Leader for today’s Ramble: Dale
This report written by Linda (plants) & Dale
Link to Don’s Facebook album for this Ramble
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?vanity=don.hunter.56&set=a.4921358374547355
Number of Ramblers today: 19
Today’s emphasis: Seeking what we find on the Purple Trail, Beaver Marsh and Orange Trail.
Reading: Dale read Uncle Jotham’s Border by Annie Trumbull Slosson (b. 1838, d. 1926), the ninth of ten children. She was self-educated in botany and entomology and gained recognition among entomologists for her extensive collections in little-known areas of New England. She was also a popular author of books of short stories. She was also a member of all the entomological societies in the New York City region.
The full text of the poem can be found here.
Here is a short synopsis of her entomological contributions.
Show and Tell:
Eve brought a beautiful Green June Bug and passed it around.
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| Dorsal view of Green June Bug (In spite of its name, it’s really a scarab beetle.) |
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| Ventral view of the same beetle showing the iridescent structural color. |
The Green June Bug can be a problem pest in large numbers. They will eat fruits and leaves of a variety of plants and their larvae feed on grass roots. But they are very pretty!
Announcements/Interesting Things to Note:
Jim told us about tying a thread around the hind leg of a Green June Bug when he was a kid. He would walk it around, holding the thread as it flew around his head.
Here’s a link to an article about Monarch butterflies using medicine from dead Boneset leaves.
Today’s Route: We walked through the Conservatory and through the Herb and Physic Garden to the Purple Trail, which we took to the boardwalk across the Beaver Marsh. We turned left on the Orange Trail and then left at the bridge across the creek and followed the path to the Flower Garden. We followed the walkway along the edge of the Flower Garden to the Heritage Garden
OBSERVATIONS:
Aerial roots on grape vine
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| Aerial roots on Muscadine vine, 2019 Ramble. |
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| Aerial roots on Muscadine vine, today’s Ramble |
Plant structures that appear where they don’t belong are called adventitious. There doesn’t seem to be a well supported explanation for the appearance of these adventitious aerial roots in grape vines. Most of the “explanations” are really guesses: “Perhaps the vine was damaged by freezing during the winter.”
Even if we don’t really know why they appear it will be interesting to see if any are able to reach the ground below.
Cranefly Orchids are blooming.
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| Cranefly Orchid |
Crane-fly Orchids are flowering along the Purple
Trail. A close look at the flowers reveals that they are slightly twisted
either to the right or left. The flowers are pollinated by noctuid moths that
probe the flowers for nectar and, in the process, bring their eyes into contact
with a sticky packet of pollen (called a pollinia). The packet sticks to either
the left or right eye of the moth, depending on which way the flower is
twisted, and is carried to another flower and deposited during nectar-probing
on the stigma of that flower. This type of pollination is “all
or nothing” – instead of producing lots of loose pollen grains that may be
picked up by several different visiting insects, all the pollen is packed
inside the pollinia and is carried all together to another flower – or not.
This may seem like a risky pollination strategy but the orchid family is the
second largest plant family, so they must be doing something right.
Persimmon tree
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| “Hugh’s” Persimmon tree |
Hugh and Carol Nourse were the original leaders of the Nature Ramblers back in 2012. Any time we walked down the Purple Trail Hugh would point out this lone Persimmon tree and tell us that it was a male tree because no one had ever found any fruit under it. (But of all the times I went down the Purple Trail no one ever volunteered to look for fruit.) Hugh and Carol moved to St. Louis early in 2016, but we can’t pass this tree without thinking of them.
Puffballs
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| Puffballs on rotting wood |
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| Puffball caught in the act. The “smoke” is a cloud of spores emitted when the center puffball was tapped. |
Puffballs are an unusual type of mushroom. The spore producing tissues are not directly exposed to the atmosphere. Instead they are enclosed in a spherical capsule with a single, central opening. Other mushrooms drop their spores from gills on the underside of their caps, or from pores in a spongy cap. The puffballs wait until their spores are ripe and then a single, small opening appears in the center of the dome. And then the puffball waits for rain or a curious Rambler. Just a light touch on the dome expels millions of spores through the opening. In the absence of curious humans, a raindrop will do the job.
Puffballs come in a variety of sizes and shapes. When they are immature they are usually solid and white and it is at that stage they are edible. But be careful — the early stages of the deadly poisonous Amanita mushrooms resemble newly emerged puffballs.
