Leader for today’s Ramble: Dale
Link to Don’s Facebook album for this Ramble
Today’s emphasis:  Since this is National Pollinator Week we planned to find Insect pollinators in the formal gardens (International, Herb and Physic, and Heritage Gardens)
Number of Ramblers today:  30
Readings:

Charlie Seabrook recited a timely little bit of verse:

“Kissing spreads germs,
the doctor has stated;
but kiss me baby,
I’m vaccinated!”

Dale read an excerpt of the entry for June 24 from An Almanac for Moderns by Donald Culross Peattie:

. . . the name of a bird is nothing but the opening of a door to knowledge: it is not knowledge in itself, and the pleasures of study consist in making one’s self a Sherlock Holmes, intent upon every trace and detail of one’s subject’s life.

Today’s Route:   We left the arbor and headed down the paved path, past the American South Section towards the Flower Bridge, turning left on the path before reaching the bridge and walking through the Spanish America, Mediterranean and Middle East Sections.  We then passed through the Herb and Physic Garden into the Heritage Garden where we completed the Ramble for the day and headed back to the conservatory where we enjoyed a little social hour at the Café Botanica tables.

This FINE Thing was recommended by Jan Coyne.

OBSERVATIONS:

American South Section:

A group of Scarlet Beebalm flowers in the American South Section of the State Botanical Garden.

Scarlet beebalm has all the classic features of mint family plants: square stems, opposite leaves, aromatic leaves, and two-lipped flowers. The style and stamens project well beyond the lip of the flower, and brush against the head of back of pollinators as they enter and exit. The large patch of flowering plants was eye-catching, with lots of deep red flowers.  A Ruby-throated Hummingbird made an appearance while we were there, the ruby-colored throat competing with the beebalm for brightest red.  Large patches of flowers are more attractive to pollinators, who will often ignore single examples of the normally attractive flowers. This is a good garden plant for folks who contend with deer – its pungent leaves discourage browsing.

Summer Sweet

Summer Sweet or Downy Sweet Pepperbush is a large shrub sporting numerous white-flowered racemes, now in bud. It is sometimes treated as a variety of the native Sweet Pepperbush (Clethra alnifolia) that Ramblers know from the roadside fence along the Dunson Garden. Both are largely Coastal Plain species. (Note: Linda told a group of ramblers that this is a non-native species – wrong! She didn’t know of this variety-now she does.)

A Bumble Bee collects pollen from a St. John’s-wort flower.

St. John’s-wort ‘Sunburst’ is a cultivar of a native species of Hypericum frondosum. It has slightly larger flowers, up to 2 inches across, than the native form and a more compact growth habit (less than 3 feet tall). The large flowers with their numerous showy stamens are attractive to bumblebees. St. John’s-wort plants get their name from their flowering time which coincides with the Feast Day of St. John the Baptizer.

Spanish America Section:

Spanish Bayonet has dangerously sharp-pointed leaves.

Spanish Bayonet. This large species of yucca grows from Virginia south to Mexico in coastal sand dunes. It is just one of dozens of Yucca species in the USA, most abundant in the southwest.

A Carpenter Bee cutting a hole in the base of a Red Salvia. Carpenter Bees are large and have hairless, shiny black abdomens.

A Honey Bee at the mouth of a Red Salvia flower. This bee may be gathering pollen, but it cannot reach the nectar at the base of the flower. Or, it may be a novice forager and is learning that no nectar is available this way.

A Honey Bee “robbing” nectar from a Red Salvia flower. Honey Bees often take advantage of openings cut by larger bees, like the Carpenter Bee. Honey Bee tongues are too short to reach nectar from the mouth of the flower as in the previous photo. The rectangle surrounds two slits made by Carpenter Bees to gain access to the nectar at the base of the Red Salvia flower. The smaller Honey Bee cannot cut the flower, but can learn to find the openings made by Carpenter Bees.

Red Salvia (‘Heatwave Blaze’ Salvia):  We saw quite a few Western Honeybees and one Eastern Carpenter Bee working the salvia.  Both were “nectar-robbing,” piercing the narrow bottom of the tubular flower, while only the Honeybee was attempting to access the nectar through the flower opening.

Nectar Robbing is interesting because it shows that bees can learn how to access a food source that would otherwise be unavailable to them. 

