The Savannah River Site has more than 800km². It is a mostly forested area in Aiken and Barnwell Counties directly adjacent to the Savannah River near the town of Augusta. Since the 1950s radioactive materials were enriched and refined here in order to be used for nuclear wapons and reactors. What they are doing today I do not know. But it must be a lot since the area may only be entered for botanical interest after a notice long in advance. It is necessary to mail passport copies and to give explanations. Everyone will be checked thoroughly. The large parking lots for employees and a huge checkpoint otherwise known only from borders to other countries are explaining enough. It seems, that Charles Horn and myself are trustworthy persons. Surprise! Nevertheless we were accompanied all the time by a botanist working for the site and we had to have our permissions always highly visible around our necks. By the way, there were also some plants to be seen on the site: R. flammeum and R. canescens. R. flammeum was in full bloom whereas R. canescans was past bloom. The R. flammeum were rather single specimens than populations. In some places to which we were led we could not find them at all or they were very small and overgrown by other plants. The species obviously is in danger here. It prefers the upper parts of hillsides above creeks and rivers.
