by Dale Hoyt

We had a
group of 9 today. Hugh started us off by reading a few passages
discussing some of the problems Darwin encountered in his study of barnacles.
They are from Carol Kaesuk Yoon’s book, Naming
Nature: The Clash Between Instinct and Science, pp. 70-71:

“I
have been struck,” he [Darwin] wrote to Hooker, “with the variability
of every part in some slight degree of every species:  when the same organ is rigorously
compared in many individuals  I always
find some slight variability, & consequently diagnosis of species from
minute differences is always dangerous.”

. . .

The
variation he had been searching for, hoping to find.  For in an evolutionary view of life,
variation is not only real, it’s essential, critical, and exactly to the point.

. . .

But
as he noted, while “pleasant to me as a speculatist,” this variation
was “odious to me as a systematist.” 
In fact, “Systematic work would be easy were it not for this
confounded variation…”  It was the
understatement of the (nineteenth) century.

As
soon as a person sees life through an evolutionist’s eyes, as soon as they see
all that confounded variation, all that incipient evolutionary change, their
view of the species changes as well  It
is not merely mutable; it is ever-changing. 
What we see at any moment, we realize, is just a snapshot in time, a
moment in the great flux of the long life of its lineage, on its way to
diverging into new species.  It’s a
triumph when this happens, for you have gained great evolutionary insight.  The only problem is now you will have
absolutely no idea how to order the living world.  You will have no idea how to decide what
constitutes or doesn’t constitute a species. 
You won’t have a clue as to how to decide where one variety, one species
ends and another begins.  And that was
Darwin’s problem [with barnacles].

Terry brought a fold-out pamphlet with pictures of common butterflies found in our area (Butterflies of North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia: Common and Notable Species by Mark Minno). This looks like a handy reference to carry with you when you’re out and about.

We covered
the same ground as last week’s walk: White trail from the parking lot to the
power line, then down to the river and back up the powerline and through the
Dunson Garden (to avoid the sun). Here’s what we saw along the way:

The
Cinnabar Chanterelle mushrooms were still present in abundance, shining like
glowing orange flags on the wet, shaded forest floor. It’s hard to keep in mind
that mushrooms are the “flowers” of a more extensive fungal body that
consists of fine threads permeating the soil and, in some cases, enveloping the
roots of trees and other plants. We looked for evidence of insect feeding
damage on the Chanterelles and found none. This is a mystery to me because when
I took a mushroom course at UGA 10 years ago every Chanterelle we found was
crawling with fly larvae. That was in late August, early September and a
different kind of Chanterelle. On one of the other kinds of mushrooms we found
there were a number of fungus beetles, but no fly maggots.

Growing
on various fallen tree limbs we found Turkeytail fungi as well as False
Turkeytail. (The true Turkeytail has a smooth undersurface whereas the
“Not-A-Turkeytail” type have porous under surfaces.

Among the
other mushrooms we think we were able to identify were Caesar’s Amanita and Berkeley’s
Polypore (Bondarzewia berkeleyi).

Out in
the power line we found a Horse Nettle (Solanum carolinense) in bloom. This
plant is in the nightshade family (Solanaceae); other familiar members of this
family are tomatoes, potatoes, and eggplant. Many of these solanaceous plants
have the same unusual arrangement of the anthers. They are bright yellow and
are clustered like a tent around the pistil. The anthers are further unusual in
that they do not split open to release their pollen. Instead there is a pore at
the end of each anther from which the pollen can emerge. But the flower must be
shaken or vibrated to remove the pollen. To get this pollen the bee must engage
in “buzz” pollination. It grips the flower with its mandible, curls
it body over the anthers and makes a buzzing vibration that shakes out the
pollen. The vibration is produced by the flight muscles contracting without
causing the wings to move. The pollen is attracted to the bee’s furry body
because of a difference in electrical charge that is built up as the bee flies,
just as you build up static electricity when you shuffle across a rug. The
flower and its pollen are negatively charged, the bee carries a positive
charge.

Here is a link to a site that has a lot of information about buzz pollination, as well as several videos of bumblebees doing it. Buzz pollination videos.

Another
cool thing: there is evidence that bees can determine when a flower has been
previously visited. A bee visiting a flower will “discharge” it and
subsequent bee visitors can detect the diminished charge, probably because some
of their sensory hairs are not as strongly attracted to the bloom.

Avis
spotted an Indigo Bunting in the trees and it cooperated by remaining there
long enough for everyone to view it through Emily’s binoculars. The iridescent
blue of the male bird is always breathtaking!

