
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, September 9, 1995                   TAG: 9509110081
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: C-5   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE: STUARTS DRAFT                                LENGTH: Short

`MOTHER LODE' OF RARE PLANTS PRESERVED

A vinyl-siding factory has donated a spring-fed wet prairie to the Nature Conservancy so that one of the greatest concentrations of rare plants in Virginia will be protected forever.

``It's really a mother lode of rare plants,'' Nature Conservancy spokesman Rob Riordan said Friday after a ceremony at the 14-acre site beside Alcoa Corp.

The South River Preserve is one of two or three prairie wetlands left in the Shenandoah Valley, where the habitat was common before settlers began plowing farms, Riordan said.

Prior to the 1700s, there were thousands of acres of prairie in the Shenandoah Valley, where Indians once hunted buffalo and places like Buffalo Gap and Elkton were named after the animals attracted by the grasslands.

The Nature Conservancy now owns 27 nature preserves covering 203,000 acres in Virginia. This is its first property in the Shenandoah Valley.

The South River Preserve abuts the Norfolk Southern Corp. tracks between Route 340 and the South River on the western slope of the Blue Ridge Mountains.

Fourteen plants that are rare in Virginia grow on the marshy site, including queen-of-the-prarie, rattlesnake master, buckbean, prarie sedge and whorled nutrush.

- Associated Press

by CNB