Photos provided Blister Swamp is a 50-acre wetlands conservation and restoration project in Pocahontas County.

Blister Swamp now boasts the world’s largest population of the globally rare Van Brunt’s Jacob’s ladder plant.

POCAHONTAS COUNTY — A very special Earth Day celebration was enjoyed by more than 40 people from West Virginia’s conservation community at Blister Swamp, a 50-acre wetlands conservation and restoration project in Pocahontas County owned by Andrea Larrivee of Franklin.

Following a presentation on the globally rare wildflowers found in the swamp by ecologist Elizabeth Byers, volunteers removed the wire cages from the now fully grown balsam fir trees planted some 20 years ago, planted 300 balsam fir seedlings donated by arborist Dave Saville, and fenced in the new seedlings to protect them from browsing deer on both Larrivee’s property and the adjacent U.S. Forest Service land.

Volunteers came from Americorps, Master Gardeners, the Monongahela National Forest, The Nature Conservancy, WV Division of Natural Resources, WV Land Trust, US Fish & Wildlife, WV Highlands Conservancy, and the Kump Education Center.

Protection of the swamp, which now boasts the world’s largest population of the globally rare Van Brunt’s Jacob’s ladder, among others, was initiated by landowners Mary Dalen, John Dalen and Andrea Larrivee of Franklin in the late 1990s, following the rare plant surveys conducted by West Virginia University botany professor Dr. Roy Clarkson in the 1960s through the 1990s.