We
reviewed the structure of the Passion flower (Passiflora incarnata) flower
and how it is pollinated, principally by the large Carpenter Bee (Xylocopa virginiana). Also how each
flower can be either hermaphroditic or unisexual male. This condition is apparently
determined by how much energy is available to each individual flower; those
with adequate supplies become hermaphroditic while those with less energy
available become functionally pollen donators only. This is done by lowering
the three stigmas to a level where they can be pollinated in the bisexual
flowers or allowing them to remain in an upright position where they will never
receive pollen (“male” flowers). The decision is made by each flower
individually, so one plant can bear each type of flower.

Passionflowers
have extra-floral nectaries, a pair of glands at the base of each leaf blade
that secrete nectar. This source of sugar is attractive to ants and the ants
that patrol plant, looking for nectar and protect the plant by also eating
herbivores like small caterpillars that they encounter.

We also
saw two beetle species are are associated with passionflowers. One was a bright
orange and black. This type of conspicuous coloration is typically associated
with either distastefulness or poisonousness; i.e., it’s a warning coloration.
The passionflower vine contains several compounds that are toxic and/or
distasteful. Some of the animals that eat the plant store these chemicals in
their body and become toxic or distasteful in turn. (The monarch butterfly has
a similar relationship with milkweed plants.)

We saw a
single Pearl Crescent; this is a very common and very pretty butterfly. Its larval
food plant is various species of asters.

Hugh kept
scanning the “Wingstem jungle” under the power line for Goldenrod.
It’s hard to find it among all the other green stems in the jungle but he did locate
a couple of plants that had galls. These particular galls are probably caused
by a fly (family Cecidiomyidae for the entomology nerds) that lays an egg in
the growing tip of the plant. The plant reacts by producing shorter internodes,
so the leaves all bunch together at the growing tip. The larva of the fly feeds
on the plant tissues inside the bunched leaves. We’ve been looking for the
gall-forming fly that produces a spherical gall on the stem, but haven’t yet
seen one in the Garden although we have spotted some around Lake Herrick on the
UGA campus.

We also
found Wild Senna (Senna marilandica) plants where we first located them last
year. They are not yet blooming. Joan also noticed that these plants have
extra-floral nectaries!

Many of
the same plants that were in flower last week were observed again: Virginia
buttonweed, Pokeweed, Wood Sage. Not flowering, but abundant were the Wingstems
and the Ironweed. We heard Green Frogs (Rana
clamitans) calling and saw two Green Tree fogs (Hyla cinerea), one newly metamorphosed. A new plant in flower was a
Red Morning Glory (Ipomea coccinea)
clambering up the fence near the gate. On the hillside near the Dunson Garden a
Mullein was still in bloom.

It was
beginning to get hot so we decided to walk back through the shady Dunson Garden
and observed the Hibiscus in bloom. Hugh also discovered a Golden Garden Spider
orb web in the Hibiscus. Also seen: newly metamorphosed Spadefoot toad, Royal
Fern, Jack-in-the-Pulpit with developing fruits, Clethra in bloom, Rattlesnake
Master and a Yellow Wood tree.

While in the Dunson Garden we came across a Black Cohosh that was still blooming. Its tall inflorescence still had a few flowers at the very tip. This prompted Carol to tell us about determinate and indeterminate growth forms. The Cohosh exhibits an indeterminate growth form — the terminal bud of the flowering stalk continues to grow and new flowers appear from lateral buds below the terminal. The first of these flower bud are the oldest and they open first. Then successive buds higher up the stalk open until the top is reached. Because the flowering stalk can continue to grow and produce more flowers the number of flowers that will ultimately be formed is indeterminate. As good discussion of the kinds of inflorescence and growth forms in flowering plants can be found in this Wikipedia article.

We then
adjourned to Donderos’ for our usual snacks and conversation.

Dale

First, we had a reading and a show and tell about dodder (Cuscuta
gronovii) by Dale Hoyt

The reading is from: Cultivating Delight: A Natural History of My Garden, by Diane
Ackerman, 2001, HarperCollins, pp. 75-76

Summer is a new song everyone is humming. From atop a
chestnut tree, where spiked fruits hang like sputniks, comes the
sound of a bottle band and the kazoo-istry of birds. On the ground, a blanket
of dry leaves gives sound to each motion: falling berries, scuffling voles, a skink
rising from its bog. Small fence lizards do rapid push-ups as part of their
territorial display. All along the weedy roadways, grasshoppers thrash and rustle in the brush, playing
mating tunes. Grasshoppers are musical instruments. They sing by scraping a row
of . . . pegs on the inside of each back leg against hard ridges on their
forewings. Different species have different calls,
depending mainly on the arrangement of the pegs. There are alto and tenor
grasshoppers, plus a band of crickets and cicadas rubbing shrill songs on their
washboards. The grass has grown tall at last, and the trees offer shade for the first time
in a year.

. . .

