Today’s report
was written by Dale Hoyt. The photos that appear in this blog are taken by Don
Hunter; you can see all the photos Don took of today’s Ramble here.
Twenty-five ramblers met at the Arbor at 8:30AM on a fine
morning.
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4th Annual Bluestems and Bluejeans Native
Thursday, Friday
October 1st
4:00 pm – 6:00
Mimsie Lanier Center for Native Plant Studies at |
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Pollinator Garden Sunday, Oct. 4th @2PM
Contact Debbie
Will be
Sponsored by the
Take GA15 from
Go left on
The Herb Walk is |
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Dan Williams will lead a Wednesday, October 7 at 9:00AM Sandy Creek Nature Center. |
Today’s reading:
Hugh read a passage about Flying Squirrels from How to be Wild, by Simon Barnes (pp. 162-164):
Dusk is the time of the flying squirrels. The first one:
shuffling up the side of a tree like a squirrel hoping to escape recognition
for a rather unedifying reason, wrapped up in a cloak. This furry cape ruffled
and rippled with each movement: the entire animal looked like a small bedroom
slipper running away by itself. At last it reached the topmost branches, which
bent and swayed under his slight weight.
And once he got there you could see him nerving himself
up for the next bit. Oooh-er!
I’m going to do it! I really am! Next time! No, time after that. All alright then, Now! Oooooo – and with a wild, despairing leap, the squirrel left from the tree and spread out his crazy furry membrane
that stretched between his legs, becoming in a trice the worst glider you have
ever seen. The
completed craft was on the far edge of control: there seemed to be no lateral
stability whatsoever: the
squirrel wobbled from side to side, correction, over
correction, recorrection, oscillating wildly, until,
apparently more by luck than judgement, it slapped itself onto another trunk and
stopped there: regrouping,
apparently saying to itself: bloody hell, that was close. I thought I was a
goner that time. I‘m never going to do that again.
Not until. .. well,
I’ll try it again. just once more. I’m going to do it you know ... and up he shuffled again,
furry cloak aflap, till he was at the top again and ready to try another
demented leap into the void.
This was not flying. It really wasn’t much better than
falling. It was a kind of parachute jumping: completed under some hazy notion
of control. A swift can manage a flight of three years: a flying squirrel can
manage about half a minute. Swifts fly [from England] to Africa and back: the
record for flying squirrels is about 500 yards. Flying squirrels are the
funniest animals I have ever seen, but no one could call them the finest flying
machine ever designed.
Are they an evolutionary mistake? No, certainly not:
there are 43 species of them worldwide, including one in Siberia. There are
fourteen in Borneo alone: from the pygmy flying squirrels at eight centimetres
in length, to the giants, five times as big, They are a successful little
group.
Are they improving? Are the forces of evolution trying to
make them more sophisticated, less funny? Again: certainly not. Why should they
improve? They work perfectly well as they are. The blind forces of evolution
are not seeking to create perfection: they are seeking something that works
well enough: well enough to permit the creature to survive, breed, become an
ancestor.
The flying squirrels are gorgeous proof that evolution is
not about perfection. This is an absurd and glorious jerry-rigged creature . .
.
. . .the process of life isn’t about the seeking after
perfection. It is about the seeking after even more life. Those squirrels: like
the magnificent men in their flying machines, are gallant pioneers of the
skyways, flinging themselves into the air once again with a crazy fecklessness: faulty, optimistic, jerry-rigged, jaunty,
indomitable, and
apparently deranged: perhaps the ultimate symbol of life on earth.
Today’s route: Down
the cement walkway through the Shade garden, across the road and take the White
trail to the power line. Turn right on the power line and go uphill to the
locked gate, then turn left and follow the fence to the White trail. We rambled
along the White trail until a little past 10:00 and then walked back along the
White trail and returned to the parking lot.
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| Witch Hazel flower buds |
Shade garden:
We stopped to take a look at the tiny flower buds of the Witch Hazel. They look
almost exactly the same as they did last year at this time. Witch Hazel is
remarkable for blooming in late fall when almost no other plants are flowering.
We’ll pass by this area later in October and November and to watch the progress
of the flower buds.
Question of the
week: do you know the other plant in our area that flowers in late
fall/winter? The first rambler to email me with the correct answer gets a
quarter at the next ramble.
White trail:
We stopped to take a look at the American Beech with the long branch reaching
out to the sunlight in the path. We’ve followed the development of the Beech
nuts on this plant this year and today some of us were surprised to discover there
weren’t nearly as
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| Beech buds |
many visible as there were the last time we visited. Blame
the squirrels. Rosemary won the 25 cent reward for the first to discover one.
