page_title: Pettigrew State Park
section_title: Plant life
hierarchical_section_title: Pettigrew State Park / Ecology / Plant life
caption_attribution_description: Chamaecyparis thyoides (L.) B.S.P. Atlantic White Cypress.
context_page_description: Pettigrew State Park is a North Carolina State Park in Tyrrell and Washington Counties, North Carolina in the United States. It covers 5,951 acres around the shore lines of Lake Phelps and the Scuppernong River. The park's developed facilities are south of U.S. Route 64 near Roper and Creswell, North Carolina. Pettigrew State Park is open for year-round recreation, including hiking, camping, fishing, boating and picnicking.
  Pettigrew State Park is named for Confederate General J. Johnston Pettigrew, who lived in a nearby home. It surrounds Somerset Place, a North Carolina state historic site that includes a restored 1830s plantation house and outbuildings that can be toured, including reconstructed slave quarters.
  Pettigrew State Park was established during the Great Depression after the land was leased from the Farm Security Administration, a New Deal program of U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
  Part of Pettigrew State Park surrounds Lake Phelps, one of the oldest lakes in the eastern United States and a former hunting and fishing ground for the Algonquian peoples.
context_section_description: Pettigrew State Park is home to one of the last stands of old-growth forest in eastern North Carolina. A forest of bay trees, sweetgum, pawpaw, persimmon, bald cypress and poplar are found on the northern shore of Lake Phelps. The cypress have a trunk diameter of up to ten feet (3 m) and the poplar have a trunk diameter of six feet (2 m). There are vines that are as wide as an average man's leg and grow up the trees in excess of 130 feet (40 m). In the section of the park along the Scuppernong River, the Atlantic white cedar and other rare cedar trees have grown to rather large sizes. Several of the trees at Pettigrew State Park are listed on the North Carolina and National Registries of Big Trees.
  Wildflowers are found throughout Pettigrew State Park. Atamasco lily, periwinkle, buttercup, Jack-in-the-pulpit, maypops, and jewelweed are sometimes found on the banks and in the shallows of Lake Phelps. The Scuppernong River provides a habitat for swamp dogwood, evening primrose, blue flag iris and cardinal flowers. The roughleaf dogwood is also found near the river. This particular dogwood is rare in North Carolina and the type along the Scuppernong is rarer still.
caption: The Atlantic white cedar is an evergreen found at Pettigrew State Park.
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