Today’s Ramble was led by Linda Chafin.

Here’s
the link to Don’s Facebook album for today’s Ramble. (All the
photos in this post are compliments of Don.)

Today’s post was written by Linda Chafin.

Today’s Focus:
Grasses
and wildflowers in the ROW; deer fence passionflower vines

23 Ramblers met today.

Today’s reading:
Lee read from the Boston Gazette, April 1741,
about a catamount (mountain lion) that could be seen for the price of one
shilling:

To be seen at the Grey Hound Tavern in
Roxbury, a Wild Creature, which was caught in the Woods about 80 miles to the
Westward of this Town, called a Cattamount, it has a Tail like a Lyon, its
Leggs are like a Bears, its Claws like an Eagle, its Eyes like a Tyger, its
Countenance is a mixture of every Thing that is Fierce and Savage, he is
exceeding Ravenous, and devours all sorts of creatures that can come near. Its
agility is surprising, it will leap 30 foot at on jump, notwithstanding it is
but three Months old. Whoever inclines to see this Creature may come the Place
aforesaid, paying one Shilling each shall be welcome for their Money.  [spelling
irregularities are in the original]

Today’s
Route:   We left the Visitor Center, and headed down
the road towards the powerline right-of-way and took the White Trail.  We made our way up to the ROW, stopping at
the prairie project test plot, before heading up the ROW hill.  Part way up, we turned around and headed
back, stopping at the Dunson Garden Passionflower vines before returning to the
road to the Visitor Center.   We then
enjoyed air conditioning, refreshments, and conversation at the Cafe Botanica.

LIST OF
OBSERVATIONS:

Visitor
Center Plaza:

A Red-spotted Purple butterfly
was moving around on the plaza paver stones, probably gathering minerals and
salts in a behavior called “puddling.” Butterflies gather most of their
nutrients from nectar, which has a high sugar content, but lacks other nutrients
that butterflies need, especially when they are ready to reproduce. Male and
sometimes female butterflies will gather around rain puddles, overripe fruit,
carrion, dung and urine deposits to suck up minerals, salts, and amino acids.
Males especially spend a lot of time puddling, then they pass the nutrients
along with their sperm to females during mating, which improves the survival
rate of the eggs and larvae. Various sources on the internet recommend creating
puddling sites in your butterfly garden with a shallow dish filled with sand
kept moist with beer, salty water, compost tea, etc.

Several Monarch butterfly
caterpillars were busy defoliating the ‘Hello Yellow’ Butterfly Weed cultivars
planted in containers to the right of the main entrance. 

Warm Season
Grasses.

Late August, September, and early October are the months
to look for warm-season grasses, so called because they do most of their
growing and all of their reproduction during the warmest months of the year.
Warm-season grasses are adapted to the heat, high light, and low rainfall of
summer by using a type of photosynthesis (called C4 photosynthesis) that is
extra-efficient in these conditions. Some of humanity’s major food crops are C4
grasses that evolved in tropical zones, such as corn, sugar cane, millet, and
sorghum. Other food grasses that evolved in cooler climates, such as wheat,
rye, barley, oats, and rice, use the more common C3 photosynthesis. (About 85%
of all plants are C3 plants. The numbers refer to the number of carbons in the
compounds produced during the carbon fixation step of photosynthesis.)

Bigtop Lovegrass

Purple Lovegrass

Two species of Lovegrass
are common in the ROW–both have basal rosettes of leaves and short stems topped
with large, airy, much branched seed clusters; their tiny florets are held at
the tips of delicate, thread-like branches. Purple Lovegrass florets are tinted purple and make a beautiful
display when growing en masse on
roadsides, especially when covered with dew. 
Bigtop Lovegrass’s seed
cluster is larger than Purple Lovegrass’s and its florets are green. The seed
clusters of both species break off when the seeds are mature and tumble across
the ground, spreading their seeds. Zabulon Skippers use Purple Lovegrass as a
larval host.

River Oats

River Oats are
a great species to look at when learning grass “parts” and their specialized
terminology because, compared to most grasses, their parts are large. Each
spikelet dangles like a fish from a pole in the inflorescence and is composed
of 5 – 15 florets, about half of which contain developing seeds (the others are
sterile, without seeds).

Purpletop

Purpletop or Greasy Grass has purple spikelets
coated with a waxy material that gives the flower cluster a greasy feel.

Perennial Foxtail
Grass is a native foxtail grass found mostly in disturbed areas and has a
tendency to become weedy, as it has in the right-of-way prairie test plot.

