May is bloom time for one of Georgia's most strikingly beautiful wildflowers, the rare shoals spider lily. Growing in dense colonies, the spider lily's large, white flowers, sitting atop 3-foot stems, are breathtaking.
Making the flowers even more stunning is the natural habitat in which they live. Shoals spider lilies require sunny spots in rocky, shallow, swift-current sections — shoal areas — of fast-flowing rivers and streams. There, they develop from bulbs rooted in cracks of shoal rocks.
I had heard about the legendary population of spider lilies inhabiting Flat Shoals Creek, a pristine tributary of the Chattahoochee River in Harris County. So, last weekend, when property owner Stephen Johnson invited folks to come see the flowers from his trail along the creek, I headed there.
I was not disappointed. At several spots along the creek, in plain view among the rocks and swirling water, were sprawling clusters of blooming spider lilies as far as the eye could see. Such a glorious sight truly took my breath away.
It's another prime reminder that, despite Georgia's rampant development and land clearing, numerous little-known natural places of amazing beauty — untouched by chain saw or bulldozer — still exist in the state.
The famed naturalist-explorer William Bartram made the first recorded observation of the shoals spider lily (Hymenocallis coronaria) in 1773, when he found it growing in the Savannah River at the "cataracts of Augusta." The fragrant flower, he wrote, "almost alone possesses the little rocky islets."
Over the decades, however, entire populations of shoals spider lilies have been wiped out by rising water from dams and by siltation from development that chokes life out of streams. In Georgia, the plant is found in only five streams and is under state protection.
The colonies on Flat Shoals Creek make up one of the largest populations of shoals spider lilies anywhere. The colonies are on a quarter-mile stretch of the creek running through Johnson's 323-acre property. A retired high school science teacher from West Point, Johnson has placed a conservation easement on the land so that it can never be developed. Upon his death, it will become property of the Nature Conservancy of Georgia, which considered the tract a top conservation priority.
Nevertheless, new development near Johnson's property threatens the Flat Shoals Creek spider lilies. Johnson already has found signs of siltation in his section of the creek.
"It's a serious threat to the spider lilies," he said.
His property is open this weekend for the public to see the flowers. The address: 4725 Ga. 103, West Point. Watch for a small white "open house" sign at the gravel-road entrance. Parking is limited.
In the sky
The moon will be new on Sunday, says David Dundee, astronomer with Tellus Northwest Georgia Science Museum.
By Thursday, look for the thin crescent moon low in the west just after sunset. Mars and brightly shining Venus are low in the eastern predawn sky. Jupiter rises out of the east at midnight. Saturn rises out of the east before sunset.
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