ALABAMA – When Noah Yawn headed out for Oak Mountain State Park in October 2020, he was planning to take part in a survey for a tree found only in Alabama. What he didn’t expect was to also stumble upon a sizable population of another rare plant species – the Georgia aster.
The survey was part of an ongoing effort of the Alabama Plant Conservation Alliance (APCA) to better understand the range and natural history of the Alabama sandstone oak, a tree found only in six north-central Alabama counties.
Yawn, an undergraduate student assistant in conservation and botany studies at Auburn University, was looking for the rare oak when he first spotted the asters through what he calls “drive-by botany.”
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