Split-beard Bluestem

Split-beard
Bluestem is just beginning to flower, though it’s still hard to see the
paired spikelets that give it its name. However, the blue-green and maroon
striped stems are a good clue to its identity. (Little Blue Stem, Schizachyrium scoparium, also has maroon
and green banded stems, but it is a smaller plant with a single, sparsely
flowered spikelet.)

Purple Fountain Grass

Purple Fountain
Grass is an exotic species native to Africa, Middle East, and southwest
Asia. It is widely used as an ornamental grass and has become invasive in some
parts of the world. It was planted in the ROW decades ago when this area was an
ornamental display bed.

Witchgrass

Witchgrass is
conspicuous in the ROW now, in its late summer/fall form. This is a grass that
couldn’t decide whether to be a cool-season or a warm-season grass.
Technically, it is a cool-season grass because it is a C3 plant, but it flowers
twice a year, in the spring and again in the fall. The vegetative parts of the
plant change their appearance drastically in between.

Chia

Late summer and early fall is also the time to see lots
of native mints in flower, including Spotted Horse-balm, Appalachian Bee-balm,
and Mountain-mint mentioned in a previous blog post. Today, we were stumped by
a bushy mint growing where a medicinal plant bed had been planted in the 1980s.
Turns out that it is one of several Salvia species that yield Chia seeds, sold for their high
nutritional value. The seeds are also hydrophilic, soaking up to 12 times their
weight in water and giving chia drinks a mucilaginous or gelatinous texture.
And, yes, these are Chia seeds of 1980s Chia Pet fame!

Animals:

Orthoptera (pronouned: “or-THOP-ter-ah”) is an insect Order that includes the grasshoppers, crickets and katydids. Each of those groups has many species that few people are familiar with because a lot of them are nocturnal and/or cryptically colored. One such group is the coneheaded katydids. These look like somewhat gangly grasshoppers with very long antennae that emerge by a cone-shaped projection from the head.

The Katydids belong to the Family Tettigoniidae (pronounced: “tet-eh-go-NIGH-eh-dee” within the Order Orthoptera.

Coneheaded Katydid

Grasshoppers make up the family Acrididae (pronounced: “a-CRID-eh-dee”), They have much shorter antennae than the katydid family. Their antennae are about as long as their head is high (katydid antennae are longer than their body). We couldn’t reliably identify this individual, so we’re just leaving it at the family level.

Grasshopper, family Acrididae

Butterflies

Hairstreaks are a group of butterflies that have one or two fine, hair-like projections extending from the lower rear corner of their hind wings. At the base of the “hair” there is usually as contrasting mark on the wing that resembles an eye. (The resemblance often is not very exact.) When a Hairstreak is on a flower it often rubs its hing wings together, which causes the hairs to wiggle up and down, like a pair of antennae. In combination with the eye spot it looks like the head end of the butterfly. At least that’s the theory. The idea is that the fake head attracts the attention of predators, like birds or lizards, and they strike the rear edge of the wing, which tears away, enabling the lucky butterfly to fly another day.

Red-banded Hairstreak

  

Gulf Fritillary showing the silver spangles on the underside of the hind wing.

Gulf Fritillary upper wing surface; arguably the most beautiful butterfly in North America.

Eastern Tiger Swallowtail, dark form female. Females occur with two color patterns: the dark form, as seen in this photograph, or a form with yellow and black stripes. Males are always the yellow and black form.

Caterpillars:

Spotted Apatelodes

This Spotted Apatelodes was found on the deer fence along upper
section of the road. How do you like the ruby red slippers on all its legs? Is this an escapee from the Land of Oz? This moth caterpillar feeds on a variety of host plants.

There is at least one well disguised caterpillar you can see in this seed head of Silver Plume Grass It’s just below the center and has a pair of vertical brown stripes. There are others — can you fine them? This is the caterpillar of the Sorghum Webworm moth.

An Owlet moth being attacked by ants.

An Owlet moth (family Noctuidae, genus Mocis, sp. ?) caterpillar was clinging
to a grass stem and being attacked by red ants. By itself, this ant can only irritate this caterpillar, but en masse they could kill it. Ants are important predators of early stage insect larvae, an economic value that is often overlooked. Some studies have shown that cotton fields with more fire ant mounds have less damage from cotton boll worms than fields with fewer mounds. And, of course, you remember that a lot of plants have extra-floral nectaries that attract ants. Those plants sustain less damage from herbivorous insects than plants with the nectaries removed.