Countless
birds seem to be auditioning for their jobs. Large glossy crows sound as if
they’re gagging on lengths of flannel.
Blackbirds quibble nonstop from the telephone wires, where
they perch like a run of eighth notes. I sometimes try to sing their melody.
Because every animal has its own vocal niche . . . summer days unfold like
Charles Ives symphonies, full of the sprightly cacophony we cherish, the
musical noise that reassures us nature is going on her inevitable green way and
all’s right with the world.

Dodder is a parasitic plant that lacks
chlorophyll and leaves. Its orange/yellow stems vine across and around its host.
Where the vine lies close about the host’s stem it sends out haustoria that
penetrate the stem and tap into the conductive tissue of the host. The parasite
gets all it’s nutrition from the host plant.

Not many participants today (8), but the
weather held beautifully.  We walked down
the white trail from the lower parking lot to the power line right of way and
down to the river.  Then walked up the
power line right of way to the top of the hill. 
There was an amazing number of things to talk about.  In fact we found a spade foot toad in the
parking lot before we left.  They must
have traveled up into the Garden area from the power line right of way at the
river where they started.

The first find was a whole batch of
Chanterelle mushrooms.  They lined the
trail all through the woods.  A few spade
foot toads were still around in the power line right of way by the river.  There were a number of plants of interest: Virginia
Buttonweed (Diodia virginiana), Maypop or Passionflower (Passiflora incarnata), and Wood Sage or American Germander (Teucrium canadense).  Dale discussed
how the maypop changes to a male or bisexual flower by either holding up its
stigmas (male), or by lowering them to be close to stamens so that when bees
visit the plant they deposit pollen on the stigma.  In this area we observed how high and fast
the Oconee River was flowing and also loaded with silt (red soil).  Because of poor farming practices during the
cotton era, the Piedmont has lost 12 feet or more of topsoil through
erosion.  The muddy river is still
picking up some of that soil and carrying it further downstream.

Two butterflies were seen, even thought
the morning was very overcast: a freshly emerged Red Admiral (Vanessa atalanta) and a Pearl Crescent (Phyciodes
tharos). We also heard a few isolated
calls from a Bronze Frog (or Green frog) (Rana
clamitans) in the wetland areas. It
sounded like a very nasal “Gulp.”

Walking up the power line right of way, a
number of plants were discussed:

Queen Anne’s Lace (Daucus carota)

Butterfly weed, or chigger weed (Asclepias tuberosa)

Spiderwort (Tradescantia virginiana)

Castor
bean             

Bitterweed (Helenium amarum)

Mountain Mint (Pycnanthemum incanum)

Whorled Coreopsis (Coreopsis major)    

Wild Bergamot or Beebalm (Monarda fistuloso)

Rose Pink Sabatia (Sabatia angular)

Crownbeard (Verbesina virginica)

Thimbleweed (Anemone virginiana)

Pineweed (Hypericum gentianoides)

Spotted St. Johnswort (Hypericum punctatum

Sensitive Brier ( Mimosa microphylla)

At the top of the hill it was time to
return to the Visitor’s Center for snacks and conversation.

On the way back we did take a short
detour to see the flowers on the Devil’s Walking Stick (Aralia spinosa).  Dale pointed out that the leaf is compound
and huge, so huge that it may be the largest leaf in plants in North
America.  Next to it was the Anise tree (Illicium parviflorum), also in bloom.

 Hugh

The reading this
week, a poem by Walt Whitman (1819-1892), was provided by Hugh Nourse: 

The Dalliance of the Eagles

SKIRTING the
river road, (my forenoon walk, my rest,)

Skyward in air a sudden muffled sound, the dalliance of the eagles,

The rushing amorous contact high in space together,

The clinching interlocking claws, a living, fierce, gyrating wheel,

Four beating wings, two beaks, a swirling mass tight grappling,

In tumbling turning clustering loops, straight downward falling,

Till o’er the river pois’d, the twain yet one, a moment’s lull,

A motionless still balance in the air, then parting, talons loosing,

Upward again on slow-firm pinions slanting, their separate diverse flight,

She hers, he his, pursuing.

This morning we took the White trail to the power line
cut, turned left and went downhill to a Trumpet Vine and then returned uphill,
pausing to examine some insects where the White trail enters the woods. Then we
continued up the power line to the fence, turned left, following the fence to
the White trail and returned in the woods back to the Arbor.

The Trumpet Vine (also called Trumpet Creeper),
Campsis radicans, has conspicuous red trumpet-shaped flowers – just right for
attracting hummingbirds. But pollinators are not the only animals attracted to
these flowers. Careful examination will reveal numerous ants hanging out on the
surface of the flower buds and, later in the season, on the surface of the
long, bean shaped seed pods. The ants are in search of nectar, but not from
inside the flower. The nectar they find is secreted by the plant on the surface
of the flower buds and the seed pods. These “extrafloral nectaries” are thought
to attract ants to defend the plant from attack by herbivorous insects and
especially those that might try to eat the developing seeds. There is currently
no direct evidence that this is the case for the Trumpet Vine, but many other
plants have extrafloral nectarines and in some of these the evidence for ant
defense is quite good.

