant Catholic boycott was happening and began selling its own version of the Pill. Syntex continued to supply much of the bulk steroid for the industry and its Yam-based chemicals ended up in pills that carried other companies’ names. By 1967 more than 12.5 million women worldwide were using the Pill, and by 1970 seven American companies were making it.

Wags have suggested that the Wild Yam, the humble plant that grows along the GAP, was responsible for the Sexual Revolution that began in the late 1960s. This may be an exaggeration, but it remains a fact that the Wild Yam deserves credit as the unlikely root ingredient that made cheap, effective birth control pills possible. Aging GAPers who lived through the beginning of the Sexual Revolution—assuming they have good memories of it—may want to give the Wild Yam a nod of appreciation if they do happen to stumble upon it.

Wild Yam

Friday, October 23, 2026

Don Croner’s Wanders on the Great Allegheny Passage Bike Trail | GAP Towns | Meyersdale

Western Maryland Railway Station Visitors’ Center and Museum, now a de rigueur pitstop for GAPers (click on photos for enlargements)

The first sight in Meyersdale is the spick-and-span train station. The station was built for the Western Maryland Railway and completed in 1911. To get permission to build the railroad through town, the railroad company had promised it would build in Meyersdale “the finest station between Cumberland and Connellsville.” After the Western Maryland Railway shut down the line in 1975, the unused station was abandoned and soon fell into a state of near ruin. In 1993, as plans for the GAP were heating up, a group of local citizens formed the Western Maryland Railway Station Committee and began making plans to restore the station. This committee eventually became the Meyersdale Area Historical Society. The Society now oversees the Western Maryland Railway Station Visitors’ Center and Museum, the new name for the station. The station has a wide selection of GAP gear (t-shirts, etc.), local products (maple syrup, of course), numerous exhibits, and a miniature railroad layout that will leave the model railroad community swooning.

Just a small part of the elaborate model railroad display at the train station

It also keeps a detailed guest log. In 2024 the station was visited by GAPers from forty-nine states (Wyoming was the lone holdout) and thirty-three countries, including India, China, Taiwan, Iran, North Macedonia (perhaps my favorite country in Europe), Romania, Ecuador, Peru, Paraguay, and Kenya.

Directly across from the train station and only thirty-five feet from the GAP is the Inn on Main, an upscale bed and breakfast catering to GAPers. This is the ideal place to stay if you don’t want to be faced with the prospect of pedaling back up the steep hill from downtown Meyersdale (a 130-foot vertical climb from the corner of Meyers Avenue and Grant Street). The Inn’s motto, according to its website, is “Save your legs and stay on top of the hill. Conveniently located steps from the Great Allegheny Passage Trail.” The Inn has four rooms that go for about 150 bucks a night.

Inn on Main, within spitting distance of the GAP.

Main Street proceeds down the steep hill from here, across the still-active tracks of the CSX Railroad. The Amtrak passenger train the Capitol Limited from Washington, D.C., to Chicago also goes this way (being a Limited, it doesn’t bother to stop in Meyersdale), although since November 2024 it has been temporarily folded into the Floridian, which runs from Chicago to Miami via Washington. Just across the tracks on Cherry Street to the left, a block off Main, is the Levi Deal Mansion Bed and Breakfast, a very upscale establishment favored by affluent GAPers. As we have seen, the mansion was built in 1900 by local tycoon Levi Deal, the great-grandson of Peter Deal, who first developed the area around the Deal Crossroads on the GAP. It has four rooms priced from $189 to $209 a night.

Levi Deal Mansion Bed and Breakfast, the self-proclaimed “Gem of the GAP”

Further down Main Street on the left is the old Methodist Church, now the Cornerstone Apostolic Church. According to its website:

We believe the Bible is the infallible and authoritative Word of God (II Timothy 3:16; Ephesians 3:5; II Peter 3:2) . . . We believe that when a person receives the baptism of the Holy Spirit, that person will speak with other tongues under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. (Acts 2:4; Acts 19:6; Isaiah 28:11) . . . We believe that the church will be raptured by Christ and will be with Him forever in eternity. (1 Thessalonians 4:15-18; 1 Corinthians 15: 51-52; 1 Thessalonians 1:10)

If you ride by the church on a Sunday morning and hear a preacher shouting at the top of his lungs and the congregation screaming, crying, and moaning, do not be alarmed. It’s just people getting into that old-time religion.

Cornerstone Apostolic Church

Just across the street from the church is a large white two-story building. Now abandoned. It was once the Hazel McGilvery Hospital. It was here that I was born on Sunday, March 27, 19 – –. My mother distinctly remembered that I emerged into this Vale of Tears just as the Sunday morning bells were ringing at the Methodist church across the street, which would have been around 9:30 a.m. I was just one of the 225 babies born in the hospital that year.

