Tracking plants at historic site

By Charles Seabrook

For the AJC

Pickett’s Mill Battlefield Historic Site in Paulding County, northeast of Atlanta, is said to be one of the nation’s best preserved Civil War battlefields. During fierce fighting there on May 27, 1864, more than 1,600 Union soldiers and 500 Confederates were killed.

Enlarge photo

Charles Seabrook, for the AJC Georgia Botanical Society members survey an old field during a plant inventory at Pickett's Mill Battlefield State Historic Site in Paulding County. Left to right, Charles Hunter, Tom Patrick, Scott Ranger and Connie Dhosh.

More Homefinder stories »

• Family gets more space, same district
• Rainy stretch can leave mark on foundations
• Brown pelicans enjoy a revival
• Be thankful for homebuyers’ tax credit
• Bulbs need room to bloom

Today in the park, visitors can travel roads used by troops of both sides, see the earthworks they built and walk through the ravine where hundreds died.

The other day, some of us members of the Georgia Botanical Society were there to perform another mission — an ongoing plant inventory of the 765-acre park.

Where Minié balls once whizzed and men clashed in deadly combat, the now peaceful historic site encompasses many natural habitats — including hardwood forests, stream banks, old fields — that harbor a large diversity of native flora.

The inventory project is a partnership between the botanical society and the state historic site to help the park’s managers learn about and protect the native plants.

Since the project began in 2006, more than 450 species of wild plants have been identified at Pickett’s Mill. One is the Georgia aster, a threatened species. Its beautiful blue flowers were still blooming in the fields when we were doing inventory the other day.

On that survey, we also found two more native species to add to Pickett’s Mill’s inventory list. One was the lesser snakeroot (Ageratina aromatica), which sports white blooms in late summer.

Our leader, Tom Patrick, a Department of Natural Resources botanist, noted that the plant is very similar to the one that killed Abraham Lincoln’s mother — white snakeroot (Ageratina altissima). On Oct. 5, 1818, when young Abe was 9 years old, Nancy Hanks Lincoln died of “milk sickness,” contracted from drinking the milk of a cow that had eaten the poisonous white snakeroot.

Seed gathering: Pickett’s Mill’s old, grassy fields are of special botanical significance — they are carpeted almost entirely in native grasses and sedges, such as Indian grass, big and little bluestems and brown sedge, and other grassland species such as goldenrods.

“You won’t find many old fields like this in Georgia,” Patrick said.

The grasses also are what botanists call “native phenotypes,” meaning that not only are the species native to Georgia, they are direct descendants of the grasses that were here hundreds of years ago.

That’s why several volunteers will be at Pickett’s Mill today to harvest some of the native seeds. The seeds will be sown in other locales in Georgia — part of an effort to restore native grasslands in the state.

In the sky: The Taurid meteor shower, visible most of next week, will reach a peak on Wednesday night of 15 meteors per hour, says David Dundee, an astronomer with Tellus Northwest Georgia Science Museum. Look to the east from about midnight until dawn.

The moon will be last quarter on Monday. Venus shines in the east just before sunrise.

Mars rises out of the east about midnight and will appear near the moon on Sunday night. Jupiter is high in the south at sunset and sets in the west about midnight. Saturn rises out of the east about two hours before sunrise.