Some of Georgia’s most biologically rich havens for native wildflowers and other plants are where you might least expect them — on roadsides and in rain-filled ditches along the roads.
Often overlooked spaces, roadsides and ditches can harbor a surprising variety of flora and play important ecological roles.
As such, roadsides offer something else: the opportunity for “roadside botanizing.”
That, in fact, was what drew several of us Georgia Botanical Society members last weekend to several rural roadsides in the vicinity of the Okefenokee Swamp deep in southeast Georgia.
We found a large variety of striking summer wildflowers in full bloom in the sunny expanses and ditches along the highways. One plant was the night-flowering wild petunia, one of Georgia’s rarest and strangest wildflowers.
“You know the flowers must be good (for us) to go out in the July heat,” said our leader, Rich Reaves.
Reaves, a field botanist, has led numerous roadside botanizing adventures all over Georgia. The technique is simple: Safely pull off alongside a highway to look at the plants growing there. (These are naturally occurring plants, unlike those planted by workers for highway beautification projects.)
During our two-day trek, we carpooled in a small caravan and followed Reaves and his wife, Anita, to several roadside stops in Brantley, Ware and Charlton counties. We used extra caution to safely park along the roads. On the roadsides, we saw and photographed two species of carnivorous pitcher plants, sunflowers, milkweeds, marsh pinks, meadow beauties, spiderworts, loblolly bays, bog cheetos, hatpins and many other summer wildflowers. Large, resplendent patches of rose gentians and Barbara’s buttons along some roads were breathtaking.
On our second day, we were up early to see the night-flowering wild petunia in a roadside spot that’s one of few places where it’s found in Georgia. Making the flower so unusual is that it fully blooms for one night only. It is pollinated at night by hawk moths. A few hours after daybreak, its large, single white flower shrivels and falls off.
IN THE SKY: From David Dundee, retired Tellus Science Museum astronomer: The moon will be new on Thursday, July 24. Mercury and Mars are low in the west just after dark. Venus is in the east a few hours before sunrise. Saturn rises in the east around midnight.
Charles Seabrook can be reached at charles.seabrook@yahoo.com.
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