Walking up the hill we passed a stand of very healthy
Pokeweed, Phytolacca americana, with
a developing inflorescence. Most parts of this plant are poisonous, but the
young shoots and leaf tips can be eaten if properly prepared (boiling with at
least two changes of water).

Where the White trail
enters the woods we found several different types of insects feeding on the
freshly emerged leaves of a Tuliptree (Liriodendron tulipifera). Viewing them
with a hand lens is an exciting experience. We saw aphids and the nymphal
stages of a treehopper as well as several forms with fuzzy, waxy secretions
that conceal part of their bodies. (Yesterday I found a aphid lion, the larval
stage of the Green Lacewing (Chrysopa sp.). It has sickle-shaped jaws that
pierce the skin of its aphid prey and suck them dry. It then sticks the husks
of its victims on its back, apparently to serve as camouflage.) Lacewings are
Neuropterans, related to Doodlebugs.

It took us over an hour to walk up the rest of the
power line to the fence, there were so many plants in bloom – summer has
finally arrived! Perhaps it’s best to just list the plants seen: 

The Wild Bergamot was especially abundant. 

As we wandered up the path we met several Botanical
Garden workers engaged in plant rescue efforts. This part of the Garden is
being converted to a Piedmont Prairie and the initial steps involve removal of
much of the broad leaved herbaceous vegetation. (This means, in large part, the
Wingstems that grow so abundantly in the power line cut. We’ll miss their
colorful yellow and white flowers that provide masses of color during the
summer before the goldenrod and ironweed begin blooming.)

Finally, into the woods to cool off and look for
mushrooms! And there were mushrooms galore, especially Chanterelles which
glowed orange against the light and dark browns of the leaf litter. Besides the
Chanterelles we encountered Amanitas and Russulas as well as others that
perplexed us. We need an experience mushroom collected to join us some time and
give us a little guidance.

On the way back we noticed the fruits of two plants
in the shade garden: Camellia and Sweet Shrub. Both surprised us – none of us
had ever seen the fruits of these plants before.

Then it was on to Donderos’ for iced beverages and
the reconstruction of the list of plants we had observed.

Note: There will be no Nature Ramble next week (next
Thursday falls on July 4). Hope to see you all again on July 11.

The reading this week was provided by
Carol Nourse and is from The Garden,
by Freeman Patterson, p. 100:

If it weren’t for
fungi the planet would soon cease to function, probably within minutes.  Like many other fungi, Amanita mushrooms are important to
the collective health of the forest, though I’ve also found and photographed
them in open areas, where other species also live and do their work, often in
gardens. For example, the delicious Agaricus,
often called the “meadow mushroom,” is common wherever there is
decomposing manure of farm animals.

…………..

The visible part of
mushrooms, those weird constructions I love to photograph, are the reproductive
organs. However, the daily work of most species is carried out by mycelia:
fine, fibrous, root-like hairs that invade dead wood and other material,
causing it to decay. Then bacteria take over and complete the process of making
it part of the soil again. One day it occurred to me that we all garden with
fungi and bacteria to a greater extent than we do with shrubs and herbs and
grasses.

The
route:  We went through the Shade Garden and on to
the white trail.  Just past the Power
Line Right of Way we took the Green Trail, then continued to the right on the
White Trail to a large group of Chanterelle Mushrooms. Then we returned the
same way we came.

Our first stop was under the Power Line
on the White Trail.  Gary identified the
white button mushrooms as Puffballs. He told us they should be eaten when the
inside is white, before it becomes yellow. They must be cooked to get rid of dangerous
alkaloids before eating.

Under the power line we also found a False
Caesar’s Mushroom (Thank you Sandra for working with the mushroom guide and
finding some of these names) (Amanita
parcivolvata).  As we rambled along,
we found many more mushrooms than we could name. We only managed to identify about
five. We found many individuals of Black footed Marasmius (Marasmiellus nigripes), a
really interesting small, white mushroom growing on a twig (and eventually
found growing on the trunk of a tree) that had dark thread-like projections
emerging from the wood below the mushroom itself. There were so many
interesting mushrooms to see that we were hardly moving on the Green Trail. We
wanted everyone to see the Chanterelles, we decided to move on to where they
were growing and then come back along the Green Tail at a leisurely pace. Gary
said the Chanterelles (Cantharellus
cibarius) were excellent eating. There were quite a number of them at this
site. We turned around and started back.

