Summer is a great season for Georgia’s wildflowers and plant life in northeast Georgia. And many can be found in the cooler parts of the mountains, providing a pleasant escape to the midsummer heat. Now there’s a new book called 35 Natural Wonders Of Georgia to See Before You Die that can help narrow your search.
Co-authored by Ann Litrel and Charles Seabrook, this beautifully crafted guide to incredible places to visit in Georgia features beautiful wildflowers and unusual plants and nearly three dozen choices of where to begin your discoveries.
Litrel, a Certified Master Naturalist, is a nationally published artist whose paintings of botanical and wildlife subjects have appeared on print, books, stationery and textiles. As a writer and illustrator she has collaborated on three books and has been a monthly columnist for a range of publications on topics of art ecology community and history.
Seabrook retired from the Atlanta Journal & Constitution in 2005 after 34 years as a science environmental writer. He continues to write a regular column, while in Georgia, for the AJC Saturday living section. He has also authored three books about environmental and nature issues in the state.
35 Natural Wonders In Georgia To See Before You Die is more than a wildlife and nature guidebook. It is a collection of stories and outstanding illustrations of some lesser-known sites in Georgia well worth visiting for their flora, fauna and distinctive geological and environmental features.
Poppies and Bluebells
Wild Geranium and Liverwort
In the book, Litrel and Seabrook have captured their impressions of the sites profiled. Litrel’s watercolors and black-and-white sketches are colorful and engaging and includes a number of studies of individual types of wildflowers and geological sites. Seabrook has deftly brought these Georgia wonders to life through inviting prose and interesting back stories of these parks, prairies and wetlands.
Here are some examples of wildflowers and beautiful nature scenes that you can see in multiple locations referenced in the book. Some are easier to visit than others but each is worth a trip.
Yellow daisies, known as Stone Mountain daisies or Confederate daisies, are present on all three of Georgia’s most famous trio of monadnocks – Stone Mountain, Arabia Mountain and Panola Mountain.
Their distinctive color and daisy shape signal the beginning of fall.
Longleaf pine, once was by far the most common tree in South Georgia, has been reduced to about three percent of its original population. The Wade Tract near Thomasville is one of few places to find old-age longleaf pine forests that resemble what DeSoto would have seen when he arrived here more than 400 years ago. Some longleaf pines still remain at Pine Mountain and several other scattered areas in the coastal plain and Piedmont.
Yellow celandine poppies and Virginia bluebells are found in several sites in north Georgia, including the Shirley Miller Wildflower Trail on Pigeon Mountain.
“The colorful blue bells mixed in with the yellow poppies are quite impressive,” Litrel said.
Twenty-two species of trillium grow in Georgia, the most of any state. You can find colonies of trillium in abundance from places like Sosebee Cove in northeast Georgia, to the shores of the Savannah and Chattahoochee rivers in south Georgia, home of the endangered relict trillium.
Another beautiful combination is the protected purple Georgia aster that grows alongside wild goldenrod in the Oaky Woods Blackland prairie; the yellow prairie coneflower blooms in abundance there in summer.
These are just a few of the examples of the wonder and beauty that lies across the state of Georgia.
For more information or to purchase 35 Natural Wonders Of Georgia To See Before You Die, visit www.ugapress.org and search for the book’s name.
Watercolor art by: Ann Litrel