Gulf Fritillary caterpillars feeding on the leaves of Purple Passionvine

The caterpillar of the Virginian Tiger Moth; the caterpillar is known as the Yellow Bear, an allusion to the Wooly Bear caterpillar, which is also a Tiger Moth.

Fall Webworm

This Fall Webworm has wandered away from its nest mates, seeking a place to make a cocoon and pupate. Usually they are found in large numbers inside a silken next that covers the ends of tree branches.

A parasitized Banded Tussock Moth caterpillar; the rice shaped structures are the cocoons of a wasp that laid eggs in the caterpillar.

We found a Banded Tussock Moth (Halysidota tessellaris) caterpillar that had been parasitized by an unknown (to us) wasp. The unfortunate caterpillar was discovered by a tiny wasp that injected eggs into its body. These eggs hatched and each wasp larva began feeding on the tissues of their host caterpillar, avoiding the critical organs that keep the caterpillar alive. When the larvae reach the size for pupation they chew their way through the caterpillar’s skin and spin a cocoon on the surface of the caterpillar. After a short time the adult wasp emerges from its cocoon, mates, and seeks out other caterpillars to parasitize. 

You may have seen a similar life cycle if you grow tomatoes. The tomato hornworm is frequently attacked by a parasitoid wasp with a similar life history.

Reptiles:

Carolina Anole

The Carolina
Anole is a lizard, sometimes called the American Chameleon, or the Green Anole. These other names are inappropriate because it is not a Chameleon and, further, it can change color from green to brown. There are several ways to pronounce “Anole”: “uh-knoll”, “uh-knoll-ee” or “an-ol”. You may take your pick and you’ll be right.

The Carolina Anole recently became the first reptile to have its genome sequenced. This has made possible a lot of studies that were previously impossible or very difficult. Anoles are found in the New World tropics and Caribbean Islands. In the Caribbean each island has several anole species adapted to different habitats: ground, tree trunk, tree top, etc. It was previously thought that, for example, the tree trunk species of different islands were more closely related to one another than to the other anoles on their own island. But new genetic studies revealed that each island had evolved its own suite of habitat specialist species independently. 

The Carolina Anole used to be the only anole in the United States, but the Cuban anole was introduced to south Florida and has been expanding its range. It is now found in Valdosta, Georgia. No one knows what impact it may have on our native anole.

SUMMARY
OF OBSERVED SPECIES:

Red-spotted Purple Butterfly	Limenitis arthemis astyanax
Fragrant Ladies’ Tresses	Spiranthes odorata
Monarch Butterfly caterpillar	Danaus plexippus
Spotted Apatelodes	Apatelodes torrefacta
Butterfly Weed	Asclepias turberosa ‘Hello Yellow’
Bigtop Lovegrass	Eragrostis hirsuta
Purple Top/Grease Grass	Tridens flavus
Yellow Crownbeard	Verbesina occidentalis
River Oats	Chasmanthium latifolium
Witchgrass	Panicum capillare
Yellow Passionflower	Passiflora lutea
Purple Fountain Grass	Pennisetum setaceum
Chia or Linden-leaved Salvia	Salvia tiliifolia
Perennial Foxtail Grass	Setaria parviflora
Red Buckeye	Aesculus pavia
Red Morning Glory	Ipomoea coccinea
Milkweed Vine	?????
Oleander Aphids	Aphis nerii
Tooth-leaved Croton	Croton glandulosus
Split-beard Bluestem	Adropogon ternarius
Short-winged Meadow Katydid	Conocephalus brevipennis
Red-banded Hairstreak	Calycopis cecrops
Rabbit Tobacco	Psuedognaphalium obtusifolium
Purple Lovegrass	Eragrostis spectabilis
Gulf Fritillary	Agraulis vanillae
Eastern Tiger Swallowtail	Papilio glaucus
Beggars Lice	Desmodium glabellum
Carolina Anole	Anolis carolinensis
Bumblebee	Bombus sp.
White Crownbeard	Verbesina virginica
Brown Grasshopper	Orthoptera: Acrididae
Yellow Foxtail Grass	Setaria glauca
Late Boneset	Eupatorium serotinum
Sleepy Orange Butterfly	Abaeis nicippe
Sorghum Webworm Moth	Nola cereella
Gulf Fritillary caterpillars	Agraulus vanillae
Yellow Bear caterpillar	Spilosoma virginica
Fall Webworm	Hyphantria cunea
Banded Tussock Moth	Halysidota tessellaris
Owlet moth	Noctuidae: Mocis sp.
Blue Dasher Dragonfly	Pachydiplax longipennis
Turtle	Order Testudines