Today’s Ramble was led by Linda Chafin.

The photos in this post, except where
noted, came from Don’s Facebook album (here’s the link).

Today’s post was written by Linda Chafin .

30 Ramblers met today.

Announcements:

1) Don announced more details about his Coweeta Hydrologic
Laboratory trip for Nature Ramblers. Visit our
Announcements page for all the details.

2) Katherine brought a hummingbird feeder to give away.

3) Dale handed out new name tags for most of those present. You are responsible for this name tag. Save it and bring it with you to each
Ramble. (Keep it in your car so you don’t forget it.)

No reading today

Late addition (8/27): Cure yourself of tree blindness. 

Today’s Route:   We left the entrance plaza at
the Visitor Center and made our way down the paved path to the International
Garden, passing by the American South section, then taking a left onto the path
to the South America section. Here we took a path out to the Pitcher Plant Bog.
Leaving the bog, we made our way through the Native American Southeastern
Tribes and Herb and Physic Gardens, before retiring to the Cafe Botanica.

Show and
Tell:  Dale brought two mystery plants and several Southern Red Oak limb
tips to show.

Ragweed infloresence

Ragweed leaf

The first mystery plant was Ragweed, identified by its raggedy
leaves and nondescript, green flowers in slender spikes. The plant is
monoecious (“one house”), with flowers of both sexes in the same spike-like flower
cluster. The female flowers are at the bottom of the flower cluster and the
male flowers are at the top. The light-weight pollen produced by the male
flowers can be carried for hundreds of miles in the wind. Ragweed pollen is the
culprit behind many late summer and fall allergy attacks. The allergen is
actually a substance on the surface of the pollen grains. The plant is
self-sterile, meaning that pollen from the male flowers are incompatible with
female flowers of the same plant, so their close proximity in the same flower
cluster does not result in self-pollination.

Spanish Needles flower heads

Spanish Needles bipinnate leaf

Dale compared Ragweed
with a second mystery plant whose leaves look suspiciously like Ragweed’s but
the flowers are very different. Its “flowers” are actually composite flower
heads, with tiny, dark yellow disk flowers in the center surrounded by a few
yellow ray flowers that look like petals. The mystery lay with the stems –
which are square – and the leaves – which are opposite. Doesn’t that make the
plant a mint?  Ah, would that plants
followed our rules! No, this is Spanish
Needles, a member of the composite, or Aster, family. Several plant
families have adopted the Mint family model of square stems and opposite
leaves, such as some species in the verbena and snapdragon families. Spanish
Needles is known to most of us in the form of its annoying seeds that are
pointed and barbed such that they easily work their way into and through socks,
sticking one in the ankles.

Southern Red Oak; last year’s acorns still developing; will mature this fall.

Southern Red Oak; this year’s acorns; will mature and fall next year.

Dale also brought along branches from a Southern Red Oak to demonstrate the two-year acorn-maturing cycle
for oaks in the red oak subgenus.
The branches were long enough to have growth from last year (2016) as well as from
this year’s (2017) growing season. The acorns on the newer growth are very small
and bud-like. Further up the branch, the acorns on last year’s growth were larger
and more developed, with cups (or caps) and nuts clearly distinguishable. These
acorns will complete their development this fall, to the delight of deer, squirrels,
chipmunks, and other wildlife.

Oaks in the white oak
subgenus have acorns that mature in one year so you would not find both
immature and mature acorns on the same branch. Interestingly, acorns in the
white oak group are tastier than red oak’s. Spending fewer months exposed to
nut-eating animals, they have less of the bitter-tasting tannin and were the
acorns preferred for eating by Native Americans. Apparently, animals aren’t so
picky because deer, squirrels, etc., relish all the acorns equally. Another way
to distinguish between trees in the red oak group and trees in the white oak
group is the leaves: red oak leaves have pointed lobes tipped with tiny
bristles; white oak leaves have rounded lobes without a bristle.

Some common Georgia red oaks: 
Northern Red Oak, Southern Red Oak, Scarlet Oak, Water Oak, Black Oak.

Some common Georgia white oaks: 
White Oak, Chestnut Oak, Swamp Chestnut Oak, Live Oak (Georgia’s state
tree).

Today’s focus:  Plants in the pitcher plant bog and other
things in the International Garden

American South
Section:

We
saw what we first thought were spadefoot frogs but, according to Jeff, they are
either American or Fowler’s toads.

We
saw several fungi, including Japanese parasols, which occur in North America,
Japan, and Europe, and small puffballs.

