North Carolina uses wildflowers to reduce driver fatigue and save lives along major highways.

Photo © 2004 by Helena Merrill

A large patch of sweet williams
lines I-95 in North Carolina.

North Carolina sits on the southeastern coast of the United States. Most of the year it's warm and humid. As you drive along the freeways, tall pines and junipers, tangled with vines, form walls of solid green along both sides of the road. Workers keep the vegetation trimmed well back from the road so that you feel you're driving through a well-kept garden.

Photo © 2004 by Helena Merrill

Dames rockets mingle with red
and gold California poppies.

But as beautiful as it is, the verdant landscape can also be deadly. After a while, it may lull you into a sense of serene security and then into fatal slumber behind the wheel.

One way to counteract the hypnotic effect of the scenery is to break it up. To do that, the North Carolina Division of Motor Vehicles created beds of wildflowers that stretch intermittently for hundreds of feet along one side or the other of the road. They've varied the colors and varieties so that sometimes you'll see a bed of solid red California poppies or magenta dames rockets. Other times, you'll come across a field of white daisies, golden coreopsis. or yellow day lilies.

Photo © 2004 by Helena Merrill

Golden coreopsis fields line
some of the median strips.

The splotches of color, mingled with the natural green forests and well maintained roads, make driving a stunningly attractive experience while reducing the hazards of a long trip.

Photo © 2004 by Ben J. Merrill

The red poppies grab your eye;
you can't not look at them.

Photo © 2004 by Ben J. Merrill

These golden poppies actually
keep you from sleeping.