Today’s Ramble was led by
Linda Chafin.

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

Today’s post was compiled by
Dale Hoyt; Linda Chafin is the author of the fern guides (links below).

Today’s Focus:
Ferns

28 Ramblers met today.

Announcements: Linda made the following request: “please put a link
to this new Georgia Trees
website. It’s newly posted by Richard and Teresa Ware, who have been
studying and photographing trees for decades. The photos are wonderful! And the
text is too. They plan to create webpages for shrubs, ferns, wildflowers, etc.
as they get to it.”

Today’s reading:
Bob Ambrose read an excerpt from Walden, by Henry David Thoreau:

“We
need the tonic of wildness, to wade sometimes in marshes where the bittern and
the meadow-hen lurk, and hear the booming of the snipe; to smell the whispering
sedge where only the wilder and more solitary fowl builds her nest, and the
mink crawls with its belly close to the ground. At the same time that we are
earnest to explore and learn all things, we require that all things be
mysterious and unexplorable, that land and sea be infinitely wild, unsurveyed
and unfathomed by us because unfathomable. We can never have enough of nature.
We must be refreshed by the sight of inexhaustible vigor, vast and titanic
features, the sea-coast with its wrecks, the wilderness with its living and its
decaying trees, the thunder cloud, and the rain which lasts three weeks and
produces freshets. We need to witness our own limits transgressed, and some
life pasturing freely where we never wander.”

Today’s route:
Past the Children’s Garden and through the Shade Garden on the sidewalk. Then
through the Dunson Garden.

Observations:

Ferns: Here is the link to Linda’s Guide to Ferns of the
State Botanical Garden. These files
cover everything Linda said about ferns today and then some.

A sight for sori

Don created a nifty little
poster for the sori of several ferns. (Remember that the sori (singular: sorus)
are clusters of spore-producing structures. Their color, shape and arrangement
are often useful in fern identification.

Don’s sori poster (click to enlarge)

Comments on Animals Observed:

Hammerhead planarian, a terrestrial flatworm (click to enlarge)

Hammerhead Planarian. A planarian is a free-living
flatworm (Phylum Platyhelminthes). Most people have never encountered one,
except in biology courses. Those planarians are aquatic, dark in color and have
two eyespots in their head end. They have the ability to regenerate complete
worms when cut in half, either transversely or longitudinally. When cut
lengthwise the right and left halves regenerate the missing side. If cut the
other way, the head end grows a new tail and the tail end grows a new head.

Flatworms lack a body cavity and a circulatory system.
The free-living species have a mouth in the center of the body (not the head!)
that leads to a  complexly branched
digestive tract. Its many branches and projections allow the products of
digestion to diffuse directly into the surrounding tissue, a function provided
by the circulatory system of other kinds of animals. This is probably why
flatworms are flat – all their cells are a short distance from as source of
oxygen and food.

Other kinds of flatworms are parasitic; you may have
heard of liver flukes, tape worms or schistosomes, all of which are parasitic
flatworms. These flatworms live in the digestive tract or circulatory system of
their host animal, places where they are immersed in fluids containing food
that can be directly absorbed.

The Hammerhead planaria is a free-living, terrestrial
predator of earthworms. There are many species that are found all over the
world. The commonest species in the USA was probably accidentally introduced
via the soil in pots containing plants. They are commonly seen in and around
greenhouses. On a ramble a few years ago we found one attacking an earthworm on
the sidewalk in the Shade Garden. A UGA professor found a number of them on the
greenway while riding his bicycle in the rain. Emily found one on the porch
near some potted plants after a heavy rainfall.

The Hammerhead produces an very sticky adhesive secretion.
If you pick it up, it will stick to your fingers and be very difficult to
remove. This enables the Hammerhead to hold tight to its prey, an earthworm.

One more thing – the Hammerhead is the only terrestrial
invertebrate known to posses tetrodotoxin, a nasty neural poison. By attacking
the nervous system tetrodotoxin causes paralysis. That makes it useful in
subduing earthworms. The only other terrestrial organisms known to produce
tetrodotoxin are some salamanders and tropical frogs (the poison dart frogs.)

Click for more  information
and references on Hammerhead planarians.