Narrow-Leaved
Ironweed is in flower in the American South section. In the same genus and with
similar flower heads as the Tall Ironweed that grows so robustly in the
Garden’s powerline right-of-way, these narrow-leaved plants are adapted to life
in the dry, extremely well drained soils of Georgia’s Coastal Plain sandhills. Plants
with narrow leaves will lose less moisture because the small amount of leaf
surface reduces transpiration (water loss). Plus, the leaf doesn’t heat up as
much in south Georgia’s hot summers. Typically, narrow leaves are also rolled
under along their edges, partially covering and protecting a line of stomates,
or pores, that open to let in carbon dioxide for photosynthesis. The plant must
take in CO₂ but runs the risk of drying out when the pores are open.
Most dry-land species have “figured out” how to balance the need for CO₂
with the need to conserve water. Other such adaptations include waxy or hairy
leaf surfaces and leaves held at a slant to the sun’s rays.

Obedient plant

In
the same bed is a large patch of Obedient Plants. It’s named Obedient Plant because you can push the
flower to one side and it will stay “obediently” where pushed. It’s a native mint
family species, with square stems, opposite leaves, and two-lipped flowers. As
mentioned earlier, other plant families may have square stems and opposite
leaves, but the mint family also has distinctive tubular flowers with a downturned
lower lip and an upturned or projecting  upper lip. The lower lip usually has a pattern
of contrastingly colored lines or dots that direct insects into the center of
the flower where nectar or pollen or both are available. These nectar guides or
“runway lights” may be even more elaborate than humans can see. Bees can see
colors in the ultraviolet end of the spectrum, and flowers often have patterns
visible to them but not to us. This
website has images of flowers under both human-visible light and
bee-visible UV light: Flowers in Ultraviolet (www.naturfotograf.com).

Spanish America Section:

Turk’s Cap Hibiscus

Linda
pointed out the vivid red flowers of Turk’s
Cap Hibiscus, a member of the Hibiscus or Mallow family. Although the
partially closed flowers are different from the wide-open flowers of most
hibiscus, this species has the typical Mallow family arrangement of stamens and
pistil. The stamens are fused into a hollow tube that surrounds the style, and
the “sticky stigmas” protrude from the top of the tube. In this plant the
stamens and stigmas extend well beyond the petals. Another typical hibiscus
feature found on this plant is the whorl of bracts surrounding the base of the
flower.

Camphor Weed

Some
folks quickly picked up the smell of a Camphor
Weed plant, a member of the Aster family with pale pink or lavender flower
heads and strongly smelling vegetation. Smell is a subjective thing – most
folks find the odor offensive, likening it to the smell of a cat litter box,
and others sort of like the way it smells. None of the ramblers seemed to think
it smelled like camphor. Although smelly plant compounds evolved to deter herbivores,
strong-smelling plants often turn up in traditional, non-western medicine and
attract the attention of scientists who are looking for medicinal uses of
plants. Members of this genus, Pluchea,
are packed with compounds that have been investigated for anti-bacterial,
anti-malarial, or even anti-cancer activity.

The needle-like point of a Soft Rush leaf

Soft Rush fuit cluster

Crossing
the artificial stream that bisects the International Garden, we stopped to
admire another very effective plant defense: the sharply pointed tips Soft Rush stems. This also provided an
opportunity to review what we know about the stems of three groups of grass-like
plants: “sedges have edges, rushes are round, and grasses are hollow all the
way to the ground.” Soft Rush stems are indeed round in cross-section and not
at all hollow–they are filled with a spongy pith that allows oxygen and carbon
dioxide to flow within the stems, an important feature in plants that inhabit
the low-oxygen soils found in wetlands.

Pitcher Plant Bog Garden:

Late
summer is a good time to visit bogs, especially in the Coastal Plain. Linda recommended
that folks visit some of the spectacular bogs found in the Florida panhandle,
such as those at Blackwater River State Forest and Apalachicola National
Forest. Sunflowers, Blazing Stars, and Meadow-beauties are all at their prime
this time of year, up until frost.

Pitcher plant flower(L); White-top Pitchers (R)

Pitcher Plants flower in the spring and have
lost their petals by now, but fascinating aspects of their floral anatomy are
still visible in the spent flowers nodding at the top of tall stalks. The most
obvious feature is the upside-down “umbrella” that tops the pistil. In most
flowers, stigmas are fairly inconspicuous structures held at the top of the
style, but in pitcherplants the whole umbrella is an expanded style. Pollen
deposited on the tips of the umbrella’s “ribs” can find its way to the ovary
and effect fertilization. The umbrella combined with the drooping petals also
ensure that insects are trapped long enough to bumble around among the stamens,
picking up pollen which they may carry to the next plant.