The first stop on the way back was for a
mushroom that looked like a Chanterelle, but was growing on wood and not on the
ground. Gary noted that this one was poisonous. I could not find latin name of
the poisonous Chanterelle-looking mushroom. 
But we did find the name (Thank you Sandra) for the red mushroom
bursting out of a white covering, American Caesar’s Mushroom (Amanita caesarea). One of the slime
molds and a coral mushroom were seen along the Green Trail on the return.

In addition to mushrooms we noted several
rattlesnake ferns (Botrychium virginianum),
partridgeberry (Mitchella repens) not
blooming, and pipsissiwa (Chimaphila
maculata). We also identified several trees:  Southern Red Oak (Quercus falcata), Scarlet Oak (Quercus
coccinea), mockernut hickory (Carya
tomentosa), pignut hickory (Carya
glabra), shagbark hickory (Carya
ovate), and a tulip tree (Liriodendron
tulipifera).

Don Hunter found our last mushroom off
the trail:  Silver Ear Fungus or White
Jelly Mushroom (Tremella fuciformis).
Gary said that Jelly mushrooms were edible.

As we walked by the old flower garden we
saw wild petunia (Ruellia caroliniensis). 

Returning to the Arbor, we dispersed with
many retiring to Donderos for coffee and snacks. This was a very pleasant day
with eye-catching mushrooms even if we could not identify most of them.

Hugh

Today’s
reading was from Rachel Carson, The Sense of Wonder, 1956. This short piece was originally
written for Women’s Day magazine. Ms. Carson intended to expand it later, but
died before this could be done. A short paragraph follows (Roger was her
grand-nephew):

When Roger has visited me in Maine and we have walked in these woods I have
made no conscious effort to name plants or animals nor to explain to him, but have just expressed my own pleasure in what we see, calling his attention to this or that but only as I would share discoveries with an older person. Later I have been amazed at the way names stick in his mind, for when I show color slides of my woods plants it is Roger who can identify them. “Oh, that‘s what Rachel likes –that‘s bunchberry!” Or, “That‘s Jumer [juniper} but you can‘t eat those green berries-they are for the squirrels.” I
am sure no amount of drill would have implanted the names so firmly as just going through the woods in the spirit of
two friends on an expedition of exciting
discovery.

Today’s Route (mostly in the shade due to the
hot weather):

From the Arbor we went past the Dunson Native Plant Garden and
then on to the White Trail to the gate; left at the gate on the old service
road, past the Torreya project, then onto the Blue trail back to the White
trail.

Stuff we saw or talked about:

On the way
down the switchbacks to the Dunson Garden we paused to look at the galls on the
Witch Hazels (we examined these on May 16; see the Ramble Report).

The Black
Cohosh was still blooming even though the inflorescence had fallen over (see
this Ramble Report for more on Black Cohosh).

On the White
trail we stopped where an American Beech and a Hophornbeam stand side-by-side,
making comparison of the leaves easy. The branch of this Beech is low and
exposed to more sun than is usual and its leaves are not typical of the Beech
leaves we normally observe. Because of the increased sun exposure they are
thicker, darker and feel tougher. They are “sun”
leaves. This is typical for many trees – the leaves we see low to the ground
are usually shade leaves – thin, wider
and larger than the leaves in the canopy. The sun leaf thickness is due to an
extra layer of photosynthetic tissue that develops when a leaf is exposed to
high levels of light.

Another
thing we noticed was an absence of fruit on the Hophornbeam. Last year at this
time we saw lots of the hop-like clusters of maturing seeds on these trees.
Many of the canopy species exhibit a pattern of fruit production called masting. (Mast is the collective name for the fruits of all tree species in
an area. The amount of mast varies considerably from year to year and the
mystery is that many trees over large areas synchronize their mast production.
Such years of heavy seed production are called mast years. We usually think of
the masting habit in terms of the canopy species like oak, chestnut, or beech.
But some of the subcanopy species, like Hophornbeam also have the masting
habit. This year is not a mast year for the Hophornbeam.)

We puzzled
over some saplings with compound leaves that I at first thought were alternate
(they were not). When we realized that it had opposite, compound leaves we
decided it must be an Ash, probably a Green Ash (Fraxinus pennsylvanica).

Along the
way we noticed a few flowers: Daisy Fleabane (Erigeron strigosum), Spiderwort (Tradescantia sp.), Deptford Pink (Dianthus armeria), Queen Anne’s Lace (Daucus carota) and Wild Petunia (Ruellia caroliniensis).

We also
noticed a lot of fire ant (Solenopsis
invicta) nests that I can’t resist poking into. There is a reason behind my
madness. Fire ants frequently produce their reproductive castes (future queens
and males) in the spring or early summer and these are released from the nest
soon after a rain. Not many people have seen winged reproductive ants and I’m
eager to show them to everyone, but no luck today. After their mating flight
the inseminated queens separately fly off to a hopefully suitable site, land
and discard their wings. Each solitary queen then begins, by herself, to dig a
nest. She doesn’t feed, living off the energy she gets from metabolizing her
now useless flight muscles. If she’s lucky she will live long enough for her
first brood of workers to emerge and start to forage for food. Then she will
attend to her only function – laying eggs. I’ll tell you more about fire ants
on later rambles.