Eastern Cottontail Rabbit, unfazed by the presence of all the Nature Ramblers.

An Eastern Cottontail Rabbit appeared at the edge of the path and remained around for most of the Nature Ramblers to get a glimpse.

Betony and White-bordered Burrower Bug

Betony is a European plant with a storied past, used for everything from a charm against sorcery to a treatment for “anxiety, gallstones, heartburn, high blood pressure, migraine and neuralgia, and to prevent sweating.” (Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betonica_officinalis)
Betony’s scientific name is Stachys officinalis. An “officina” was a building on the grounds of medieval monasteries where medicinal potions, usually plant-based, were prepared. When Linnaeus began naming plants and encountered ones that were well known for their medicinal uses, he usually gave them the species name “officinalis” in recognition of their traditional use.
We saw two examples of Betony in flower attracting bees.  Many small White-bordered Burrower Bugs were crawling on all parts of the plants. 

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Close up of White-margined Burrower Bug.

White-margined Burrower Bugs are related to the Peanut Burrower Bug, but do not inflict harm on peanuts or cotton. 

According to Mary Holland of Naturally Curious:

These bugs [White-margined Burrower Bugs] feed on the seeds of plants in the mint and nettle
families. Being true bugs, they feed not by chewing but by
piercing seeds with a sharp beak, injecting digestive enzymes, and then
sucking in the partially digested food.

White-margined Burrower Bugs are fairly unusual for non-social
insects in that the mothers provide care and provisions for their young,
much like social insects such as ants, paper wasps and honeybees. The
adults dig shallow burrows into which they place a supply of seeds
and lay between 120 and 150 eggs next to the seeds. They guard their
eggs and brood and bring more seeds as needed for 1-3 days after the
eggs hatch. At this point, the young bugs can forage for themselves.

Adults dig down into the leaf litter in late fall, where they
overwinter and emerge next spring ready to mate. If you see a large
cluster of White-margined Burrowers Beetles, do not be alarmed, as they
do not bite nor are they interested in eating anything but species of
mint and nettle.

Chaste tree, purple flowered variety with Bumble Bee

Chaste Tree:   Although not a native tree, its purple flowers were attracting bumble bees.  Both the common name and the species’ scientific name (agnus-castus) refer to the medieval belief that the tree’s fruits suppress sexual desire and lead to a chaste life. Another common name is Monk’s Pepper. A white-flowered variety is also growing in the garden.

Fig tree. Figs may be pruned to the shape of a shrub, with many stems or a tree with a single stem. As a tree it can grow to a height of 20 feet. At such a height access to the figs without resort to a ladder making access to the figs more difficult. Then you’ll have to share the figs with fruit-eating birds. This variety of Fig is “Brown Turkey,” One of the  Ramblers asked me: “We have a fig tree that always produces figs, but we never see any flowers?” The answer is that the flowers are actually inside the developing figs. This structure, called a syconium, contains thousands of tiny flowers. Many figs require specialist insects to pollinate the flowers in the syconium, but the Brown Turkey variety poduces edible figs in the absence of fig wasps. This process is called parthenocarpy, the development of a fruit without fertilization.

Herb and Physic Garden:
 

Long spires of Culver’s Root flowers were attracting Honey Bees, as well as a Large Milkweed Bug.

Rattlesnake Master flower head with a flower scarab beetle named Channeled Valgus.

Rattlesnake Master was used by Native Americans and pioneers as an antidote to snakebite as well as to reduce fever. We saw several small Channeled Valgus flower scarab beetles on the flowers. This plant was a US Forest Service plant of the week:

“In the prairie or in the garden, rattlesnake master is a favorite of native insects. Monarch butterflies, skippers, and other butterflies visit the flower heads for nectar. Soldier beetles visit the flowers to eat pollen; major pollinators include a diversity of bees, wasps, and flies.
One specialized insect, the rattlesnake master stem-borer (Papaipema eryngii) is dependent of the rattlesnake master to complete its life-cycle; this moth’s caterpillars burrow in the stems and roots of this plant. The surviving populations of this moth are now restricted to prairie remnants that support large populations of rattlesnake master. The moth’s natural range is limited to the central United States.
Another dependent insect is the larva of a seed-eating moth (Coleotechnites eryngiella) that burrows through the flowerheads, eating seeds as it grows. Caterpillars of the black swallowtail butterfly (Papilio polyxenes) occasionally feed on the leaves, but the caterpillars prefer other members of the carrot family (both native and introduced). In our native prairies, rattlesnake master is a characteristic flowering plant that contributes greatly to insect diversity.”

