Twenty four ramblers met on a fine September morning and enjoyed a wonderful display of wildflowers in the course of our ramble.

Don Hunter’s album for today’s ramble is here; all the photos in today’s blog are Don’s.

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Readings:

 

Rosemary brought a poem by Margaret Atwood:

The Moment

 

The moment when, after many years

of hard work and a long voyage

you stand in the centre of your room,

house, half-acre, square mile, island, country,

knowing at last how you got there,

and say, I own this,

is the same moment
when the trees unloose

their soft arms from around you,

the birds take back their language,

the cliffs fissure and collapse,

the air moves back from you like a wave

and you can’t breathe.

No, they whisper. You
own nothing.

You were a visitor, time after time

climbing the hill, planting the flag, proclaiming.

We never belonged to you.

You never found us.

It was always the other way round.

~ Margaret Atwood ~

(morning in the
burned house)

—

Tim brought a reading about Beech trees from Hiking Trails of Joyce Kilmer-Slickrock and
Citico Creek Wildernesses, p. 54, by Tim Homan! (Our Tim is the author of 8
books on hiking trails in the mountains of North Carolina and North Georgia.)

The
beech offered a welcome look of stability and familiarity to the early
colonists because
our species does not differ significantly from the beech of Europe. The
European beech is closely linked with the history of
writing. Historians write that the earliest Sanskrit characters were carved on
strips of beech bark. This practice
spread to Europe, where
the earliest scribblings of the Germanic people were inscribed upon beechen
tablets. In fact, our modern word “book” was
derived from the ancient Anglo–Saxon
word for beech. Gutenburg
printed the first Bible from
movable type carved from beech
wood.

Catherine Chastain brought a reading from An
Altar in the World:  A Geography of Faith
by Barbara Brown Taylor,  from the
chapter The Practice of Getting Lost:

            Because
once you leave the cow path, the unpredictable territory is full of life.  True, you cannot always see where you are
putting your feet.  This means you can no
longer afford to stay unconscious.  You
can no longer count on the beat-down red dirt path making all of your choices
for you.  Leaving it, you agree to make
your own choices for a spell.  You agree
to become aware of each step you take, tuning all of your senses to exactly
where you are and exactly what you are doing.

            When
I do this, I hear the buzzing of the yellow jackets in time to take a detour
around their front door.  I see the gap
in the grass around the groundhog hole in time to step around it.  I sing old Baptist hymns to warn the snakes
that I am coming.  They do not want to
see me any more than I want to see them, after all.  What I see instead is the tiny wild blue iris
that grows close to the ground.  I see
the round bed in the tall grass where the doe sleeps with her twin fawns at
night, and the hornet’s nest no bigger than a fist, hanging from the underside
of a thistle leaf.

Today’ route: We then headed out for the morning’s
ramble, leaving the parking lot on the white trail spur to the mulched path
down through the Dunson Native Flora Garden, then out to the white trail under
the power line ROW to the river, where we turned left on the orange trail to
the “vine tree,” and then left on the orange spur back to the parking
lot.

First stop was in the Dunson Native Flora
Garden to wonder about a white mold that seemed to

Zygomycete mold

be all around the Garden.
Don has conducted research on the subject and thinks it could be Spinellus
fusiger.  Almost

Sporangiophores

underfoot were
leaves of sharp lobed hepatica. Farther along were a number of ferns.  Broad beech fern we have often seen on the
orange trail.  The netted chain fern  had a

Fertile frond

fertile frond so we could see the chain
like markings on the fronds, from which it gets its name.  Royal fern is a wetland fern which I have
seen in a wetland area near Track Rock Gap. There it had been surrounding a
beautiful cardinal flower.

Arriving at the wetland area of the
Garden we admired the tall ironweed , late-flowering boneset , white crownbeard
(AKA frostweed), blue mist flower, and rattlesnake master   The swamp mallows  were still blooming after all these weeks;
the

Virginia salt-marsh mallow

seashore, or Virginia salt-marsh mallow 
was at its peak with

Anthers and stigma

beautiful pink flowers. To the right is a closeup of the yellow anthers wrapped about the style, with the stigma projecting outward. This arrangement of the male and female parts is characteristic of the mallow family. In amongst the mallows were a number of
cardinal flowers  with their  brilliant red flowers.  Turning around to look behind us we saw the
big red hibiscus, and a low horsemint, which has wonderfully intricate yellow
and pink flowers with polkadots. The curator of the Dunson Native Flora Garden
planted several false indigo bushes, which are not blooming at this time, but
had interesting compound leaves.

The natural area beyond the Dunson Garden
under the power line was spectacular with yellows, blues, and whites in densely
packed vegetation.  Let’s first take a
look at the big plants:  wingstem  yellow crownbeard , white crownbeard,
pokeweed, fireweed, field thistle, late

Clematis seed head

flowering boneset, tall Ironweed, and
golden rod.  Crawling over these big
plants were a lot of vines:  virgin’s
bower, which was going to seed, pink wild bean, (a new plant to us), small red
morning glory, passion vine, climbing hempweed, blue or ivy-leaf morning glory,
small white morning glory, and one we could not identify at the time.  Taking our photos to Linda

Climbing buckwheat fruits

Chafin, she
identified it as common climbing buckwheat. 
Smaller plants could be found amongst the vegetation:  beefsteak plant, camphor weed, reclining St.
Andrews cross, leafy elephant’s foot, and mild water pepper. 