Hazel McGilvery Hospital

Just before the intersection of Main Street and Grant Street is the G.I. Dayroom Coffee Shop (5:00 a.m.–2:30 p.m. with all-day breakfast and a daily lunch special) and next to it the Corner Cup with all the usual specialty coffees (expect nothing but regular perked coffee at the Dayroom; they are generous with refills, however). Right across the street is a small park with four charging stations for electric bikes. I turn right on Grant Street and after .18 of a mile turn left on Broadway. A few hundred yards further on, Broadway crosses the Casselman River just below its confluence with Flaugherty Creek, which GAPers coming from Cumberland will have already crossed ten times since the Continental Divide. The GAP continues through the valley of the Casselman River thirty-one miles to its confluence with the Youghiogheny at the GAP town of Confluence (Turkeyfoot).

Confluence of Flaugherty Creek (left) and the Casselman River

As we have seen, Flaugherty Creek, known first as Wolf Creek or Wolf Run, was named after an early arrival in the area around the confluence of the Casselman River and the creek that now bears his name. One account maintains that he did not settle here but soon moved on: “With the coming of the home seekers these hunters [Flaugherty and Jacob Casselman; see below] followed the vanishing herds of deer and elk into the blaze of the setting sun, leaving us to wonder.” According to another account, however, he did stick around:

The first manufacture of whiskey in what is now the borough of Meyersdale was by an Irishman by the name of Flaugherty . . . Flaugherty was a popular man in his time, and creek named after him has some of the same characteristics of the effects of his brew—it frequently gets on high, gets as full as it will hold and then follows seasons of depression. At all events this is how Flaugherty Creek got its name.

Flaugherty Creek flowing through Meyersdale. The retaining walls were built after Hurricane Hazel flooded the town on Oct 16, 1954, resulting in two deaths. Peter Meyers, for whom the town is named, drowned while crossing the creek near here.

The still was reportedly located somewhere along what is now Keystone Street, which runs over a mile and a half from downtown Meyersdale to Glade City. The site of the still may have been later occupied by the Stahl Distillery and still later by the Buhl and Gatesman Distillery, now long out of business. Although the production of craft whiskeys has become a thing in Somerset County (there’s the Tall Pines Distillery in Salisbury, six miles south of Meyersdale), none is currently produced in Meyersdale (except perhaps for moonshine).

For more see:

Wanders on the Great Allegheny Passage (GAP): Frostburg to Garrett Including the GAP Town of Meyersdale and a Preview of the 9-11 Memorial Trail

from Garret to Berlin

Thursday, October 15, 2026

Don Croner’s Wanders on the Great Allegheny Passage Bike Trail | Flora | Asters

Asters are one of the signature plants of Autumn along the GAP. Although not as conspicuous and flamboyantly showy as the Goldenrods, attentive GAPers will notice them everywhere. A few may bloom in late August but they peak in mid-September, around the time of the Autumn Equinox, and some continue to bloom well into October, persisting even after the first hard frosts. The name comes from Greek astēr, “star,” referring to the radiating flower head. It must first be noted that “Asters” is an umbrella term that includes a number of different genera that were once placed in the single genus Aster, which included such European species as Aster amellus. Starting in the 1990s, studies of morphology, chromosome numbers, and DNA sequences demonstrated that the old broad term Aster bundled together branches of the evolutionary tree that did not descend from one exclusive common ancestor. Once the evidence was evaluated, most North American Asters proved to be more closely related to North American members of the Astereae tribe—such as Goldenrods (Solidago) and Fleabanes (Erigeron)—than to the Eurasian species that remain in the narrower, true genus Aster.

An estimated twenty-four plants going by the name Aster belonging to at least four different genera (Symphyotrichum, Eurybia, Oclemena, and Doellingeria) grow in southwestern Pennsylvania. Ten are commonly seen along the GAP (note that most Asters go by numerous names; only the most common are given here):

Azure or Skyblue Aster (Symphyotrichum oolentangiense)
Big Leaf Aster or Bigleaf Wood Aster (Eurybia macrophylla)
Blue Wood Aster or Heart-leaved Aster (Symphyotrichum cordifolium)
Shining or Glossy-leaf Aster (Symphyotrichum firmum)
Mountain Aster or Whorled Wood Aster (Oclemena acuminata)
New England Aster or Michaelmas Daisy (Symphyotrichum novae-angliae)
Purple-stemmed Aster or Swamp Aster (Symphyotrichum puniceum)
Flat-topped Aster or Appalachian Aster (Doellingeria infirma)
Calico Aster (Symphyotrichum lateriflorum)
Frost Leaf or Awl Aster (Symphyotrichum pilosum)

Azure or Skyblue Aster (Symphyotrichum oolentangiense). Pale sky-blue to lavender flower rays surrounding a yellow disk that may become reddish-brown with age. Flowers about ¾ in. (½⁠–⁠1¼) in diameter; 10⁠–⁠25 rays per head.

