With gas prices hovering around $4 per gallon, I decided to skip a hike in the mountains last weekend. Instead, I drove a few miles from my Decatur home to southwest Atlanta, where I joined fellow Georgia Botanical Society members for a walk through the Cascade Springs Nature Preserve on the edge of Utoy Creek.
It was an excellent choice. The 135-acre preserve turned out to be one of the most botanically rich places I’ve ever seen in Georgia. My fellow botanizers apparently felt the same way because I repeatedly heard the words “wow, fantastic, amazing, unbelievable, goodness gracious” as we walked the trail to see the flora.
Altogether, we saw well over 150 native species of ferns, wildflowers, trees and other vascular flora — a mix of mountain and piedmont species growing lush in Cascade Springs’ rich soil. Two of the plants, the bay star-vine and the Jones aster, are on Georgia’s protected plant list.
“It’s hard to believe we’re in the heart of the city,” our co-leader Leslie Edwards said. Only the muffled sound of traffic on nearby Cascade Road reminded us that we were in the heart of a densely populated urban area.
Along the trail, it was not uncommon to find 10 species growing in the space of a square yard. In gorgeous bloom was the Indian pink, its stunning crimson tubular flowers fringed in yellow, making it one of Georgia’s most beautiful wildflowers.
Many of Atlanta’s tallest and biggest trees also grow here. A water oak is 120 feet tall and more than 12 feet around. A huge sourwood is the city’s champion for that species.
The star of Cascade Springs is the big-leaf magnolia tree. Its leaves can be 30 inches long and its big, white flowers can be a foot wide, the largest leaves and flowers of any North American native tree. Looking up from the ground into a big-leaf canopy can be awe-inspiring. We saw dozens of the trees in the preserve, the most any of us had ever seen in one place.
Steve Bowling, our other co-leader, said a reason for the rich plant diversity is that the soil is naturally enriched with calcium, essential for plant growth, cell division, root system development and other functions.
The city of Atlanta purchased the land for Cascade Springs in the 1970s. It protects not only a superb forest and natural beauty, including a waterfall, it also preserves a Civil War battlefield. The Battle of Utoy Creek was fought there in August 1864.
At the turn of the last century, the spring-fed waters were thought to be restorative to one’s health, and an exclusive resort was built here. The spring water was bottled and sold until the 1950s. The ruins of the old bottling plant can still be seen in the preserve.
In the sky: The moon will be last quarter on Tuesday, rising about midnight and setting around midday, said David Dundee, astronomer with Tellus Science Museum. Mercury, Venus, Mars and Jupiter are low in the east about an hour before sunrise. Saturn is high in the east at dark and is visible throughout most of the night.