Southern Grape Fern
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| Southern Grape Fern with fertile frond |
Southern Grape Fern and Rattlesnake Fern are sometimes confused as both have fertile fronds that are separate from non-fertile fronds. The fertile frond arises near the ground in the Southern Grape Fern. It arises from the base of the leaves in the Rattlesnake Fern.
Boardwalk over Beaver Marsh
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| Boardwalk over the Beaver Marsh |
The Boardwalk was part of a project to re-route the Orange Trail to avoid the badly eroding sections that were becoming a danger to walkers/runners. It gives us access to the plants that we could never safely reach before.
Water Hemlock
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| Water Hemlock with Great Black Digger Wasp |
Water Hemlock has been called the most toxic
plant in North America. For livestock who browse this plant, death is
nearly instantaneous. For humans, convulsions and vomiting are followed
by death – or life with a permanently damaged
central nervous system. The toxic ingredient is called cicutoxin and is
present in all parts of the plant at all seasons of the year, but is
concentrated in the root. There is no antidote for cicutoxin poisoning,
only palliative care. This plant ain’t fooling
around!
Water Hemlock, a native of North America, looks almost identical to Poison Hemlock (Conium maculatum),
a native of Eurasia. Poison Hemlock is equally poisonous to both humans
and livestock, and is probably the plant used to execute
Socrates in 399 BC. Both Water Hemlock and Poison Hemlock occur in
wetlands throughout Georgia.
Many important culinary herbs – coriander (aka
cilantro), dill, fennel, cumin, parsley, and caraway, and anise — are
in the same family as these poisonous plants. As are carrots, parsnips,
and celery. All share a family resemblance:
highly dissected leaves and small white flowers held in showy,
umbrella-shaped clusters. One wonders how many people died on the way to
sorting out which members of this family are edible.
Duck Potato/Arrowhead
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| Leaves of Duck Potato/Arrowhead |
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| Spots on Duck Potato leaves. What are they? |
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| White spots enlarged. Are they Scale Insects? |
The most conspicuous plant in the Beaver Marsh is the Duck Potato or Arrowhead. The second common name, Arrowhead, is obvious — it refers to the shape of the leaves. Duck Potato is a little more obscure. It refers to the edible tubers at the bottom of the stems. These are apparently edible both raw and cooked. Wildlife (muskrats, beavers, wading birds and ducks) eat both the tubers and seeds of the plant.
Some of the plants we looked at were covered with white spots. On closer examination it looked as if each spot was raised on the surface of the leaf, not a part of the leaf. This suggested to me that they might be scale insects.
Scale insects are strange creatures. The larval stages are mobile — they crawl around like ordinary insects. But, for females, the molt in the last stage is to an immobile, eyeless, legless creature that secretes a waxy cover. She retains her mouthparts to suck juices out of the plant she is on. There are no males in many scale insects; the females reproduce parthenogenetically.
Arrow Arum
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| Arrow Arum |
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| Arrow Arum, showing the marginal vein. |
Is it Arrow-arum or Duck Potato?
Two species with similar leaves grow in the beaver
marsh: Arrow-arum and Duck Potato. Both have arrowhead-shaped leaves,
but very different flowers. To distinguish them when not in flower (most
of the growing season), look closely at the
leaf venation. Arrow-arum leaves have a prominent central vein and
lateral (side) veins that parallel each other. There is also a barely
perceptible vein that runs close to and parallel with the leaf margin.
Duck Potato leaves lack this marginal vein, and
its lateral veins originate from a central point at the junction of the
leaf blade and stalk. Arrow-arum leaves are also glossier and smoother
than those of Duck Potato. If you feel like doing a bit of wild-edible
exploring, you could also dig up the plant:
Duck Potato rhizomes bear small, white, starchy tubers that were an
important food source for Native Americans. Less so for ducks, who
usually can’t dig deep enough to excavate the tubers, though muskrats
can.
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Image of Duck Potato tubers by Eric Toensmeier |
Lurid Sedge
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| Lurid Sedge |
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| Lurid Sedge perigynia |
Sedges have edges….and some sedges – those in the genus Carex –
also have small but easily observed, inflated sacs holding their
three-sided seeds. The sacs are called perigynia, i.e. “surrounding the
female parts.” In Lurid Sedge,
the sacs have elongated beaks which may help with seed dispersal.
Waterfowl and other birds eat the seeds. Both the common and scientific
names derive from Latin
luridus “pale yellow, ghastly, the color of bruises,” which seems a bit harsh for one of the prettiest sedges.