Contents of a pitcher; insects in various states of decay. Yummy!

In a further affront to our
olfactory organs, we split lengthwise a pitcher of a White-top Pitcher Plant to expose the insects which had been
trapped and partially digested (cue: totally disgusting sights and smells!).
Insects are attracted by sweet smelling nectar produced around the top rim of
the pitcher and, if they fall in, are prevented from escaping by downward
pointing hairs or slippery surfaces. Once trapped in the bottom of the pitcher,
their bodies are digested by enzymes produced by bacteria that live in the
pitcher, as well as those produced by the plant. In fact, pitcherplant pitchers support a suite of creatures that depend
on them for shelter and food, including some that are found nowhere else but those
pitchers, a wonderful example of symbiosis. Both plant and bacteria depend on
this insect soup for nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorus. Wetland soils,
where pitcherplants live, are always low in available nitrogen, and pitcherplants,
sundews, butterworts, and bladderworts make up for this lack with their carnivorous
lifestyle. 

Virginia Meadow-beauty

Pale Meadow-beauty

Other flowering bog species
included Fragrant Flatsedge, Virginia Meadow-beauty, Pale Meadow-beauty, Yellow-eyed Grass,
Seed-box, Round-leaved Thoroughwort, Dwarf St. John’s Wort, and Poor Joe. Of special interest were the
stamens in the meadow-beauty flowers, with their hinged, boat-shaped anthers. The
anthers have tiny pores at their tips and are buzz-pollinated by bumblebees.
The fruits that result from pollination and fertilization look like tiny,
wooden vases and persist on the dried plants through the winter. There are nine
species of Meadow-beauty in Georgia, but the only common one in the Piedmont is
Maryland Meadow-beauty, aka Pale Meadow Beauty, which has white or very pale
pink flowers. 

Flower stalks of Yellow-eyed Grass (not really a grass!)

Single flower of Yellow-eyed Grass

Tall
stalks rising from a clump of Yellow-eyed
Grass caught our eye. At the top of each Yellow-eyed Grass stalk there is a
cone-like structure composed of many brown, overlapping scales. Each day, a yellow,
three-petaled flower emerges from under a scale for a few hours then withers
away. (The time and duration of flowering differs among species.) We saw both
withered and fresh flowers. Katherine noted that there are many species of
yellow-eyed grass, up to 20 in Georgia. Many are rare due to the loss of their
bog and wet prairie habitats due to draining and conversion to pine
plantations. Yellow-eyed Grasses vary in size from a few inches to several feet
tall. Their flowers are pollinated by bees and flies but will also
self-pollinate if insects don’t show up during their brief flowering period. 

A
large Ogeechee Lime tree shades the
eastern edge of the Bog Garden. Not at all related to the citrus family, Ogeechee
Lime is actually a species of black gum. (Another of these trees is planted in
the wet area at the western edge of the Dunson Native Flora Garden.) Ogeechee
Lime is named for Georgia’s Ogeechee River and for the tart juice in its green,
somewhat lime-shaped fruits. There are two other wetland-inhabiting black gums in
Georgia, Water Tupelo and Swamp Black Gum.

Path near Freedom Plaza:

We
stopped at the Pawpaw patch and
commented on the relative lack of fruit this year and how the crushed leaves
smell like green bell peppers.

Winged Sumac stem showing lenticels (red spots)

Part of Winged Sumac leaf showing the “wings” between the leaflets

Nearby,
is a Winged Sumac in full flower.
Most conspicuous in late summer and fall when their dark red, conical fruiting
clusters brighten the banks of highways, Winged Sumac also has a lot to offer a
botanist with a good eye and a hand lens. Its small yellow-green flowers have 5
petals, the stems are hairy and peppered with tiny red lenticels, and the
compound leaves have up to 21 pointed leaflets. The common name derives from
the narrow wings of leaf tissue that connect each pair of leaflets with the
pair above and below. This is a species that deserves to be in the horticultural
trade: its leaves have beautiful red fall color, the flowers attract many types
of insects, and the foliage supports a variety of caterpillars. The fuzzy red
fruits are famous for their tart, lemony taste and are used by wild-food
fanciers to make pink lemonade (many recipes are online). 