Florida Fern caterpillar (click to enlarge)

Florida Fern
caterpillar:

Found feeding on
Widespread Maiden Fern.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/een.12724

Ferns seldom show any
signs of insect damage, probably because they are so heavily defended,
chemically. Any insect that feeds on a fern has to deal with those defenses in
some way. In previous years we have seen a moth caterpillar that feeds on the
terminal pinnae of Christmas fern by rolling them into a ball and feeding on
them from the inside.

Ebony Jewelwing Damselfly (click to enlarge)

Ebony Jewelwing
Damselfly: This lovely, metallic blue-green
damselfly with black wings is related to dragonflies in the insect order
Odonata. The female has a white spot on the tip of the wings and is a browner
color. Like their dragonfly cousins, the damselflies are predators, feeding on
flying insects like mosquitoes, that they capture while flying.

Mantis nymph; note the grasping front legs. (click to enlarge)

Mantis: The mantids we find this time of year are not yet
adults. You can tell this by the absence of functional wings. A young mantis
has a pair of wing buds behind the second and third walking legs, on the top
side of the thorax. As a mantis nymph grows it periodically molts (sheds its
skin). With each molt the wing buds get larger. Finally, with the final molt,
the wings become functional and the mantis doesn’t have to walk to work to find
food.

The first pair of legs are
modified for grasping and holding its prey while it is being eaten. At rest the
mantis folds its forelegs so they appear to be “praying,” hence, the common
name “praying mantis,” not “preying mantis.”

Gray Hairstreak on Rattlesnake Master (click to enlarge)

Gray Hairstreak: There are over a dozen kinds of Hairstreak
butterflies in the state of Georgia. All share one feature: one or two
hair-like projections from their hind wings and, where these hairs emerge, a
colored spot that resembles an eye.

When an hairstreak lands
its wings are folded vertically above its body and the two hind wings are
rubbed together. To understand this motion hold your hands In front of your
body with your thumbs up and your fingers together and pointed forward. Next,
place the palms of your hands together. Then rub your hands together, up and
down so your fingers slip over the fingers of the opposite hand.

Next, imagine that each of
your little fingers has a small, dark hair projecting straight out, away from
your body. That hair will wiggle up and down as you rub your hands together.
The motion of the hair on each little finger will resemble a butterfly antenna
wiggling up and down. Add a dark eyespot to each little finger nail and you
have an imitation butterfly head.

When the hairstreak
butterfly performs this motion, it may attract the attention of a predator and
cause it to attack the hind wings, thinking that this is the head of the
butterfly. At least that’s the theory.

Eyed Elator (click to enlarge)

Eyed Click Beetle (Eyed
Elator):

This handsome beetle has
two large “eyespots” on its first thoracic segment. I have heard several times
that the light colored borders of the eyespots can glow like a firefly, but
I’ve been unable to find confirmation for this. There is a related species that
has two spots on its prothorax that can glow, but not the Eyed Elator.

Click beetles have the
ability to flip into the air when they are lying on their back. This is made
possible by a spine on the thorax that fits into a groove on another segment.
When on its back the beetle tilts its thorax toward its abdomen and engages the
spine with a groove. Thoracic muscles contract, increasing tension. When the
tension reaches a certain point the spine snaps out of the groove and the thorax
snaps back against the substrate with enough force to hurl the beetle into the
air, head over heels, so to speak. If the beetle lands on its feet it will
trundle off. On its back, it gets to try again. The smaller the beetle the
higher it can jump.

The larvae of the Eyed
Elator are predators of wood-boring beetles. They inhabit rotting wood and seek
out beetles in the family Cerambycidae (Long horn beetles or Sawyer beetles). 

SUMMARY OF OBSERVED
SPECIES

Today’s Ramble was led 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, unless otherwise credited.)

Today’s post was written by Dale Hoyt.

Announcements:

1.     From Karen Porter: There
is a Tallassee Forest SPLOST2020 information session at the Kenney Ridge
Community Center this coming Sunday. I’m inviting Ramblers to this community
event because most of them have visited the Forest and know its conservation
value as well as the desirability of having public access in an environmentally
protective way.

Continue reading →

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, unless
otherwise credited.)

Today’s post was written by Dale Hoyt.

Today’s Focus:  Herb and Physic Garden, Purple Trail, Purple
Trail Spur to Flower Garden, Flower Garden, Heritage Garden

32 Ramblers met today.

Today’s reading: No reading today.

Show and Tell:

Continue reading →