Also noted were the typical Beech buds, almost fully developed. These sharp
pointed, cigar shaped buds house the future leaves and twigs that will appear
next spring. There is no other tree in this area that has similar buds.
One of the lower limbs of the beech was
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| Sooty black mold on Beech leaves |
covered with
sooty black mold, Scorias spongiosa.
We commonly see this mold on or beneath beech trees. It is not really infecting
the tree – it is growing on the “honeydew” produced by aphids located
on the branches above. The honeydew is the same sugary solution that spots your
windshield when you park your car under a tree during the summer. The mold is
simply growing on a rich carbohydrate source that is really just aphid poop. Of
course the aphids produce it by sucking the sap of the tree, so, in an indirect
way, the mold is really growing on the tree – just not in the way you think.
Later on today’s walk we found a colony of Beech blight aphids on another tree
and noticed a similar sooty mold on the ground beneath the colony.
Of course we had to stop and examine the fruits of the
Hophornbeam that are now fully mature, brown clusters of hop-like seed pods.
This year is certainly the year for this particular tree to reproduce, but many
others of the same species in the wooded areas are not following suit. Is it
because that this tree is in a nice, sunny location?
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| Wild sensitive plant |
One of the nice finds today was a single individual
of Wild Sensitive Plant (Chamaecrista
nictitans). Don’s closeup of
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| Wild sensitive plant flower; extrafloral nectary on petiole at bottom pair of leaflets |
the flower also shows the conspicuous extra
floral nectary on the petiole of the compound leaves. Nectar produced in these
structures attracts ants by offering them a sweet drink without having to climb
around inside the petals. While on the plant the ants will eat any herbivorous
caterpillars or insect eggs they run across, so the plant benefits from their
presence.
Other plants still flowering in this area were Small red
morning glory, Pennsylvania smartweed, Camphorweed Golden aster, Yellow
crownbeard, Forked blue curls, Late blue aster, Leafy elephants foot and
Ragweed. We also found a fern, Ebony spleenwort tucked away in the trees by the
edge of the path. The grasses, Splitbeard bluestem and Little bluestem were
also flowering.
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| Ragweed |
The Ragweed is responsible for the persecution of Goldenrod. It
flowers at the same time as Goldenrod, but its flowers are wind pollinated and,
therefore, very inconspicuous. They produce copious, dry and very light pollen
grains that are carried for miles by the breezes. It is these pollen grains
that cause the seasonal allergy, Hay fever. Goldenrod flowers are pollinated by
insects and their pollen grains are large and sticky, not likely to be blown
about by a wandering breeze. But because they are often the most conspicuous
flower open during Hay fever season they get all the blame. Moral: Don’t
confuse correlation with causation.
Elaine Nash prairie:
Some of the fall wildflowers are showing their age just as the grasses we saw
last week are beginning to bloom. The white crownbeard was not much in evidence
today, but it is still there, just not obvious as it was a few weeks ago
because most of the white petals have dropped. Without the petals the plants no
longer stand out; they just blend in with the general green vegetation
background.
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| Puffball |
At the bottom of the prairie nestled among the grasses
was a group of puffballs. These are fungi that produce spores within an outer
wall. The interior is solid when they are young and, when mature, becomes a dry
powdery mass of spores that are dispersed when the puffball is disturbed by a
mechanical force, like raindrops.
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| Linear ant mound |
In the path we found another linear ant mound. I still
have no idea what causes these mounds to be so straight. This one was about a
3-4 feet in length and less than an inch in width, which was variable.
Entomologists that I have talked to have never heard of such a thing.
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| Dog fennel; closeup of flowers |
Dog fennel has begun blooming. It is in the Aster family,
but unlike most other plants here in that family it is wind pollinated. Most
wind pollinated flowers have no petals – they would interfere with pollen
dispersal and Dog fennel is no exception to that generalization.
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| Roundleaf thoroughwort |
One new plant was encountered: Roundleaf thoroughwort.
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| Wreath goldenrod |
The other species that are still blooming are: Goldenrod,
Rabbit tobacco, White Crownbeard, Blue mist flower, Slender gerardia and Blue
stem or wreath goldenrod.
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| Basilica orbweaver |
This is the time of year when spiders become more
apparent and we saw three different orb weavers today, one of which we could
not identify with any confidence. The other two were Spinybacked orbweaver and Basilica
orbweaver.