Freedom Plaza:

Freedom
Plaza is a great place to see large plantings of several very showy natives in
full flower: Joe Pye Weed, Eared Coneflower, and Spotted Bee Balm. All three of these
species were swarming with bees, butterflies, and other insect pollinators. 

Eared Coneflower

Joe Pye Weed (with Tiger Swallowtail)

Spotted Bee Balm

Joe
Pye Weed greeted us as we arrived at the plaza, its huge, pinkish-purple
inflorescences crowned with both male and female yellow tiger swallowtail
butterflies.

Just
past the Joe Pye Weed is a stand of the tall, rare Eared Coneflowers. Typically
found growing on sand bars and stream banks, they appear to be thriving in the
dry soil at the base of the Freedom Plaza wall. It’s often the case that
“wetland plants” will thrive in upland garden settings, and in nature are confined
to wetlands because there are fewer plant competitors. 

Butterfly Weed

We
saw a couple of small plants of Butterfly Weed, a member of the milkweed genus,
sporting some late-flowering orange blossoms. Milkweeds are essential to the
life cycle of Monarch butterflies, its leaves exclusively providing food to the
Monarch larvae (caterpillars). The leaves are full of a milky latex that
contain toxic glycosides that the caterpillars take up and later pass to the
adult butterfly during metamorphosis. Birds quickly learn to leave these adults
alone because the toxins will make them sick or even kill them. Ironically, the
one milkweed species that lacks the toxic latex is the one named Butterfly
Weed. Even so, it is still used by the Monarch as a host plant for its larvae.
The adult Monarchs that result from these caterpillars are not particularly
toxic but are avoided by birds who have learned to avoid Monarchs in general.

Herb and Physic Garden:

Clearwing Moth nectaring on Cleome (note the proboscis inserted in the flower)

A
Clearwing Moth was busy nectaring on
the flowers of Cleome, or Spider Plant, a showy plant native to
southern South America. Meanwhile, a Ruby-throated Hummingbird zoomed around,
seeming impatient while the moth and the ramblers had their fill.

SUMMARY OF OBSERVED SPECIES:

Today’s Ramble was led by Dale Hoyt.

The photos in this post, except where
noted, came from Don’s Facebook album (here’s the link).

Today’s post was written by Dale Hoyt
& Linda Chafin.

29 Ramblers met today.

Announcements:  

1) One of our Ramblers, Katherine Edison has started a private Facebook group. You may already be a member. The Administrators for the group are Katherine, Emily Carr and Don Hunter. They can add your name to the membership. Once you’re a member you can invite others to join.

Here is the purpose of the group:

“This Facebook group was formed to give members of the Weekly Nature
Ramble at the State Botanical Garden of Georgia a way to connect, share
and communicate about nature topics outside of the actual Ramble. It is a
place for Ramblers to share their own photos or reports of interesting
sightings from the Bot Garden or from around the area. It is a place to
share relevant poems, readings, articles and research. It is a place to
connect Ramblers for nature related activities—hikes
with friends, book groups, interesting movies or lectures. It is a
place to share information about fellow Ramblers—significant milestones,
honors, achievements, moves, or health concerns.”

Gary Crider is handling the campaign to have a whole row (12 seats) at the Cine theater become a “Rambler Row.” If you haven’t heard about this fund raising effort please contact Gary at gcrider AT charter DOT net (replace the capitals with the corresponding symbols).

Today’s reading was sent in by a
Rambler who has difficulty making our 8:30 Rambles because of living in
Clarkesville. It’s a poem by the German poet and author, Ranier Maria Rilke:

A Walk

My eyes already touch the sunny hill,

going far ahead of the road I have
begun.

So we are grasped by what we cannot
grasp:

It has its inner light, even from a
distance——

and changes us, even if we do not
reach it,

into something else, which, hardly
sensing it, we already are;

A gesture waves us on, answering our
own wave.  .  .  .

But what we feel is the wind in our
faces.

                                                                        Musot,
March 1924

Today’s route: Through the
Garden to the Purple Trail; down the Purple Trail to the river; left on the
Orange Trail and back to the Visitor’s Center via the Orange Spur trail.

Bottlebrush buckeye flower stalk, only one with a fruit

In the International Garden, just beyond the Flower
Bridge, there is a large Bottlebrush Buckeye
with the tall, sweeping remnants of flower stalks that each bore 300 +/- blossoms
just a few weeks ago. Only a small number of these stalks have fruits. Those
that have fruits bear only one or two toward the tip of the stalk.

