ROME, Ga. - Henning von Schmeling says nobody gave him the right to take away a species from the planet.
Von Schmeling, director of operations at the Chattahoochee Nature Center in Atlanta, and four other conservationists were in Rome last week replanting seeds of the Arabis georgiana, better known as Georgia rockcress, at several sites on The Nature Conservancy's Black's Bluff Preserve southwest of Rome.
Malcolm Hodges, a conservation ecologist with The Nature Conservancy, said he had been monitoring the plant at Black's Bluff for about 15 years, since the mid-1990s.
"The only ones we knew of were on the roadside and had a long, slow decline and finally, we think, were wiped out accidentally by road maintenance," Hodges said.
By 2007, the Georgia rockcress, one of 155 state-protected species of flora, had dwindled to just one plant on the Black's Bluff Preserve.
It is found at perhaps two dozen other sites in Georgia and Alabama.
"It got down to about one plant [at Black's Bluff] that was found by somebody from the State Botanical Gardens," von Schmeling said. "She collected the seeds from the one plant that year, and the next year that plant didn't come back."
At best, the Georgia rockcress is a short-lived plant, typically making it through two or three seasons before dying. Von Schmeling compared the plant to a salmon, which once it returns from the open ocean to spawn expires after dropping its eggs.
The Georgia Plant Conservation Alliance took those seeds from the last remaining plant to the State Botanical Garden of Georgia in Athens. Five new plants were germinated from those seeds.
Additional seed stock was gathered from the five new plants and taken to the Chattahoochee Nature Center, where thousands of seeds have been produced.
Last fall, 100 of these plants were returned to Black's Bluff.
"We came back this spring," von Schmeling said. "They were blooming. They were setting seeds, and we had some deer damage on some of them."
In spite of man's best efforts, sometimes nature just seems to get in the way of itself. Von Schmeling said even though deer had made a meal of their labor, the plants appeared to have taken root and were resprouting from the base.
Hodges said of the 100 plants set out last year, about 80 of them bloomed this past spring.
"If we have some success with these seeds we're going to have quite a bit of Arabis Georgiana on Black's Bluff," Hodges added.
The chances of the average person seeing the plant are slim. The five-member crew that was spreading seed last week used ladders and ropes to climb the cliffs overlooking the Coosa River to get to places even the deer can't get to.
The plants like the thin soil that lies on top of the limestone rock so dominant at Black's Bluff, and since the Rome area is not primary habitat for mountain goats, the plants should thrive if they are to take root.
Lest the average person decide to strike out on his own in search of the plants, take note, you'll be traipsing through poison ivy that apparently likes the limestone soil as well and grows about knee high.
Von Schmeling said he and his group of volunteers will come back in the spring or late winter to see how many have germinated.
"Once those seedlings grow up, flower and set seeds, we can call it a success because they have formed another generation," he said.