White trail: At
the top of the prairie we turned to the left and entered the woods to get to
the White trail. Almost immediately we saw spectacular mushrooms, the first of
many we were to find today.
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| Cinnabar polypore |
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| Cinnabar polypore undersurface showing pores |
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| Crown-tipped coral |
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| Turkey tail |
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| Multicolor gilled polypore |
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| Multicolor gilled polypore showing gills on undersurface |
The Multicolor gilled polypore is interesting because the DNA evidence shows that it is a true polypore but it has gills on its lower surface, like a gilled mushroom. Nature throws us a curve every once in a while.
You can see the other mushrooms we saw today by visiting Don’s facebook album (see link at top of this post).
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| Grape fern with fertile frond |
Not everything we saw was a fungus. We found a small
cluster of Grape ferns, one of which had a fertile frond. The fertile frond
arises from ground level in the Grape fern which is the way that you
distinguish it from Rattlesnake fern in which the fertile frond arises from the
point at which you find the sterile fronds.
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| Luna moth cocoon; exit hole at top |
Someone picked up an old cocoon from which a Luna moth
had emerged.
White Oaks vs. Red
Oaks: In our area the oaks can be divided into two groups of species: the
White oaks and the Red oaks. These differ in many ways but I just want to
focus on the acorns right now. I brought a recently fallen white oak acorn to
show – it was already germinating when I found it. You can see the embryonic
root projecting from the pointy end of the acorn. This illustrates one
difference between the white and red oaks: white oak acorns can germinate right
after falling. red oak acorns remain dormant until the following spring.
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| Germinating White oak acorn |
Another difference between the two groups is in their
tannin content. White oak acorns have a lower tannin content than do red oak
acorns. Tannin is a substance that imparts a bitter taste to plant tissues. It
is responsible for the astringent quality of tea and red wine. (In wine it comes
from the skin of the grape, which is why white wines, which are made from
skinless grapes, lack the bitter quality of the reds). Tannins are found in
other plant tissues as well. They combine with other molecules, especially
proteins, to permanently interfere with their normal functions. Ancient humans discovered
that animal skins could be treated with extracts from oaks or firs to create
leather. The old German term for a fir, which survives in the Christmas song “O
Tannenbaum” (literally, fir – tree) was adopted for the process of making
leather: tanning. Since leather is usually darker than the original skin
“tanning” has also applies to the darkening of human skin when
exposed to sunlight, even though the underlying process is unrelated to making
leather. Plants use tannins to protect their parts from herbivores. An
herbivore that eats a leaf with a lot of tannins will not grow as fast one
consuming a leaf with lower tannin content. Why? The tannins will combine with
the animals digestive enzymes, inactivating them. This makes the food less
nutritious because it cannot be digested as efficiently. Over evolutionary time
herbivores will switch to plants with lower tannin content. (Sorry for the
digression; back to the acorns.)
This difference in tannin content between white and red oaks has ecological consequences. Gray squirrels are major predators of acorns.
When they find a white oak acorn they usually eat it. Those they do not eat are
nipped “in the bud” – the squirrel bites off the end where the
embryonic plant is located and then buries the acorn for future use. But,
because of their lower tannin content, the white oak acorns are more likely to
suffer fungal attacks during the winter. On the other hand, a red oak acorn
is immediately buried. The higher tannin content better protects the acorn from
attacks by fungi through the winter months and the squirrel has a larder of
food to draw on over the winter; even if it tastes bitter. Sometimes bitter is
better.
Acorns were a staple food for many Native American
peoples and they had ways to remove the tannins before consuming them. If you
want to try eating acorns this website has the necessary
instructions and recipes (Note: I have not tried any of these. Caveat emptor.)
If you’re simply interested in growing oaks you’ll find this publication
has a lot of information about acorns, including how to prepare them for
germination and how to store them.
Mea culpa: Tim
mentioned another difference between the white oaks and red oaks: white oak
acorns mature in the same year while red oak acorns mature in two years. I
said that I didn’t think that was right. I was wrong. I don’t know if this is
related to the tannin content difference or not. There are other nutritional
differences between the two oak groups: the red acorns have higher lipid content,
making them a better choice of food in cold weather.
White rot vs.
