My friend Clayton Webster, the “trail boss” for a hiking group at Oak Grove United Methodist Church in Decatur, always sends me glowing reports of his group’s treks into Georgia’s wilds.
Last week’s report was especially intriguing. Clayton and his group had just hiked a trail near Mulky Gap in the Cooper’s Creek Wildlife Management Area that lies in the Chattahoochee National Forest near Blairsville in Union County.
“We saw the greatest patch of pink lady’s slippers that any of us have ever seen,” Clayton said. “We saw hundreds, if not thousands, of pink lady’s slippers in bloom. As far up the mountainside as we could see were the pink beauties. Usually we feel very fortunate to see a group of three or four on one of our hikes. The sight we saw here was just overwhelming.”
As Clayton’s reports usually do, this one left me regretful that I didn’t go on the hike. But I had to see this sight for myself, so late last week I followed Clayton’s directions to the location.
He was not exaggerating. I was dazzled by pink. Coming across a pink lady’s slipper in the forest can be breathtaking, but thousands of them in one place can be awe-inspiring.
The pink lady’s slipper, named for its bloom’s unusual shape, is a showy, 6- to 15-inch-tall wildflower belonging to the orchid family. Its large, magenta to whitish-pink flower sits atop an erect stalk. The flower, which blooms May through July, requires bees for pollination.
The pink lady’s slipper, also known as moccasin flower, is listed as one of Georgia’s 103 protected plants, mostly because it takes many years to grow from seed to mature plant, which can then live for 20 years or more. It prefers mostly mixed hardwood coniferous forests of pine and hemlock on rocky or mossy slopes.
But, to survive, the lady’s slipper must form a symbiotic relationship with a mycorrhizal soil fungus. The plant needs the thread-like fungus to break open its seeds and germinate.
In the sky: From David Dundee, Tellus Science Museum astronomer: The moon will be full Saturday night — the "Planting Moon," as the Cherokee peoples called May's full moon. The only visible planets now are Mars, rising in the east at sunset; Jupiter, high in the southwest at dusk; and Saturn, high in the east just after dark.
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