After many years of reading, researching and teaching that life can be found in the most bizarre, out-of-the-way places you can imagine, I’ve learned that boiling hot springs, scorching deserts, deep undersea thermal vents, ancient ice packs and subterranean groundwater are oases of living things. Not far from Alexander City is a place that is as tenuous as any of these but full of plants and animals as unlikely as any you’ll find in other places. This wonderful place is not a forest, open field or pond, but an island in the middle of a forest. It sounds unusual, because it is.

These areas are known scientifically as piedmont granitic outcrops, and some are close by. They are amazing examples of how life forms can adapt to the harshest environments. One of the largest outcrops in Alabama can be found just west of Wadley, near the Randolph/Tallapoosa county line on State Route 77. Bald Rock, as this area is called, harbors an unusual collection of rare and threatened species. These include Amphianthus pusillus, called pool sprites, found only in two locations in Alabama, Sedum smallii or sedum, an ephemeral that grows in shallow depressions, Arenaria alabamensis, also called Alabama sandwort, along with mosses, lichens, insects and spiders, many with incomplete descriptions.