Today’s Ramble was lead by Dale Hoyt.
Here’s the link to
Don’s Facebook album for today’s Ramble. (All the photos in this post are compliments
of Don.) Don also put together an album of nifty photos he calls “Monroe
County Lichen Foray Lagniappe.” If you want to know what lagniappe means or
look at more of Don’s photos just visit this link.
Today’s post was written by Dale Hoyt.
Attendees: 22
Announcements:
There were quite a few announcements relevant to Ramblers
today:
·
The Alhuda Islamic Center of Athens is inviting us
for Eid dinner Sept. 18.
·
Anne Shenk’s retirement gathering Sept. 27
·
Sandy Creek Nature Center’s annual bird seed
sale begins.
·
Barnes & Noble bookfair Oct. 7-9 benefiting
the Garden’s children education program.
·
Oct. 8 our own Gary Crider will teach a course in
the Certificate in Native Plants program on how to identify and control exotic
pest plants.
For details about these announcements visit this page.
Misc. links you’ll enjoy:
My friend, Dac Crossley, reminisces here
about spiders he has known.
Today’s reading:
Dale read the lyrics to Misalliance
by Flanders and Swan; hear them sing the lyrics here. If you have trouble understanding the English accents you can find the
written lyrics here.
Today’s
route: We’ve been having trouble getting to the floodplain power line right-of-way
lately – we’ve run out of time the last two weeks. So today we hustled down the
cement walkway to the access road without stopping. We walked down the road to
the Passion vines on the fence and from there to the power line and down
towards the river. We returned to the arbor via the White trail.
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| Gulf fritillary caterpillar; in some individuals the purple stripe is more pronounced. |
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| Variegated fritillary caterpillar; beautiful red with white stripes. |
The Variegated Fritillary challenge: We stopped at the Passion
vines we’ve been watching disappear the past two weeks. Our challenge was to
find caterpillars of the Variegated Fritillary (VF) with only a description of
them to go on. By far the most numerous caterpillar was the Gulf Fritillary
(GF). The VF caterpillar looks very similar to the GF, but has a red body color
with white stripes that runs the length of the body. It was quite a challenge
but the Ramblers were up to it and soon discovered two VF caterpillars. The
adult VF butterfly is not as common as the GF and we didn’t see one this
morning. But if you come to the power line an hour or so later, when the sun is
shining on all the flowers, you may see one or two nectaring and searching for
uneaten Passion vines. While we were gazing on the remains of the Passion vines
Avis stomped on one of the fruits to show another Rambler why they are called
“Maypops.” But that origin of the name is folk etymology.
The real origin is an English corruption of the Indian word for the fruit: maracock, which means
“rattle-fruit.” When the gourd-like fruit is dried the seeds rattle
within it.
More about
insect metamorphosis.
The pupal stage of a butterfly is called a chrysalis or chrysalid
(pl.: chrysalides or chrysalises). Strictly speaking, the chrysalis is the hard
covering of the pupa which is inside the chrysalis, but, in general usage, it
is often used to mean the pupa plus the shell.
It is in the chrysalis that the miracle of metamorphosis takes place.
Within the body of the caterpillar, in addition to the customary organs
(muscles, digestive tract, nervous system, etc.), there are tiny sacs of
embryonic tissues called imaginal disks (ID) that will give rise
to all the parts of the adult. (You can think of these as equivalent to embryonic
stem cells.) During the formation of the chrysalis all the caterpillar tissues
and organs, except the nervous system and the ID, undergo self destruction. The
death of all these cells releases the substances that will fuel the growth of
the ID to make the adult form.
Two hormones, ecdysone and juvenile hormone (JH), are
involved in controlling the growth of the caterpillar through several molts and
its transformation into the chrysalis and then the adult. In simple terms,
pulses of ecdysone stimulate the molting process. What emerges from the molt is
determined by the level of JH. When JH is high the growth of ID is inhibited
and a caterpillar emerges from the molt. At the end of the last caterpillar molt the levels of JH begin to drop. The caterpillar stops eating, evacuates its hindgut and begins to wander. When it finds a suitable place to form a chrysalis it stops and after suspending itself begins to molt into the chrysalis stage. During the chrysalis stage the levels of JH
continue to decline and the ID are no longer inhibited. The ID cells start to divide rapidly and they begin to form
the adult structures. At the last molt the adult emerges from the chrysalis.