Wild Quinine

Wild Quinine was used by Native Americans to treat a variety of ailments, including dysentery, sore backs, and burns. Although a member of the Aster (or composite) Family, Wild Quinine’s flower heads are unusual. There are only 5 or 6 ray flowers on the rim of the central disk and they are very small. In most composites, the ray flowers are showy and sterile, and serve only to attract pollinators. In this species, they are fertile and produce seeds (the black dot seen inside each ray flower are the stigmas where the pollen germinates). The 15-35 tiny flowers packed into the central disk have stamens only, producing pollen but not seeds. Given that each head can produce no more than 6 seeds, it is surprising that the plant is so abundant in a variety of habitats across the southeast.
Don has also seen many Channeled Valgus flower scarabs on Wild Quinine in other localities.
 

Channeled Valgus Beetle: see Rattlesnake Master photo. This tiny beetle consumes nectar from the flowers it visits. The larvae are found “feeding on the walls of termites galleries,” but no one seems to know what they are eating. 
 

Heritage Garden:
 

Female Hop flowers

Hop bracts with golden glands that contain the “hoppy” flavor.

Hop vines on the arbor in the Heritage Garden are beginning to flower. Hop plants are usually dioecious, meaning the female (seed-producing) flowers are held on a separate plant from the male (pollen-producing) plants. We examined female flower clusters in two stages. In the burr stage, the styles and stigmas are prominently displayed to catch wind-borne pollen, and the leaf-like bracts separating individual flowers are quite small. In the cone stage, the bracts have expanded to cover the developing seeds. For beer makers, this is where the action is: the inner surfaces of the bracts are coated with golden, glistening lupulin glands that produce acidic compounds, resins, and oils that give beer its traditional aroma and “hoppy” flavor. The acids also act as antibiotics, preserving and stabilizing the beer.

Planthoppers,and Leafhoppers are insects related to aphids, They have piercing-sucking mouthparts that enable them to suck sap from the plants they feed on. The adults have powerful legs and can jump into the air and then fly away. When numerous they can seriously damage their host plants.

Adult Citrus Flatid Planthopper on Hop vine.

Nymph of a Flatid Planthopper The insect is on the upper left-hand side of the stem. The waxy material was secreted by the insect and was removed by the photographer (Don) so you could get a view of the nymph.

Broad-headed Sharpshooter, a kind of Leafhopper; the head is toward the bottom.

Glassy-winged Sharpshooter, a kind of Leafhopper.

Long-handled Dipper Gourd

Long-handled Dipper Gourds developing on vines in the Heritage Garden. Like many traditional southern agricultural plants, this species originated in Africa and likely came to the south via the slave trade. The Gourd Place, in Sautee, about an hour’s drive north of Athens, is a great place to learn about the history, uses, artistry, and manufacture of gourd products (https://gourdplace.com/).   

The Heritage Garden curator, Gareth Crosby, pointed out several beetles, including two kinds of Lady Beetles:

Squash Lady Beetle

Squash Lady Beetle: Most Lady Beetles are predators and regarded as beneficial. The eat aphids and assorted other insects that suck sap from plants. But the Squash Lady Beetle is an exception: it eats plants, making Gareth unhappy.

Pink Spotted Lady Beetle

Pink Spotted Lady Beetle is a more typical Lady Beetle — it’s a predator, eating aphids and other sap sucking insects.
 

