Georgia's botany has as much variety as its geology (presented at great length elsewhere in this site.) With elevations ranging from sea level to near 4,800 feet, Georgia's botanical environments range from subtropical coastal marsh to near-alpine forests. Soils, too, vary: northwest Georgia has alkaline clays; the Blue Ridge and Piedmont have acidic clayey soils, rich with humus in northeast forests, leached of nutrients where exposed; the Coastal Plain has deep sandy soils; isolated granitic and mafic outcrops have their special conditions. [Why am I writing this? Rachel knows this subject much better than I!]
We have landscaped our yard largely with native plants, with plenty of help from George Sanko and the DeKalb Botanical Garden. (Maybe "landscaped" gives us too much credit; "overplanted" may be closer to truth.) Natives generally may be less showy than common landscape plants, but they tolerate our soils and climate well. Our yard is full of trees now, with no grass to cut. We know that we have a garage, but in summer we can't see it!
Georgia Perimeter College Botanical Garden, at the South Campus of Georgia Perimeter College (formerly DeKalb Community College) in Atlanta, operates propagation greenhouses and a public botanical garden featuring plants native to Georgia and the Southeast. Run by the infamous George Sanko, GPCBG also offers evening and weekend classes on identifying and propagating native plants.
University of Georgia has nationally- (maybe internationally- ) recognized botany and horticulture programs. Located in Athens, UGA offers undergraduate and graduate education in may natural sciences. Not surprisingly, the Georgia Botanical Garden is also in Athens.
Atlanta Botanical Garden in Atlanta's Piedmont Park has meeting rooms, the Fuqua Conservatory, and a variety of outdoor gardens set against Atlanta's skyline. They charge admission, but it's not outrageous.
Georgia Botanical Society leads field trips almost every weekend to sites of botanical interest in Georgia and adjacent states. They're a friendly group. To join, you don't need to be a botanist or a little old lady in tennis shoes; however, both are welcome.
Southern Magnolia (Magnolia grandiflora) is symbolic of the south, as much as live oak, wisteria, mint, and kudzu. Who could imagine Scarlett O'Hara at Tara without magnolias? The Magnolia family is primitive among flowering trees; fossil leaves of a tree resembling tulip poplar (Liriodendron tulipifera) -- another Magnolia family member, not a true poplar -- have been found in Cretaceous deposits. M. grandiflora is primitive among magnolias. When you inhale a magnolia blossom's pungent lemony scent, imagine that dinosaurs enjoyed it too, if they could appreciate such things. When you picture a Cretaceous landscape, visualize -- right there, next to T. rex -- a magnolia.
Many Southerners regard Kudzu (Pueraria lobata) as a botanic curse, a green plague that menaces cultivated order with rangy rapacious growth. Others perversely love its unrestraint. Like many pest species (e.g. privet, water hyacinth, honeysuckle, wisteria), Kudzu was deliberately introduced and was once valued for its invasive habit. Now unconfined, it festoons trees, houses, and utility poles with vagrant tendrils. Fortunately, it doesn't like winter. God help Eastern North America if some fool breeds cold-hardy Kudzu. Use of Kudzu in wartime is banned by the Geneva convention; otherwise, we might have used the Kudzu Bomb on Iraq.
For more information on The Vine that Ate the South (Know your enemy!), see:
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