Most of the flowers are male only, but the pale thread crossing Linda’s finger is the style (part of the pistil); the stamens are capped with yellowish tan anthers. (picture from last year)

Terminal part of an infloresence with mostly male flowers (picture taken last year)

The flowers are of two types, most of the flowers toward
the bottom of the stalk are functionally male – the stamens produce fertile
pollen but lack a complete pistil (the female part). The flowers toward the
tips of the stalk have functional stamens and
fertile ovaries and are therefore able to produce fruits. A quarter of all
inflorescences have all male flowers and of the remaining, only about 20% are
bisexual. So only about 15% of all the flowers produced are capable of setting
fruit.

It seems odd that a plant that produces literally
hundreds of thousands of flowers ends up with so few fruits and seeds (each
fruit has 1-2 seeds).

Tiger Swallowtail nectaring at Bottlebrush Buckeye (picture by Ed Wilde, last year)

The flowers are visited by numerous kinds of bees and
butterflies and one study mentions that “During peak bloom, the wings of
the butterflies would become visibly orange with pollen.” This observation
is consistent with butterflies being important pollinators, with the pollen
being transferred by the wings when they come in contact with the pistil as the
butterfly sips nectar.

Palmately compound leaves of Bottlebrush Buckeye

Buckeyes have opposite, palmately compound leaves, which
means that the leaves grow in pairs on opposite sides of their twigs,. Compound
means that each leaf is composed of leaflets, five in the case of Buckeyes.
Palmate means that the leaflets are attached to the leaf stalk (petiole) at a
single point, similar to the fingers on your hand. Those leaf characteristics
make it easy to identify buckeyes.

Hophornbeam and Sapsucker

False Turkeytail

Old Mustard-yellow polypore

Turkeytail

Violet-toothed polypore

We saw four kinds of Bracket fungi today. The bracket refers
to the appearance of the fungal body – like a bracket or shelf to put a nick-knack
on. The four we saw today are dead wood rotters; they are almost never found on
living wood. As Don pointed out, you can tell when they started growing on the
tree by looking at the orientation of the mushroom. If it were growing on a
living tree its undersurface would be parallel to the ground and at right
angles to the axis of the trunk. If the tree then fell over, the undersurface
would be perpendicular to the ground but still at right angles to the trunk
axis. If the fungus started growing after the tree fell its undersurface would
be parallel to the ground and parallel to the trunk axis.

The undersurface of these bracket
fungi is where the spores are produced inside tiny pores that open on the
underside. Each pore is the opening of a tube and the cells on the inside of
the tube produce the reproductive spores. The tube has to be oriented with its
opening toward the ground in order for the spores to fall out, otherwise they
would simply fall inside the tube itself.

These various bracket fungi start the
process of wood decay. Without them the world would stacked high with fallen
tree trunks.

On this dead NRO log we found
Violet-toothed polypore, Mustard Yellow polypore, Turkey Tail and False Turkey
Tail bracket fungi. These fungi sometimes survive over winter to make another
layer of spore producing tissue the following year.

Betsy Beetle

One of the fallen trees produced a Betsy Beetle, sometimes called Patent
Leather beetles or Bess Bugs. They are social insects in the sense that the
male and female remain with their young and care for them, providing them with
food and a tunnel system to live in. This
publication from the University of Florida summarizes quite nicely what is
known about their habits and life history. They communicate with their larvae
and mate by emitting sounds produced by rubbing the tip of the abdomen against
their wings. According to the literature, they have a repertoire of around a
dozen different sounds, which is more than a lot of “higher” animals
make. The sounds are used to communicate with their mate and larvae.

In the north the Betsy Beetles that
I’ve seen make squeaking noises when you pick them up. Here in the Athens area
I have yet to find one that does so.

Everywhere you go in the Botanical
Garden you will find fallen trees, many of them Northern Red Oaks (NRO). Why this should be is puzzling, but I have
an untested hypothesis. The Garden was established in 1968. Prior to that time
it had been in agriculture and was also logged. That means trees have been
growing unimpeded in the natural areas for almost 50 years. It is likely that
few of the NRO are older than that, especially in the logged and plowed areas
of the garden. NRO is supposed to be a moderate to rapidly growing tree,
depending on conditions. I think that the large NRO that have fallen in the
Garden were part of an even-aged group that survived the last logging/clearing
of the Garden area. They would have grown into the canopy at about the same
time, finally reaching the size where the force of wind acting on the upper
part of the tree exceeded the ability of the root system to resist pulling out
of the ground. The even age structure means that many of the NRO would be
susceptible to wind throw at the same time.

