First look at Panola Mountain

 We went to Panola Mountain to get a pass for the state parks.

In our household, having a pass to the state parks is a kind of civic responsibility, kind of like having a voter registration card and a library card.

Panola Mountain is another monadnock, a granite outcrop in the Piedmont. It’s the southern anchor in a string that begins with Stone Mountain to the north. Arabia Mountain is in between. Like Arabia Mountain, most of the dome of Panola Mountain is underneath the surface. By contrast, the peak of Stone Mountain is 825 above the surrounding woods.

The efforts to preserve the Arabia-Panola mountain area are complicated. Arabian Mountain is a national site, while Panola is a state site. Various organizations have property that are being conserved as natural areas, including the Monastery of the Holy Spirit, which has more than three square miles in a preserve.

The ranger who helped us said there are 38 miles of trail in this network, and more are under construction. The PATH Foundation, which has more than 300 miles of trails in Georgia, is doing wonderful things.

The main idea of this outing was to get our pass and get acclimated. But we took the short trail to see the outcrop. Among the wonders:

• Fire pink, Silene verginica, which is in the pink family, Caryophyllaceae. The flowers are said to be brilliant red. I’ve never seen anything more brilliant, more red. I crawled up a rock ledge to get a look at it. Its color attracts hummingbirds, a principle pollinator.

• Common yucca, Yucca filamentosa, was blooming with bushels of creamy flowers all over the granite. I have to remind myself that it’s a native of the Southeast, not the Southwest. It’s in the Asparagaceae family.  It grows in the poor sandy soils around San Antonio and on the monadnocks of Georgia.

• Eastern smooth beardtongue, Penstemon laevigatus, in the plantain family, Plantaginaceae. This lovely flower grows east of the Mississippi and so is a stranger to me.

• Spiderworts, Genus Tradescantia, in family Commenlinaceae. There are so many species, I’m lost. But the ones I saw were the palest lavender.