Silver-spotted skipper
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| Silver-spotted skipper on Ironweed |
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| Butterfly egg under the folded edge of American wisteria vine; the egg is a little less than 1 mm in diameter. |
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| A Silver-spotted skipper egg from another source for comparison with the one above. from https://www.learner.org/jnorth/tm/monarch/egg_butterflies_gallery.html |
Rosemary noticed that the American wisteria vine growing on the rail
fence by the road had several leaves with a section of the edge folded over. I
examined one and didn’t find anything under the fold, but a second leaf had the
empty shell of a butterfly egg under it. Several Ramblers were amazed at the
intricacy of the structure; the egg is less than a millimeter in diameter. What
kind of egg is it? One possibility is the Silver-spotted skipper. It’s
caterpillar feeds on wisteria and other legumes and this egg shell looks very
similar to pictures on the internet. The Butterflies of North America indicates
that the egg is: laid singly on the
upperside of host leaves. . . .Young larvae live in a folded-over flap of a
leaf. That matches what we saw.
Butterfly
supplement
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| Cloudless sulphur; we’ve seen the caterpillar feeding on Maryland senna. |
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| Gulf fritillary;underside of wings showing the silver spots. |
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| Gulf fritillary; upper surface of wings. |
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| Sleepy orange; the upper surface of the wings is orange; they almost never rest with the wings open. |
Don went back to the power line later in the morning when the sun was
high enough to shine on the vegetation. Butterflies are sun lovers and aren’t
usually very active until it warms up. Direct sunlight is their friend. So Don was
able to photograph several of the butterflies that we have only seen in the
caterpillar stages.
Other
insects.
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| Kissing bug; it can inflict a painful bite. |
Catherine pointed out a small insect nimbly moving through the vegetation
and I couldn’t get a good look at it. It kept scrambling away so I grabbed it just
as Catherine said: “I think it’s an assassin bug.” I immediately
regretted my haste. I felt a sharp, painful burning sensation in my index
finger. I finally got the critter in a box where I could get a good look at it.
It was a true bug in the Assassin bug family, Reduviidae. More specifically, it
was a Kissing bug, or Blood sucking conenose, Triatoma sp. Like all true bugs the assassin
bugs have a needle-like mouth part which they stab into their victim, injecting
a venom that paralyzes and digests at the same time. The digested liquid us
sucked back up. If you’ve read Annie Dillard’s Pilgrim at Tinker Creek you probably remember her stumbling upon a
frog that had been reduced to hollow sack of skin by the bite of another kind
of true bug. Kissing bugs normally feed on small mammals, ingesting small meals
of blood, like vampire bats with tiny straws. In Latin America a related species
transmits Chagas disease, a serious illness, but thankfully the North American
species do not. The initial pain I felt was uncomfortable, but not as bad as a
Fire ant or Honeybee sting; it was gone after 5 or 10 minutes.
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| It’s hard to pick out the Chinese praying mantis from among the vegetation. |
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| The sharp spines on the mantis front limbs insures a tight grasp on their prey. |
Nearby a large female Chinese praying mantis was found on a
Wingstem. This large predatory insects has raptorial front legs, meaning that
they function like the legs of raptors: they seize and hold their prey, which
consists of a variety of small and large insects. The mantis is an ambush
predator. By hanging out in flowers it comes in contact with pollinators like
bees, butterflies or moths. All it has to do is maneuver into striking distance
and quickly grab its victim. Because the mantis is not selective in its food
choice it is really not a good choice for pest control in the garden even
though it is often promoted as a “natural” or “organic”
solution. It can’t tell a harmful from a beneficial insect – they’re all food
to the mantis. Which I hope will cause you to contemplate the meaning of
“harmful” and “beneficial.” Is the enemy of my enemy my
friend?