Trunk of a Musclewood tree

Where the Purple Trail meets the Orange Trail there are
two trees, a Hophornbeam and a Musclewood that our former leader, Hugh
Nourse, always pointed out. The bark of these trees is quite different: smooth
and gray in the Musclewood and brown and shredded in the Hophornbeam (“cat
scratch” bark, as Hugh called it). The trunk of the Musclewood looks as if
there are sinews and muscles under the bark, giving the tree one of its common
names.

Hophornbeam fruits

Musclewood fruits

The leaves are similar in shape and double serration, but
Musclewood’s leaves are only slightly hairy (if at all) on the lower surface
while Hop Hornbeam’s leaves are finely hairy over the entire lower surface. The
fruits of both species are clusters of conspicuous bracts up to three inches
long, dangling from the tips of twigs. Musclewood clusters consist of
three-lobed, leafy bracts set below the nutlet; Hop Hornbeam clusters are composed
of papery, inflated sacs that enclose the nutlet.

Girdled twig; the dark brown marks where the beetle cut the twig.

It’s not unusual to find twigs and short, leafy branches
fallen from trees, either in your own home or in the Garden. Most people blame
squirrels but often the responsible critter is a twig girdling beetle. It’s pretty easy to determine the culprit.
Look at the broken end of the twig. If a smooth channel has been cut around the
circumference at the broken end the guilty party was twig girdler. These
beetles lay their eggs in the twigs at branch ends. The female beetle then
girdles the twig some place below where she has laid her egg. Girdling prevents
the tree from sending chemical defenses that might kill or harm the beetle
larva. It also weakens the twig and the central supporting tissues are easily
broken by winds. If you examine the photo of the Sweet Gum you will clearly see
the smooth, brown girdle chewed by the beetle. The central remaining part is
broken, allowing the twig to fall. Some of the beetles that do this are tree
species specific, others can attack a wider range of host trees.

Dead cicada with dead Yellowjacket that got caught with its head in its lunch.

It’s dead cicada
time in the Garden, this week and last week. Again we found the body of a
cicada with the stinger end of a Yellowjacket wasp sticking out of it. This
time the wasp was also dead, apparently drowned by its own gluttony. Other
deceased cicadas have the look of being attacked by a fungus. They have white
areas in parts of their bodies that are normally dark, suggesting the
spore-producing surface of an insect-attacking fungus.

Fall Webworm nest

This week we again found another nest of the Fall Webworm on a small sapling. If the
silken nest contains caterpillars and encloses a leafy branch that they have
fed on, you have a Fall Webmorm nest. If the silken structure is in the crotch
of a large branch or tree and the caterpillars leave the nest to feed you have
the nest of the Eastern Tent Caterpillar. (It will also be early springtime and
the tree will usually be a cherry.)

Last week we looked for Cranefly Orchids and today we just stumbled onto them. A few
Ramblers noticed them in time to keep the rest of us from trampling them. See
last week’s Ramble Report for photos.

Beech Blight Aphids

Near the start of the Purple Trail is an American Beech
tree with a large colony of Beech Blight
Aphids on one of its lower branches. These aphids colonies always bring joy
to the hearts of Ramblers when they induce a choreographed boogie woogie of
performing aphids by merely touching the branch or waving their hand nearby.
Search youtube for “beech blight aphid” and you’ll find several
movies of their performance. A bowl of popcorn is suggested.

The aphids, in spite of their name, never seem to do
significant damage to the Beech trees. Their sugary droppings (aphid poo) make
them ecosystem engineers for a Sooty Mold fungus that only grows on the
droppings below a colony.

Sensitive Fern (sterile frond)

On the Orange Trail at the end of the
Scout Bridge a group of Sensitive Fern
grows in the wet, marshy area spanned by the bridge. Sensitive Fern has a
separate fertile frond that hasn’t developed yet. It looks completely different
from the sterile fronds that are here now. By the way, it’s called Sensitive Fern because it’s sensitive to cold weather.

SUMMARY OF OBSERVED SPECIES:

Today’s Ramble was led by Dale Hoyt.

The photos in this post, except where
noted, came from Don’s Facebook album (here’s the link).

Today’s post was written by Dale Hoyt and
Don Hunter.

Twenty four Ramblers met today.

Announcements:

Today’s reading: Bob Ambrose
recited one of his new

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