Hike Local: Stone Mountain Park

 

Winter hikes can be useful for kids during the winter break so we took our 5-year old grandson to hike the walk-up trail at Stone Mountain this week during his school break. He was interested in all the rocks (examining small bits of it for minerals), but I was interested to see what plants I could recognize so this blog is about what I found on what is called the walk-up trail that goes to the top of the mountain.

Winter can be a challenge for identifying plants that have gone dormant. However, many of them leave clues behind (dried leaves, distinctive twigs, even a few tardy leaves, plus fruit and seeds) and I found enough clues to keep me busy (and lagging behind while the youngster raced ahead with my husband).

Quercus georgiana

Quercus georgiana

The first plant that caught my attention was Georgia oak (Quercus georgiana). This lower-growing species of oak is endemic to granite outcrops. Most of the plants were still holding onto dried leaves but I found a couple that still had good green-red leaves. Next I spotted the first of what would be many populations of sparkleberry (Vaccinium arboreum). Many of them still had a few reddish leaves and had fruit on the branches. Apologies for the blur; those little berries make it tough for the camera to focus.

Sparkleberry (Vaccinium arboreum)

Winged elm (Ulmus alata)

Winged elm (Ulmus alata) is common there but this particular individual really caught my attention; these wings are huge! At first I thought it might be a sweet gum, which also has winged twigs, but the very slender twigs encased in these wings were a clue it was the elm. Many plants are off to the edges of the trail where plants have created small woodland communities in the cracks of the rocks in soil created over time by plant debris. I spotted this small fern several times there; I think it is a marginal fern (Dryopteris marginalis) which is reported to be in the park and can be somewhat evergreen.

Fern with native goldenrod (left) and grass (below)

Pines are all around the trail (there’s even a huge one in the middle, sharing a large crack with an oak tree). Four species are reported in the park: loblolly pine (Pinus taeda), shortleaf pine (Pinus echinata), Virginia pine (Pinus virginiana), and pitch pine (Pinus rigida). This tree at the top of the mountain was quite stunted; it is probably Virginia pine or shortleaf.

Here are a couple of photos to show perspective: the youngster running up the trail and the view from the top with protected lichens (behind the fence) with a view of Atlanta in the background.

Note: For a good reference book for plants found in association with granite outcrops, see the book “Guide to the Plants of Granite Outcrops” by William Murdy and Eloise Carter.

Hike Local posts are an occasional feature in this blog (find the previous ones here) about hikes that are fairly local to the metro Atlanta area. My focus is on the plants that I found along the way.

Graffiti dating to at least 1899 is visible on the walk-up trail. I wonder if this one was meant to illustrate the Georgia oak. Do those look like acorns on the tips of branches to you?