One of the small plants was rabbit
tobacco, which Don reported that he smoked as a kid.  He bought a corncob pipe at the drug store,
and used the dried leaves of the plant. But that was the last time he and
others smoked it, because they got sick from it.

Lynx spider protecting her egg sac

Bumble bee

All this glorious vegetation attracted
many kinds of arthropods: green lynx spider with egg case, small skipper
basking, robber fly, bumblebee (note the fuzzy abdomen),

Virginia tiger moth

nymphs of leaf-footed bugs, Virginia tiger
moth, gulf fritillary

Leaf-footed bug nymph

caterpillar, gulf fritillary butterfly, gulf fritillary
chrysalis (the same one

Chrysalis

spotted last week when the caterpillar started its
metamorphosis; compare the photos of the Sept. 4 Ramble with today’s and notice how much the chrysalis looks like a dead leaf), and
ailanthus webworm moth.  Emily spotted a
monarch butterfly with her binoculars, so everyone

Monarch

trooped back to see her
find.

As you can imagine, with all these things
to see, we made very little forward progress,

River side privet removal

so it was 10AM when we reached
the river. I originally thought we would go out the white trail to the blue
trail but it was obvious that would not work. 
So we turned left on the orange trail along the Oconee River to view the
progress on privet removal. The most surprising thing was that Thomas Peters
was removing privet between the trail and the river.  Up to now everyone has been hesitant to do
that for fear of allowing too much erosion of the river banks. We will have to
see how this develops. In this area we did find lance-leaf greenbrier.

At the tree with many vines where the
orange trail spur turns back up the hill to return to the parking lot, we
observed the leaves of cross-vine, catbrier, and round-leaved greenbrier.

Even though it was time to quit, we still
found interesting items to see on the orange spur back

Insect egg slime mold

to the parking lot:
black footed marasmius, “insect egg” slime mold, Japanese parasol
mushroom, the “dancing ballerinas” (beech blight aphids), and an
unidentified orb weaver spider.

We finally made it back to the parking
lot, where many retired to Donderos for much needed refreshment.

Hugh

SUMMARY OF OBSERVED SPECIES:

Common Name	Scientific Name
Mysterious mold	Zygomycete, possibly Spinellus fusiger
Sharped lobed hepatica	Anemone acutiloba syn. Hepatica acutiloba
Broad beech fern	Phegopteris hexagonoptera
Netted chain fern	Woodwardia areolata
Royal fern	Osmunda regalis
Late-flowering boneset	Eupatorium serotinum
Tall ironweed	Vernonia gigantea
White crownbeard	Verbesina virginica
Blue mist flower	Conoclinium coelestinum
Rattlesnake master	Eryngium yuccifolium
Cardinal flower	Lobelia cardinalis
Virginia salt marsh mallow	Kosteletzkya virginica
Swamp rose mallow	Hibiscus moscheutos
Horsemint	Monarda punctata
Red hibiscus	Hibiscus coccineus
Wingstem	Verbesina alternifolia
False indigo bush	Amorpha fruticosa
Yellow Crownbeard	Verbesina occidentalis
Fireweed	Erechtites hieracifolia
American Pokeweed	Phytolacca americana
Field thistle	Cirsium discolor
Late-flowering boneset	Eupatorium serotinum
Beefsteak plant	Perilla frutescens
Smooth Creeping Bush Clover	Lespedeza repens
Virgin’s Bower	Clematis virginiana, seed pods
Pink wild bean	Strophostyles umbellata, flower and pods
Rabbit tobacco	Pseudognaphalium obtusifolium
Small red morning glory	Ipomoea coccinea
Green Lynx spider	Peucetia viridans, with egg case
Pluchea camphor	Pluchea camphorata
Reclining St. Andrews Cross	Hypericum stragulum
Small skipper	Family Hesperidae, basking
Robber Fly	Family Asilidae
Bumblebee	Bombus spp.
Blue morning glory	Ipomoea hederifolia
Tall goldenrod	Solidago altissima
White water pepper	Polygonum hydropiperoides
Daisy fleabane	Erigeron annuus
Passion vine	Passiflora incarnata
Gulf fritillary caterpillar	Agraulis vanilla
Monarch butterfly	Danaus plexippus
Nymphal leaf-footed bugs	Family Coreidae
Virginia tiger moth	Spilosoma virginica
Gulf fritillary butterfly	Agraulis vanilla
Climbing hempvine	Mikania scandens
Small white morning glory	Ipomoea lacunosa
Leafy elephants foot	Elephantopus carolinianus
Common climbing buckwheat	Fallopia scandens
Gull Fritillary chrysalis	Agraulis vanilla
Ailanthus Webworm Moth	Atteva punctella
Lance-leaf greenbrier	Smilax smallii
Crossvine	Bignonia capreolata
Catbrier	Smilax bona-nox
Black footed marasmius	Marasmielius nigripes
“Insect egg” slime mold	Leocarpus fragilis
Japanese parasol mushroom
Unidentified white mushroom
Beech blight aphids	Grylloprociphilus imbricator
Unidentified orbweaver spider	Family Araneidae