Brown rot mushrooms: Mushrooms that grow on dead wood are digesting the
cell walls of the former tree. People noticed that the same kind of wood being
rotted by different mushrooms often developed different colors: with some mushrooms
it became brown and with others it was white. To understand these differences
you have know a little about woody plant cells. Plant cells differ from animal
cells in that each plant cell is surrounded by a wall. The principle component
of this wall is cellulose. Paper and cotton are made from the cell walls of
plants. But you’ve undoubtedly noticed that wet paper isn’t very strong. So how
could a tree be able to support its massive weight if its component cell walls
are inherently weak? The secret is a second substance that is incorporated into
the walls of tree cells: lignin. Lignin binds to cellulose molecules and gives
them strength and rigidity. (The most abundant complex molecules on earth are
cellulose and lignin.) Cellulose by itself is white in color (think paper or
cotton) but lignin is brown. So the higher the lignin content of the cell wall,
the browner the color. The two types of mushrooms (brown rot or white rot) are
degrading either the cellulose or the lignin component of the cell wall. If a
mushroom digests the cellulose the brown lignin will remain, therefore it’s a
brown rot fungus. But if the mushroom digest the lignin the light colored
cellulose will remain – it’s a white rot fungus.
Sidebar: Making
paper from ground up tree wood pulp requires the removal of the lignin bound to
the cellulose. This is done by using some very harsh chemicals that produce
obnoxious odors and, if not properly treated, severe water pollution. Since the
white rot fungi essentially do the same job, removal of lignin, some people
think that they could be adapted to the commercial paper production process.
This is currently still a research idea and is far from being a practical,
commercially viable process.
We were running out of time so we turned around and took
the White trail back to the parking lot. On the way we spotted the leaf of a Cranefly
orchid and after that first one we noticed several more. The single leaf lies
flat on the forest floor. It is green on top and maroon on the undersurface. It
stays out all winter, slowly photosynthesizing throughout the cold weather,
taking advantage of the open canopy after all the trees have dropped their
leaves. In late spring the leaf finally senesces and in mid-summer a single
flowering stalk emerges from the ground, bearing tiny brown flowers.
Then we adjourned to Donderos’ for our customary food and
beverage.
SUMMARY OF
OBSERVED SPECIES:
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American beech |
Fagus grandifolia |
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Black sooty mold |
Scorias spongiosa |
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Marasmius (black footed?) |
Marasmiellus nigripes? |
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Red morning glory |
Ipomoea coccinea |
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Pennsylvania smartweed |
Polygonum pensylvanicum |
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Golden aster |
Heterotheca latifolia |
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Yellow crownbeard |
Verbesina occidentalis |
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Splitbeard bluestem |
Adropogon ternarius |
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Forked blue curls |
Trichostema dichotomum |
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Wild sensitive plant |
Chamaecrista nictitans |
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Ebony spleenwort |
Asplenium platyneuron |
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Late blue aster |
Symphyotrichum patens |
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Little bluestem |
Schizachyrium scoparium |
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Ragweed |
Ambrosia artemisiifolia |
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Leafy elephants foot |
Elephantopus carolinianus |
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Puffball mushroom |
Lycoperdon sp. |
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Goldenrod |
Solidago sp. |
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Rabbit tobacco |
Pseudognaphalium obtusifolium |
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Dog fennel |
Eupatorium capillifolium |
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orb weaver |
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White Crownbeard |
Verbesina virginica |
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Roundleaf thoroughwort |
Eupatorium rotundifolium |
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Blue mist flower |
Conoclinium coelestinum |
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Slender gerardia |
Agalinis tenuifolia |
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Spiny backed orbweaver |
Gasteracantha cancriformis |
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Blue stem or wreath goldenrod |
Solidago caesia |
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Cinnabar polypore |
Pycnoporus cinnabarinus |
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Luna moth cocoon |
Actias luna |
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Crown tipped coral mushroom |
Clavicorona pyxidata |
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Turkey tail mushroom |
Trametes versicolor |
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Multicolor gill polypore mushroom |
Lenzites betulina |
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Purple cort mushroom |
Cortinarius violaceus |
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White cheese polypore |
Tyromyces chioneus |
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Brown toothed polypore |
Hydnellum sp. |
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Tall, light brown/tan mushroom |
Amanita sp. |
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Grape fern |
Botrychium biternatum |
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Fragile dapperling (the yellow parasol) |
Leucocoprinus fragilissimus |
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Chanterelle mushroom |
Cantharellus cibarius |
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White (clear) jelly fungus |
Tremella fuciformis |
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Red oak |
Quercus rubrum |
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White oak |
Quercus alba |
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Scarlet oak |
Quercus coccinea |
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Cranefly orchid |
Tipularia discolor |
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Fuzzy slime mold |
Chromelosporium fulvum |