I was in my pickup truck last weekend, part of a seven-car motorcade crawling along a gravel road in the Chattahoochee National Forest in Lumpkin County to do some “roadside botanizing.” Suddenly, the cars in front of me slammed on the brakes.
Then, I heard people shout, “Yellow lady’s slippers.”
Indeed, my friend Teresa Ware of Rome, riding with husband Richard near the front of the procession, had spied a patch of rare yellow lady’s slippers amid the lush green foliage on a slope some 20 feet off the road.
“I beat on the dashboard and yelled at Richard to ‘stop, stop, stop,’” Teresa said.
It triggered a mini-avalanche of us wildflower lovers as we quickly exited our vehicles and slipped and slid down the slope to get a closer look and take photos of the beautiful flowers.
That was just some of the excitement last weekend during the annual Wildflower Pilgrimage organized by the Georgia Botanical Society (gabotsoc.org). The three-day gathering of wildflower enthusiasts, held each year in a different part of the state, celebrates the superb beauty and diversity of spring in Georgia. Several field trips take participants into surrounding areas to see firsthand the local botanical treasures.
This year’s pilgrimage was based in Dahlonega, gateway to Georgia’s central mountains.
From there, field trips fanned out to wild places — some reaching 4,000 feet in altitude — familiar to hikers and botanists within the Chattahoochee National Forest: Woody Gap, Lake Winfield Scott, Jarrard Gap, Sosebee Cove, Dawson Forest and Raven Cliff Falls.
Folks on the Woody Gap trip had excitement of their own. In some steep terrain near Suches they unexpectedly found a large patch of bright red, stunningly beautiful Indian paintbrush, also a rare plant in Georgia. Only a few populations exist in the state.
“We were hugging and holding on to the side of the mountain to get close to the (flower),” said Kathleen Casses of Fairburn.
Another notable encounter was a huge colony of wild lilies-of-the valley, many sporting white blooms, near Springer Mountain.
In the sky: From David Dundee, Tellus Science Museum astronomer: The moon will be new Sunday night. Mercury will be low in the west at dusk and sets an hour later; it will appear near the moon Tuesday night. Venus will be visible in the west at dusk and sets three hours later; it will appear near the moon Thursday night. Jupiter will be high in the west just after dark and sets just before midnight. Saturn rises out of the east just after dark.