Finally we
entered the woods and escaped the sun. It must have been 10 degrees cooler, but
just as humid. (The coolness is not only due to the shade but the evaporation of
water from the tree leaves. It takes energy to turn water from a liquid to a
vapor and that loss of energy lowers the temperature considerably. It’s natures
air conditioning!)

Nothing was
seen blooming as we walked through the woods, so we paid attention to the trees
and looked for other things. We did manage to find a few mushrooms (fewer than
I would have expected, given all the recent rain.) One was a pretty white one
about 6 inches high and still fresh. It had the remains of a structure called
the veil on the stem below the cap.
Some mushrooms with veils are poisonous. Unfortunately, other poisonous
mushrooms lack a veil and some with veils are edible. Lacking expert guidance,
it’s probably better to not experiment.

You should
think of a mushroom as a single flower of a perennial plant whose body is
hidden from your sight. This “body” is a complex network of extremely fine
threads, called a mycelium, that ramifies and permeates the soil around the
visible mushroom, sometimes for many hundreds of feet or more. In some cases it
sets up a mutualistic relationship with the roots of trees or other plants,
giving its plant host mineral nutrients in return for sugars. Such mushrooms
are called mycorrhizal, which
literally means “mushroom root.” In other cases the mushroom secretes digestive
enzymes into the soil and absorbs nutrients that are released. These are called
saprotrophic fungi, meaning that they
feed on dead or rotting organic material.

We slipped
past the Florida Torreya (Torreya
taxifolia) protection plantings, noting only that they don’t seem to be
thriving. Then it was back via the Blue trail to Donderos’ (for those who could
stay) to enjoy cookies and beverages.

Dale

Today, we guessed correctly that the 30
percent chance of rain wouldn’t occur before we finished our walk.  To avoid mud because of the heavy rain last
night we went through the International Garden, the Physic Garden, Heritage
Garden, and Flower Garden to the short cut trail to the Orange Trail.  Then we went up the Orange trail to its end
at the upper parking lot.  We also took a
short side trip along the white trail before going to Donderos’ for
refreshment.

Hugh provided a reading from Janisse Ray’s
The Ecology of a Cracker Childhood.  I think most were a little non-plussed.  It wasn’t what they expected:

“A
junkyard is a wilderness.  Both are
devotees of decay.  The nature of both is
random order, the odd occurrence and juxtaposition of miscellany, backed by a
semblance of method.  Walk through a
junkyard  and you will see some of the
schemes a wilderness takes–Fords to one section, Dodges in another, or older
models farthest from the house–so a brief logic of ecology can be found.

“In
the same way, an ecosystem makes sense: 
the canebrakes, the cypress domes. 
Pine trees regenerate in an indeterminate fashion, randomly here and
there where seeds have fallen, but also with some predictability.  Sunlight and moisture must be sufficient for
germination, as where a fallen tree has made a hole in the canopy, after a
rain.  This, too, is order.

“Without
fail in a junkyard you encounter the unexpected — a doll’s head, bodiless; a
bike with no handlebars; a cache of wheat pennies; thirty feet of copper pipe;
a boxy ’58 Edsel.  Likewise, in the
middle of Tate’s Hell Swamp you might look unexpectedly into the brown eyes of
a barred owl ten feet away or come upon a purple stretch of carnivorous
bladderworts in bloom, their BB-sized bladders full of aquatic microorganisms.

“In
junkyard as in wilderness there is danger: 
shards of glass, leaning jacks, weak chains; or rattlesnakes,
avalanches, polar bears.  In one as in
the other you expect the creativity of the random, how the twisted metal
protrudes like limbs, the cars dumped at acute, right and obtuse angles, how
the driveways are creeks and rivers.'”

Our theme for today was ferns, since most
forest plants have finished flowering and the meadows have not quite started
yet.  Bracken ferns in the International
Garden were our first stop.   

First we
reviewed the different parts of a fern: 
The frond is made up of a blade (the “leafy” part) and a stipe (the stem that holds up the
blade.)  The blade has a rachis (the
main vein) and is usually subdivided into smaller pinnae
(singular: pinna) that are each attached to the rachis by a vein.Sometimes the pinnae are themselves subdivided, partially or completely, into pinnules that are attached to the midvein of each pinna.

Bracken fern (Pteridium aquilinum) is deciduous (meaning the fronds do not
persist through winter) and occurs in almost every county in Georgia.