Azure or Skyblue Aster

Calico Aster (Symphyotrichum lateriflorum). Small white, occasionally pinkish flowers displayed predominantly along one side of long spreading branches; disks show yellow and purple-red simultaneously—the “calico” effect. Flowers average about ⅜ in. (⅓⁠–⁠½) in diameter; 8⁠–⁠15 rays per head.

Calico Aster

Big Leaf Aster or Bigleaf Wood Aster (Eurybia macrophylla). Large sharply toothed heart-shaped leaves; pale violet flowers in broad, rather flat clusters; yellow disks turn reddish. Flowers about 1 in. (½⁠–⁠1¼, up to 1½) in diameter; 8⁠–⁠20 rays per head.

Big Leaf Aster or Bigleaf Wood Aster

Purple-stemmed Aster or Swamp Aster (Symphyotrichum puniceum). Stout, often conspicuously purple stems; clusters of lavender to violet-blue flower heads with yellow centers that turn reddish-purple as they age. Flowers about 1¼ in. (1⁠–⁠1½, up to 2) in diameter; 20⁠–⁠60 rays per head.

Purple-stemmed Aster or Swamp Aster

Blue Wood or Heart-leaved Aster (Symphyotrichum cordifolium). Broad, toothed, heart-shaped leaves and dense, domed clusters of pale blue to lavender flowers. Flowers about ⅝ in. (½⁠–⁠¾) in diameter; 7⁠–⁠20 rays per head.

Blue Wood or Heart-leaved Aster

Mountain Aster or Whorled Wood Aster (Oclemena acuminata). Somewhat zigzag stems, coarsely toothed, pointed leaves that appear whorled, and loose clusters of white flower heads with yellow to reddish centers. Flowers about 1¼ in. (1⁠–⁠1½, up to 2) in diameter; 9⁠–⁠18 rays per head.

Mountain Aster or Whorled Wood Aster

Shining or Glossy-leaf Aster (Symphyotrichum firmum). Leafy clusters of pale lavender to nearly white flower heads with yellow centers that age to reddish-purple. Flowers average about 1 in. (⅝⁠–⁠1½) in diameter; 20⁠–⁠40 rays per head.

Shining or Glossy-leaf Aster

New England Aster or Michaelmas Daisy (Symphyotrichum novae-angliae). The name “Michaelmas Daisy” refers to the plant’s flowering around Michaelmas, the feast of St. Michael on September 29. “Daisy” is a misnomer. Large showy purple to violet flowers, many rays, very leafy and hairy stems, and clasping leaves. Flowers about 1¼ in. (1⁠–⁠1½) in diameter; 40⁠–⁠100 rays per head.

New England Aster or Michaelmas Daisy

Flat-topped Aster or Appalachian Aster (Doellingeria infirma). Somewhat zigzag stems, alternate leaves with toothless margins; loose, flat-topped clusters of white flower heads with pale yellow centers. One of the first Asters to appear, sometimes as early as mid-August; flowering usually over by mid-September. Flowers about 1 in. (to 1¼) in diameter; 5⁠–⁠9 rays per head.

Flat-topped Aster or Appalachian Aster

Frost Leaf or Awl Aster (Symphyotrichum pilosum). Many small white heads, yellow disks. Flowers average about ⅝ in. (½⁠–⁠¾) in diameter; 15⁠–⁠35 rays per head.

Frost Leaf or Awl Aster

Several Asters have recorded uses in Native American medicine, although details are scant. The Iroquois used the root of Big Leaf Aster as a “blood medicine”—it is not quite clear how—and the Ojibwe bathed their heads in an infusion of the young roots to alleviate headaches. Blue Wood or Heart-leaved Aster were also used as a nerve tonic or sedative to reduce stress or tension. The Cherokee used root poultices of New England Aster for pain, root infusions for diarrhea, and infusions of the plant for fever. The Woodland Cree applied the chewed root of Purple-stemmed or Swamp Aster to aching teeth, and the Meskwaki used the entire plant of Calico Aster to make smoke or steam in sweat baths. Apart from medicinal uses, the Ojibwe burned the root of Blue Wood or Heart-leaved Aster as an incense that was believed to attract deer within bowshot range, and they also smoked the roots of New England Aster in pipes as a charm to attract game. The ethnobotanical record is mainly silent on other Asters

Only the New England Aster appears to be used in contemporary herbalism. Herbalists describe it as relaxing and decongesting, using it for chest tightness, congestion, coughs, colds, and sometimes seasonal-allergy or asthma symptoms. The fresh flowering tops are commonly made into a tincture; a hot tea is also traditionally used during colds. Some herbalists additionally use it as a carminative for gas and bloating. These uses come primarily from herbalist practice and tradition, not strong clinical research.

Asters are now best appreciated for providing some splashes of white, blue, purple, and violet to the sometimes drab autumnal landscape and for bringing down the curtain on the flora season along the GAP. They may be the last plants seen in bloom, still flowering after even Goldenrods have given up the ghost, and thus should warm the cockles of even the most jaded of GAPer hearts.