SUMMARY OF OBSERVED SPECIES:
 

Today’s leader: Linda Chafin
Today’s Route: Alice H. Richard’s Children’s Garden, the Lower Shade Garden and the Dunson Native Flora Garden.
Number of Ramblers:  22

Reading:  Inspired by the coming summer solstice, Linda read a passage from North With the Spring, by Edwin Way Teale

Everywhere in the Northern Hemisphere Spring had come and
gone. The season had swept far to the north; it had climbed mountains; it had
passed into the sky. Like the wind, Spring moves across the map invisible. We
see it only in its effects. … It appears like the tracks of the breeze on a
field of wheat, like shadows of wind-blown clouds, like tossing branches that
reveal … the passing of the unseen. So Spring had spread from Georgia to North
Carolina, from Virginia to Canada, leaving consequences beyond number in its
wake. We longed for a thousand Springs on the road instead of just this one.
For Spring is like life. You never grasp it entire; you touch it here, there.
You know it only in parts and fragments. Reflecting thus on the first morning
of Summer … the Summer solstice, the longest of the year, we were well aware
that it is only on the calendar that Spring come to so sudden a termination. In
reality its end is a gradual change. Season merges with season in a slow
transition into another life.

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35 Ramblers met today.

The photos used in todays report were all taken by Don Hunter. Here’s the link to his Facebook album.

Today’s reading was a poem: To Maggie When Grandpa is Gone, written and read by Bob Ambrose himself. Because of pandemic travel restrictions Bob has been prevented from visiting his year-and-a-half old granddaughter who lives n England. Now that restrictions have been relaxed he’s able to see her again.

Next, Tim Homan offered some “Rambler Trivia”:
    What do you call a juvenile porcupine?  A porcupet.
    What do you call a baby sand hill crane?  A cult.

Today’s focus: Refreshing our tree identification skills. We started at the upper parking lot then moved to the Orange Trail.
 

Tuliptree is also known as Yellow Poplar which is misleading – the Tuliptree is not closely related to the Poplars. It is in the same botanical order as the Magnolias. The name comes from the colorful flower that appears in early spring. The flower  has large, white petals that are orange or yellow at the base and has green markings further up.

Flower of the Tuliptree. The petals are white on the outside. The yellow stamens occupy the center.

The flower produces copious amounts of nectar and the bees flock to it. This heavy flow of nectar produces the earliest varietal honey of the season.

Tuliptree leaves. Note the squared-off shape and the four lobes.

The Tuliptree leaf is unique. It has four points and looks like a tulip blossom in profile.

Sourwood is just starting to bloom. Instead of the large single flowers of Tuliptree it produces many very small white flowers in clusters at the ends of its branches. The honey made from Sourwood nectar commands a premium price.

Sourwood leaves. The long leaf at the lower left shows the strap-shape.

The midvein on the undersie bears needlelike hairs.

Its leaves are strap like and taper at each end and the midvein on the underside  of the leaf bears small,  needle like hairs.

Sourwood trees grow in almost any direction except straight up.

The growth form of the tree is unusual. Instead of growing straight upward it twists and turns as if the trunk was seeking out the lightest portion of the sky. All trees grow toward the sky, but only the Sourwood deviates from the straight upward growth.

Sweetgum was named for the thick, sweet resin that flows from wounded branches or trunk. It was a free substitute for gum.

A Sweetgum leaf.

The leaves resemble those of maples, but it has five pointed lobes arranges in a star pattern. The leaves are also alternate, unlike Maples where a pair of leaves emerge on opposite sides of a branch. A unique feature is the “gumballs” produced in the fall. The spiky protrusions make walking barefoot under a Sweetgum a painful experience. The gumballs contain seeds that a favorite food of many seed eating birds.

Winged Elm has almond shaped leaves with serrated edges. Unlike a lot of other Elm species the base of the leaf where it attaches to the midvein is not asymmetrical.

Winged Elm leaves are attached alternately to their branches. Also notice the saw-tooth (serrate) leaf edges.

Corky ridges are found on some, but not every, branch of a tree.

It gets the “Winged” name for corky ridges of tissues that form on the sides of twigs and small branches. But here in the Garden many of the Winged Elms lack these “wings.”

Hop Hornbeam is a small, understory tree that seems to be hard to identify. The leaves have a pointed tip and doubly serrate edges. (A serrate edge means that the edge is a series of saw teeth. Doubly serrate means that each large sawtooth has a smaller saw point on it.)

Hop horbeam leaf (L); Winged Elm leaf (R) The Elm has more coarsely serrate edges.

The bark of older Hop Hornbeams is “shredded” – it looks like a cat scratched it. The bark is in narrow strips that look slightly loose.