In the Endangered Plant Garden we found New
York Fern (Thelypteris noveboracensis)
has a blade whose pinnae are shorter at both ends than they are in the
middle.  The Botanical Society taught me
that people in Manhattan are so busy that they burn their candle at both ends –
an easy way to remember New York Fern. 
New York Fern is deciduous.

In the Indian Garden there were two ferns
of interest:The first is probably the most common
fern in the Garden — Christmas Fern (Polystichum
acrostichoides). It has sori (spore producing structures) on the undersurface
of the pinnae at the ends of some fronds (these are called fertile fronds).
Each of the pinnae are shaped like a Christmas stocking with the toe toward the
rachis. Christmas Fern is also quite common in the mountains and piedmont of
Georgia but less so in the coastal plain. 
We see it all year as it is evergreen (not deciduous). 

The second was Royal Fern.  Fertile pinnae are absent at this time of year.  The fronds look more like a locust tree than
a fern.  Usually found in wet, acid soils
(I have found them in the depressed wetland near Track Rock Gap).  Occurs throughout most of Georgia.

The two wildflower and the native grass
beds in Flower Garden elicited some comments. Currently blooming are several
Coneflowers (Echinacea sp., Rudbeckia sp.and Ratibida sp.) and mints (Monarda
sp.).  One of the fun plants blooming was
Horse Mint (Monarda punctata).  It did have the usual mint square stem.  I do not believe it was quite in full bloom
because I do not remember seeing the yellow petals interspersed between the pink
ones.

On the Orange Trail our next find was the
Broad Beech Fern (Thelypteris
hexagonoptera).  It is described as bipinnatifid,which means that the pinnae
are almost “cut” through to the rachis and each pinna is pinnately almost cut
through to the midvein. This produces a rachis with “wings” between the pinnae,
a diagnostic feature for this species. 
It is common in the mountains and piedmont of Georgia but only found in a
few counties in South Georgia.

The next fern was the Southern Lady Fern
(Athyrium asplenoides).  Someone said that it looked very delicate,
and that is a characteristic of this fern. 
This fern tends to cluster, each frond arching, and deciduous.  The rachis can be yellowish green to
reddish.  The blade is broadest near the
base.  It is bipinnate to tripinnate,
finely cut and looks delicate.  It is
found throughout Georgia, except in the sandy pineland in Southeast Georgia.

A break from the ferns was finding a
number of white avens (Geum canadense).  We have seen the rosette that comes in very early
spring, but not the flower, which just bloomed this week.

We also noticed the warty bark of a young
tree, Sugarberry (Celtis laevigata),
a type of Hackberry.

We found several Rattlesnake Ferns (Botrychium virginianum) along the Orange
Trail.  The blade is ternate and
triangular in shape.  It is bipinnate to
tripinnate. The fertile stalk arises from the where the blade branches,
actually the base of the blade.  You will
remember that a fern that looks similar comes up in the fall and the fertile
stalk is attached below the base of the Blade, and is called a Grape Fern.

We looked a long time for the common
Ebony Spleenwort (Asplenium platyneuron),
which was the last fern we found on the Orange Trail. It is common throughout
all of Georgia, with the exception of the Southeastern Coastal Plain. One
characteristic is the shiny dark brown rachis (almost looks black).  Like the Christmas Fern some of the fronds
are partially fertile with sori on the back side of the pinnae.  Each pinna has an ear like projection next to
the rachis.  It is deciduous.

There was some time left so we scooted
out the White Trail across the road to check out the blooming Wafer Ash or Hop
tree (Ptelea trifoliate, which is not
an ash).  There was quite a group of
them.  We could not name the family at
the time.  Looking it up, I found it to
be in the Rutaceae, or Citrus family, which includes the Prickly Ash, Hercules
Club, and Hardy Orange.

We then retired to Donderos’ for
conversation and refreshment.

Hugh

First, some links to items of interest:

Gary Crider called my attention to this wonderful video
about the 17yr cicadas:

The tree book I referred to today is Natural History of Trees of Eastern and Central North America by Donald Culross Peattie. It is
now, unfortunately, out of print in both the original hardback and paperback
editions. Peattie also wrote a companion volume for the Western NA trees. There
is new hardback edition that combines the two original volumes, BUT – it omits
many of the tree species that Peattie originally included. The two original volumes
totaled over 1000 pages; the new edition is only ~500 pages and it doesn’t tell
you that it is an abridgement! Seek out the paperback originals if you can find
them. (An example: I checked out the table of contents on Amazon and discovered
that this new combined edition omits the Loblolly Pine.)

Links to Peattie book at Barnes and Noble and Amazon.

Todays reading was Advice From a Treeby Ilan Shamir (read by Lili Ouzts):

Dear
Friend,

Stand
Tall and Proud.

Sink
your Roots deeply into the Earth.

Reflect
the Light of your own True Nature.

Think
long term.

Go
out on a Limb.

Remember
your place among All living beings.