American Lopseed
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| American Lopseed |
During the summer, the Piedmont forest floor is a
dark and quiet place. Very few wildflowers are in bloom in July in the
forest understory – there is simply too little light penetrating the
canopy to sustain most plant species, perhaps
as little as 5% of ambient sunlight. One species that does flourish in
the shade, in its own inconspicuous way, is American Lopseed. An herb 1 –
3 feet tall, Lopseed flowers are held in a narrow spike at the top of
the plant; once they are pollinated the flowers
“lop” or fold down against the stem and begin to develop fruits. With
its opposite leaves, angled stem, and two-lipped flowers, Lopseed
resembles plants in the mint family. But there are no mint family plants
in our area that hold their spent flowers and fruits
in such a peculiar fashion. Lopseed has adapted to living in a low
light environment in several ways. Its leaves are thin and wide, and the
leaf pairs are held at right angles to adjacent pairs to prevent
overlapping and shading each other. Also, the uppermost
leaves are smaller than the lower. Lopseed is aided in its efforts to
obtain sunlight by a surprising source: sunflecks. These are merely
flashes of sunlight that make it through the overlying tree canopy and
rest briefly on leaf surfaces. Studies have shown
that sunflecks account for up to 80% of the sunlight reaching the
forest floor and significantly increase photosynthesis in understory
plants.
Carolina Milkvine
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| Carolina Milkvine fruit |
Carolina Milkvine is one of two species of milkvines found at the
Garden. A large population occurs in the Nash Prairie and several
populations are found throughout the forest. Its deep maroon flowers are
pollinated by flies and beetles
and produce spiny, cucumber-like pods. Although they produce a milky
latex like milkweeds, the milkvines are not known to support Monarch
caterpillars.
Mushrooms
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| The underside of the cap of a mushroon, showing the gills that produce spores. |
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| Underside of bolete mushroom caps, showing the pores. Spores are produced from these tubes. |
Mushroom parts
A mushroom has two basic parts: a mycelium and a fruiting body. (Most people refer to the fruiting body as the mushroom, but mushroom = mycelium + fruiting body.) The mycelium is by far the largest part. The mycelium and the fruiting body are both made of long, threadlike cells. The mycelium is the underground part and it is the part of the fungus that decomposes the wood or leaf litter it is growing in. This makes it analogous to the root system of a plant.
Fungal life styles
There are three fungal (mushroom) life styles: saprobic, parasitic and mycorrhizal.
Saprobic mushrooms get the energy they need by decomposing dead organic material. They do this by secreting digestive enzymes into their environment and absorbing the resulting material. It’s the same process that happens in our digestive tract, but the products of digestion remain enclosed in our digestive organs. The products of mycelial digestion are absorbed by the mycelium.
(Saprobic was formerly called saprophytic, which literally means a decomposer plant. This was when fungi were still believed to be plants. We now know that no plants are decomposers and those that were thought to be are really tapping into an existing mycorrhizal connection.
Parasitic fungi acquire their energy by decomposing living material. Some mushrooms grow on the living parts of trees and may eventually kill the tree. In that case they become saprobic.
Mycorrhizal fungi have a mutualistic relationship with the roots of plants. (Mycorrhizal literally means: fungus-root.) The fungus is more efficient than the plant roots in finding water or mineral nutrients that contain nitrogen or phosphorus. In return the plant shares some of its photosynthetically produced carbohydrate (sugar). To do this the fungal partner’s mycelium is intimately wrapped about the finer parts of the root system.
Is a mushroom a flower?
What we call a mushroom fruiting body is analogous to a flower. The purpose of a flower is sexual reproduction. The function of a flower is to produce seeds. Similarly, the purpose of a mushroom is to produce spores.
Are mycelia just fungal roots?
The mycelium performs the same function as the roots of a plant: it transports water and dissolved minerals throughout the mycelium and the fruiting body. But it also does something else that the roots of a flowering plant don’t: it makes carbohydrates (CHO). The mycelium secretes digestive enzymes that break down the complex CHO in decaying leaves and wood. The simpler sugars that are released in this process are then absorbed by the mycelial threads and used as a source of energy to make more mycelium and, when the time comes, the fruiting body. (Note that the origin of this absorbed CHO is ultimately from the photosynthetic products of formerly living plants.)
