Scientific name: Arabis georgiana Harper Common name: Arabis, Georgia Rock-cress Family: Brassicaceae Legal status: Threatened in Georgia Flowering period: April Fruiting period: July Habitat: Shaded riverbanks, rocky bluffs (limestone) Type locality: Stewart County, Georgia; July 18, 1901 Herbarium specimen: Specimen ID: NY 127622/ Holotype at Herbarium of New York Botanical Garden (NY), New York, NY

Arabis georgiana Harper in the Coosa River Valley, Floyd County, Georgia May 16, 2005

Comments: In 1841, the plant was first collected near Columbus, Georgia by Samuel Boykin (1786-1848), a physician and a naturalist from Milledgeville, Georgia. Henry W. Ravenel( 1814-1887), a botanist and plantation owner from South Carolina, collected the specimens of Arabis georgiana Harper, MO 785422, MO 813007 from banks of the Coosa River in Floyd County Georgia, probably during his visit to Rome in July, 1872. Specimens were also collected in Northwest Georgia by Alvan Wentworth Chapman (1809-1899), a physician and botanist from Apalachicola, Florida. None of them recognized those specimens as a new species. In July 1901, Roland McMillan Harper (1878-1966), a Maine-born botanist and naturalist from Alabama and Georgia collected the species in the shady woods on the bank of the Chattahoochee River in Stewart County, Georgia. He recognized that his collection was a new species and he defined it in Torreya, Vol. 3 (1903): 87-88.

Description: "Biennial. Stems erect, 3-5 dm. tall, with few erect branches mostly from the base, terete, purplish-tinged, minutely hirsute below, glabrous or nearly so above: basal leaves oblanceolate, coarsely toothed, 6-8 cm. long, forming a flat rosette; cauline leaves sessile, half-clasping by a cordate or subsagittate base, bright green on both surfaces, the lower surfaces and margins sparsely pubescent with both simple and forked hairs; the lower leaves oblong-lanceolate, coarsely toothed about middle, about 5 cm. long, the upper much reduced and relatively narrower: racemes loose, terminal, becoming 3-4 dm. long in fruit: pedicles ascending ( both in flower and fruit), becoming 1 cm. long at maturity, only the lowest subtended by bracts: sepala equal, ovate, acute, concave, narrowly scarious-margined, very sparsely pubescent with simple and forked hairs towards the tips, 4 mm. long: petals oblanceolate, obtuse, spreading above, 9-10 mm. long by 1.5 mm. wide, pure white: longer stamens 7 mm. long : style 1 mm. long, as thick as the ovary and stigma: pods narrowly linear, flattened, 1.5 mm. wide and 6-7 cm. long at maturity, erect or nearly so, the valves 1-nerved: seeds in a single row, brown, narrowly wing-margined.
This species seems most nearly related to A. patens Sull. and A. hirsuta( L.) Scop. (or its American representative), but differs from both in its longer pods. From the former differs also in the glabrous upper surface of the leaves and upper portion of the stem, and in its erect pods; and from the latter in its larger flowers and evident style."- Ronald McMillan Harper, 1903.

References :
1. Harper, Ronald, M. "A New Arabis from Georgia." Torreya Vol.3., No.5 (May, 1903):88.
2. Data obtained from Ihsan A. Al-Shehbaz, Head, Department of Asian Botany at Missouri Botanical Garden, St. Louis, Missouri, on March 9, 2005.
3. The New York Botanical Garden Vascular Plant Types Catalog: (http://www.nybg.org/bsci/hcol/vasc/ ), New York Botanical Garden, 200th Street and Kazimiroff Boulevard Bronx, NY 10458
4. Image by Zvezdana Ukropina-Crawford

Last updated on November 12, 2007.

List of plants collected by A.W. Chapman in Floyd County, Georgia

Botanical explorations in Floyd County, Georgia