Embrace
with Joy the changing seasons.

For
each yields its own abundance:

The
Energy and Birth of Spring;

The
Growth and Contentment of Summer;

The Wisdom to let go like leaves in the Fall;

The Rest and Quiet Renewal of Winter.

Feel
the wind and the sun and delight in their presence.

Look
up at the moon that shines down upon you and the mystery of the stars at night.

Seek
Nourishment from the Good Things in Life.

Simple
pleasures:

Earth, Fresh Air, Light.

Be
Content with your natural beauty.

Drink
plenty of Water.

Let
your limbs sway and dance in the breezes.

Be
flexible.

Remember
your Roots!

Enjoy
the View!

Our
route: Past the edge of the Dunson Native Plant garden, then on to the White
trail, then the Green trail to the old road and down to the Mimsey Lanier
Center and then following the new road back through the Dunson garden.

We
had such a large group today that it was hard to remember everything that we saw.
I’m sure I’ve omitted several observations, so please make your additions in
the comments.

At
the Dunson garden the Black Cohosh (Actaea racemosa) was blooming. (An older
generic name for black cohosh is Cimicifuga,
which literally means bedbug repeller, suggesting that this plant might have
been used to keep bedbugs away from bedding. The plant has other medicinal
properties and is threatened because of over-collecting in the wild.)

Along
the white trail we stopped to look at the leaves of Hop hornbeam (Ostrya
virginiana) and pointed out the difference between it and American Beech.
Hop hornbeam leaves are fuzzy and the edges of the leaves have teeth while beech
leaves are smooth, thin and papery to the touch. Their leaf edges are wavy, not
toothed.

Further
along the trail we looked at some Spiderworts (Tradescantia sp.) and discovered
the basis for another common name: snotweed. (Break off a leaf or stem and the
sap is sticky and slimy, like Okra.

We
examined a sapling to refresh our memory of what a compound leaf was and what
the opposite arrangement of leaves looks like. Those of us who have learned our
trees from Dan Williams remembered which tree species have opposite leaves by
reciting the ditty that starts: “MADogs with Beards and Buckeyed Cats. . .” [Maple,
Ash, Dogwood, Old Man’s Beard, Buckeye, Catalpa] We were looking at a Green Ash
(Opposite leaf arrangement, compound leaves with 5 leaflets.)

We
also found a Redbud that had been worked over by Leaf-cutter bees. These bees
carve semi-circular pieces out of the Redbud leaf and take them back to line
the cavity of their nest where they raise their young. They are not restricted
to using Redbud, but they do seem to favor it.

On
the green trail we focused on bark characteristics and found several Shagbark
Hickories (Carya sp.) with their flaking bark and Sourwood (Oxydendron arboreum) with its distinctly ridged bark,
crooked trunk growth, long leaves with tapering ends and wonderfully delicious
honey. (The honey, of course, is made by bees from the nectar of the Sourwood
flowers.)

One
of the girls found a wonderful insect on a decaying log– a Bess Beetle (Odontotaenius disjunctus)! These beetles
have a social life! They care for their young, actually feeding them like human
parents feed their babies (well, maybe not exactly like that, but you get the
idea). They live in small social groups and communicate with each other by
sound. Many of us were able to listen as the captive beetle expressed its alarm
at being restrained. The sound is produced by rubbing the tip of the abdomen
against the hard wing covers. This was a great find!

Ella
also discovered an Oak Apple Gall and a snail shell. The gall is made by a wasp
laying an egg in an oak leaf. The leaf produces a large spherical, hollow
structure, about the size of a golf ball, in response to the egg’s presence and
the wasp larva feeds on the leafy tissue safe and snug inside it’s tiny,
spherical house.

We need the sharp young eyes to
find things for us – bring them back often!!

Further on we came across the skeletal remains of an Opossum (Didelphis virginiana) in the middle of the road. The only thing left was some patches of fur and parts of the skull, pelvis and vertebral column, plus a few scattered ribs. Something had a good meal!

The
old road took us past the Florida Cedar (Torreya taxifolia) recovery location. This plant is sometimes
called Stinking Cedar. Regardless of the name, its existence is threatened so specimens
have been sent to several botanical gardens to insure that the species does not
become extinct. On the other side of the road we found Daisy Fleabane (Erigeron
strigosum) in bloom. Judging from the name this might be a plant that repels
insects (fleas perhaps?).

Past
the Lanier Center we found a Red Mulberry(Morus
rubra) with ripening fruit that some of us enjoyed sampling.

We
stopped to look at the Ash just beyond the mulberry. It is probably a Green
Ash, but the fruits are not mature enough to definitively identify it.

Then
it was back to Donderos’ for our usual coffee and conversation. And – the awarding
of the book. The winner was Kaye Giese who was only one off the secret number.

Dale