Topsy-turvy sex
A plant produces a flower and waits for a bee to bring some pollen to make a seed.
A fungal mycelium fuses with another mycelium of the same species and then waits for the right conditions to make a fruiting body and produce spores. But not any old mycelium will do – it has to be a different sex.
There is nothing like easily recognizable male and female fungi, and a fungus doesn’t mate with just any other fungus. Fungal sexes are separated into what are called “mating types.” In order to produce a fruiting body (a mushroom) a mycelium must fuse with the mycelium of a different mating type. To humans the mating types are not visibly different. They can be determined in the laboratory by whether or not two mycelia will fuse if grown in the same petri dish. If they can’t, they are the same mating type. If they can, they were different mating types and the fused portions will go on to produce a fruiting body. The catch is that there are more than just two mating types.
A Harvard mycologist discovered multiple mating types in the common Split gill fungus, He eventually discovered that there were two genes that determined the mating type, call them A and B. Each gene had many different versions (A1, A2, . . . An; B1, B2 ,. . . Bm). Any one mushroom carried just one of the A genes and just one of the B genes. He found that two mycelia would mate only if both their A and B genes were different. If even one of the two genes was the same no myceluim fusion would take place. He calculated that, worldwide, there were probably at least 20,000 different mating types in the Split-gill fungus.
Mushroom sex differs in other ways from that seen in plants and animals. In plants and animals when egg and sperm come together their nuclei fuse to produce a single cell. That cell has a single nucleus that contains the chromosomes (and genes) of both parents. Fungi delay the nuclear fusion. Instead, when two mycelia of different mating types fuse their respective nuclei intermingle in a common cytoplasm. (The fungal cytoplasm is not clearly divided into separate cells like that of a plant or animal. Instead, it is a single cytoplasm within which the nuclei can move about more or less freely. So after the two mating types have joined their mycelia the fungal cytoplasm contains two genetically distinct nuclei. In other words, mycelial fusion is not the same as egg and sperm fusion. It does not result in a single cell with a single nucleus combining the genetic material of both parents. Instead, it results in a cytoplasm in which two genetically distinct nuclei coexist — a special kind of “hybrid” called a dikaryon. (The di- means two; -karyon is a Greek word that refers to the nucleus; thus, a dikaryon is an organism with two different nuclei in its cytoplasm.)
The dikaryon mycelium can continue to grow and when the conditions are right it will produce a fruiting body. Within the tissues of the fruiting body are specialized cells, called basidia, that will produce spores. Each basidium has two separate nuclei, one of each mating type. When ready to produce spores, the two nuclei fuse and then undergo the same type of division that human egg or sperm precursor cells do, called meiosis. This type of cell division reduces the amount of genetic material by half in each resulting cell. The cells produced by this type of division become spores and are released from the gills of the mushroom by the billions, to drift away on the gentlest of breezes. Those few that land in suitable places will germinate to form a new mycelium that combines the genetic makeup of both parents. Some spores will be the same mating type as their parents, and some will have a new combination of mating type genes.
So, when did sexual reproduction occur in this fungus? When the two mycelia fused to form a dikaryon? When the dikaryon “decided” to produce a fruiting body? When the two nuclei inside each basidium fused? Or when that basidial cell divided by meiosis to produce four spores?
SUMMARY OF OBSERVED SPECIES:
Grape Vitis rotundifolia
American
Caesar mushroom Amanita jacksonii
Cranefly
Orchid Tipularia discolor
Sweetbread
Mushroom Clitopilus prunulus
Persimmon
Tree Diospyros virginiana
Amanita
Mold Hypomyces hyalinus
Bolete
mushroom (not IDd) Boletus sp.
Ornate-stalked
Bolete Retiboletus ornatipes
Puffball
mushroom Lycoperdon perlatum
Southern
Grape Fern Botrychium biternatum
Smooth
Chanterelles Cantharellus
lateritius
Water
Hemlock Cicuta maculata
Bumblebee Bombus sp.
Great
Black Digger Wasp Sphex
pensylvanicus
Beautyberry Callicarpa ??
Duck
Potato/Arrowhead Sagittaria
latifolia
Lurid
Sedge Carex lurida
Crossvine Capreolata bignonia
Sensitive
Fern Onoclea sensibilis
Arrow-Arum Peltranda virginica
Jellied
False Coral Fungus Sebacina
schweinitzii
American
Lopseed Phryma leptostachya
Carolina
Milkvine Matelea caroliniensis