Was Myrtle

Wax Myrtle is a shrub native to the coastal plain, so this one is probably deliberately planted. It is famous for the waxy berries that develop in autumn. They are the mature fruit of the plant and each berry is very small, but the wax makes them the favorite food for many birds at that time of year. People harvest the aromatic berries and boil them in water. The wax melts and floats to the surface where it is scooped off. The wonderful smelling wax is added to bees wax to make scented candles.

Yaupon Holly with ripening fruits.

Yaupon Holly is another coastal plain plant. This is the only native plant in North America that contains caffeine. And yes, you can make a drink that has the stimulating properties of coffee by roasting the leaves making a tea from them. Native Americans use it in their ceremonies.

Black Cherry fruits are ripening.

Black Cherry flowers earlier in the spring and is producing cherries right now. But these are not the large, sweet cherries you’re accustomed to. They are small and very tart, Many insects feed on Black Cherry and it has defence to reduce damage from insects. The leaves and fruit have a compound that produces cyanide, but only if their tissues are damaged. Low levels of damage stimulate the plant to produce more of the cyanide compound, increasing its distastefulness.

Black Cherry Finger Galls are caused by mites that feed inside the gall structure they induce in the cherry leaves.

Black Cherry Finger Galls are produced by mites feeding on the cherry leaves. The mites produce a compound that acts like a plant hormone, causing the leaf tissue to produce an abnormal growth. The mites feed within this tissue and are protected from attack by potential predators.

Red Maple gets its name because there is usually something red about it throughout the growing season. The flower emerge very early and are red. When the leaves emerge they have red petioles (the name for the stalk that connects the leaf to the branch). And in the fall the leaves themselves often turn red.

Red Maple leaves emerge opposite each other.

The leaves of all the different kinds of maples are opposite. This means that the leaves grow in pairs, opposite one another on their branch. (All the leaves of the other trees mentioned above have alternate leaf arrangement.

Christmas Fern is green year round. One of our guests today explained to his friends that this fern was reproducing and wondered if it was male or female. He was surprised when I said “neither,” but that’s the truth.

Spore producing structures of Christmas Fern.

Christmas ferns produce spores in special reproductive structures on the underside of the leaf. But when a spore germinates it does not produce another leafy green fern. Instead it produces a small reproductive structure the size of a fingernail. This tiny, flat structure produces male and female structures that produce egg and sperm cells. If there enough moisture present, from dew or rain, the sperm cells can swim to the egg cell and fertilize it. The fertilized egg will then grow into a copy of what we would recognize as a Christmas Fern.

Coral Tube Slime Mold

Don spotted a Coral Tube Slime Mold growing on a piece of rotting tree trunk. Slime molds used to be considered fungi, primarily because they reproduce from spores, but we now know that they are radically different from fungi. Fungi would be digesting the tree. Slime molds are feeding on the bacteria that are rotting the tree. They have a stage in which they are single cells, like amoebas with a flagellum. When the amoebas meet each other they fuse to make a larger, amoeboid organism. that fuses with others of the same kind. When they run out of food they produce reproductive structures that make spores. The white, tubular structures are the spore producing structures of the Coral Slime Mold.

Honewort was the last plant spotted before we turned back. It is uncommon and has tiny white flowers.

Honewort, a plant in the carrot family.

Although the flowers are few they are arranged into an umbel, characteristic of the carrot family.

SUMMARY OF OBSERVED SPECIES:

Tulip Tree              Liriodendron tulipifera
Sourwood                Oxydendrum arboreum
Sweetgum                Liquidambar styraciflua
Winged Elm              Ulmus alata
Wax Myrtle              Morella cerifera
Hophornbeam             Ostrya virginiana
Yaupon Holly            Ilex vomitoria
Black Cherry            Prunus serotina
Red Maple               Acer rubrum
Dogwood                 Cornus florida
Christmas Fern       Polystichum acrostichoides
Coral Slime Mold        Ceratiomyxa fruticulosa
Honewort                Cryptotaenia canadensis

Thirty-one Ramblers met today for the first time since March 5, 2020, when we held our last gathering before the Covid shutdown. There was much joy in reuniting with friends and catching up before we began our ramble.

Today’s report was written by Linda Chafin with minor additions by Dale Hoyt. 

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