One of the first acts of the new Stone Mountain Memorial Association was to erect a steel storm fence around the rim of the mountain, probably about the same location as the ancient rock wall, as a grim warning that venturing farther would be courting disaster. FLORA [Illustration: {uncaptioned}] If you wish to see a _Hypericum splendens_, you will look for it on the steep slopes of Stone Mountain. This little hardwood shrub, about three feet tall with bright yellow blossoms, is found nowhere else on earth—not even on the similar, but lesser, granite outcrops of the area, in DeKalb and Rockdale Counties. The _Hypericums_ grow thickest in tiny crevices about halfway up the mountain and most are on the southwest side. None are found at the top nor the bottom. The saucy little golden blossoms with many stamens are about an inch across, and they appear in terminal clusters at the end of branches. Just a few open at a time, so blooming is continuous through most of June and July. The hardy little plant seems immune to drought and even indifferent to weather. Rain or shine, hot or cold, has no effect on its growth or blossoms. But each plant has a life expectancy of only about three years, after which it dies down completely, to be replaced by descendants coming up from seed. The great whale-shaped mountain of granite, far from being the bare rock that it appears, is literally covered with plant life. Thirty specimens of plants are listed as rare, and many more are so uncommon or so regional as to be total strangers to nearly all visitors. Botanists from Emory and Georgia State Universities in nearby Atlanta, and the University of Georgia in Athens, have regarded Stone Mountain as their special laboratory since the schools were founded. In 1961 a full-time horticulturist was employed to live on the mountain. Harold Cox, from Stratford, England, studied at the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew. His assistant, Gerhard Oortman, grew up working in the magnificent gardens of Eastern Holland. They have become intimately acquainted with practically every weed, twig, bush and tree on Stone Mountain. They have ascertained that the _Hypericum_ is the only shrub that grows nowhere else. Hoping to have specimens where visitors could recognize them, without running the risk of having souvenir hunters exterminate the genus, Cox and Oortman rooted some cuttings in the greenhouse and set them out in a garden plot across from the carving—and saw them promptly wither and die. However, some seed planted in the same ground have sprouted and seem to be thriving.