Stone Mountain’s botanical treasures are governed partly by the seasons and partly by the amount of soil available. The most spectacular of the unusual plants is the _Viguiera porteri_. It is so rare that it had no common name until the Stone Mountain natives titled it Confederate Daisy. It has relatives in Mexico, but the American branch is confined entirely to Stone Mountain and other granite outcrops of Georgia’s Piedmont Plateau. The Confederate Daisy grows in swales or crevices where sand or soil has collected to a depth of three or four inches to a foot. The plants would be regarded as skimpy little weeds throughout spring and summer. A dry summer stunts the year’s crop. But when frequent showers dampen the mountain’s surface, the scrawny plants put on a big spurt of growth in August. About the middle of September they burst into great beds of blooms, making the nearly bare rock look like a golden meadow. The profusion of color lasts until mid October. In early spring the _Diamorpha cymosa_ spread like a bright red carpet where soil is half to an inch deep. The color is in the plants, two or three inches tall, and in the succulent round leaves. Tiny white blossoms detract, rather than add, to the color. The _Amphianthus pusillus_ has no common name. It is a member of the snapdragon family, but is so small that it is rarely noticed except by naturalists who are looking for it. However, it leads a remarkable existence. The _Amphianthus_ lives in the rain pits on top of the mountain, small sunken areas where water collects after each shower. When the pit dries up, the only sign of the plant is a little cyst under the sand and gravel at the bottom. Immediately after a rain the cyst sends up a little rosette of reed-like leaves that stay submerged. From their midst a thread-like stem arises and sprouts two leaves half an inch across, that float on the surface. A tiny bud appears between the two leaves, and opens into a white flower no more than one-sixteenth of an inch across. When the pool dries up, the plant disappears, quickly turning to dust, except for the cyst, which waits patiently for the next rain to bring it back to life. The _Amphianthus_ is not exclusive with Stone Mountain. It has been seen on Mount Rollaway in Rockdale County, but it is missing from some of the other granite outcrops. Cox called it a monotypic genus, which means it is represented by the one genus. Sharing the larger rain pits are fairy shrimp, whose lives are frequently interrupted. These minute crustaceans, hardly more than an eighth of an inch long, look considerably like ocean-going shrimp when viewed through a magnifying glass, and they even swim backward. They disappear when the pits dry up, and come back soon after the next rain. It is presumed that all mature specimens die in the drought, leaving eggs which hatch when the water returns.