During mating the female mantis is famous for eating the head of her mate
who blithely continues doing his duty. (Insert warning against anthropomorphic
comments.)
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| Common Ragweed showing foliage and inflorescence |
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| Each tiny white bump is a pollen-spewing flower in this enlargement of a Ragweed inflorescence. |
Ragweed is
flowering right now and, fortunately, there is not a lot of it in this part of
the garden. Ragweed flowers are very tiny and inconspicuous, so small that most
people either don’t notice them or don’t recognize them as flowers. It is
responsible for most of the allergies in late summer and fall. The plant is
wind pollinated and the pollen grains are very small and dry, so they can be,
and are, carried by the wind for hundreds of miles. Because the Ragweed flowers
are so unnoticeable another plant, Goldenrod is often blamed for causing
allergies in late summer or fall. This is because it, Goldenrod, begins to
bloom at the same time as Ragweed. Noticing the correlation between Goldenrod flowering
and the onset of allergy symptoms caused people to mistakenly blame it for
causing the runny nose and itching eyes. But Goldenrods are insect pollinated
and they have large, sticky pollen grains that are not transported by the wind.
Goldenrod is blameless, the victim of confusing correlation with cause.
The Wingstems
Today was a review of how to identify the three species of Wingstems (genus Verbesina) that are all blooming in the garden right now. In this case the scientific names are more stable than the variety of common names. Remembering the combinations of flower color and leaf arrangement is the first step in identifying them. (Recognizing them comes later.) I’ll use the common names from Linda’s book in the summary below:
Yellow flowers:
opposite leaves: V. occidentalis (Southern Crownbeard)
alternate leaves: V. alternifolia (Wingstem)
White flowers
alternate leaves: V. virginica (Frostweed)
Sunflowers
There are two sunflowers (genus Helianthus) blooming in the Garden right now. They are a little more difficult to identify than the wingstems, so Don made a special effort to take pictures of the crucial parts. I hope this helps.
Rough-leaf Sunflower:
mostly opposite leaves
Upper surface of leaves very rough
Under surface of leaves with glands, not as rough as upper
Base of leaf blade rounded
Petioles longer (3/4 inch)
Woodland Sunflower
leaves opposite to alternate
Both surfaces of leaves very rough
Base of leaf blade tapered
Petioles short to none
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| Rough-leaf Sunflower Note rounded base of leaf blade |
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| Woodland Sunflower |
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| Rough-lead Sunflower; Note longer petioles |
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| Woodland Sunflower; Note shorter petioles; tapered base of leaf blade |
SUMMARY
OF OBSERVED SPECIES:
|
Common Name |
Scientific Name |
|
Passionvine |
Passiflora |
|
Gulf |
Agraulis |
|
Variegated |
Euptoieta |
|
American |
Wisteria |
|
Yellow |
Verbesina |
|
Tiger |
Subfamily Arctiinae |
|
Bumblebee |
Bombus |
|
Spittlebugs |
Family |
|
Chinese |
Tenodera sinensis |
|
Wingstem |
Verbesina |
|
Late |
Eupatorium |
|
Sericea |
Lespedeza cuneata |
|
Ticktrefoil |
Desmodium |
|
Kissing |
Reduviidae: |
|
Leafy |
Elephantopus |
|
Tall |
Cirsium altissimum |
|
Common |
Heterotheca |
|
Asian |
Harmonia axyridis |
|
Rough-leaf |
Helianthus |
|
Woodland |
Helianthus |
|
Eastern |
Papiliop |
|
Sleepy |
Abaeis |
|
Cloudless |
Phoebis |
|
Tall |
Vernonia |
|
Silver-spotted |
Epargyreus |
|
Mild |
Persicaria hydropiperoides |
|
Arrow-leaf |
Persicaria sagittata |
|
Small |
Ipomoea |
|
Common |
Ambrosia |
|
Carolina |
Solanum |
|
Climbing |
Mikania |
|
Virginia |
Commelina |
|
White |
Verbesina |