Each year in early March, I begin making the rounds of nature preserves, parks, gardens and other green spaces to see if any spring wildflowers are blooming or getting ready to bloom. It’s my surefire way of shaking off the winter doldrums and rejoicing in a new spring.
But my ultimate destination for early spring wildflowers is the place that I’ll be visiting this weekend — the “Pocket” on Pigeon Mountain in North Georgia’s Walker County (not to be confused with the Pocket Recreation Area near John’s Mountain, also in Walker County).
Botanists laud the superb beauty and diversity of Pigeon Mountain’s Pocket. “Many people consider it to be the best wildflower walk in Georgia from mid-March to mid-April,” say Hugh and Carol Nourse in their book, “Favorite Wildflower Walks in Georgia.”
My botanist friend Richard Ware of Rome, a former Georgia Botanical Society president, says that “a few other sites come close, but none pack such a great diversity of plant species in such a compact area.”
What makes the Pocket such a botanically splendid habitat is an ideal combination of geology, microclimate and water. Geologically, the Pocket is a narrow valley — a miniature gorge — bordered by steep slopes and limestone cliffs.
Like me, throngs of visitors go there this time of year to see luxuriant growths of “spring ephemerals” and other early spring wildflowers — spring beauty; trout lily; celandine poppy; foamflower; rue anemone; Virginia bluebells; blue cohosh; Dutchman’s breeches; wild geranium; several trillium species; several violet species; fernleaf phacelia; bloodroot; sharp-lobed hepatica; Jack-in-the-pulpit; and many others.
I expect to see all of these and more when I visit this weekend. I’ll see them from the Shirley Miller Wildflower Trail — named in honor of Georgia’s former first lady — that runs nearly half a mile through the gorge. The trail’s first 800 feet is a wooden, wheelchair-accommodating boardwalk that takes visitors around the Pocket’s most sensitive areas to protect the wildflowers. The boardwalk then connects to a rugged footpath that ends at a stunning waterfall.
IN THE SKY: From David Dundee, Tellus Science Museum astronomer: The moon will be full on Monday. Mercury is low in the west at dusk. Venus, Mars and Saturn are very low in the east just before sunrise. Jupiter is in the west at sunset.
Charles Seabrook can be reached at charles.seabrook@yahoo.com.
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