Ramble Report March 16, 2023
Leader for today’s Ramble: Linda Chafin
Authors of today’s report: Linda. Comments, edits, and suggestions for the report
can be sent to Linda at Lchafin@uga.edu.
Insect identification: Dale Hoyt
Link to Don’s
Facebook album for this Ramble. All the photos that appear in this report, unless
otherwise credited, were taken by Don Hunter. All of the photos may be enlarged by clicking on them or by tapping your screen.
Today’s emphasis: What’s flowering and leafing out on the White Trail Spur, the Orange Trail connector, The Orange Trail, and the Purple Trail.
Ramblers today: 30
Announcements:
Sandy Creek Nature Center is celebrating its 50th anniversary on Saturday the 18th! A full afternoon of activities, from Mayoral proclamation to bird walks, local music, and a planetarium program,
are lined up for Saturday. Click here for the full line-up of events.
The Nature Ramblers are looking for volunteer leaders for our Thursday walks. As most of you know, Dale retired last year after
thirteen years as Nature Rambler leader. Those are mighty big shoes to fill
and I’m not asking for anyone to do that, but…I cannot be the sole leader. We need folks who can step up
once or twice a month to lead a ramble. You
DO NOT NEED TO BE AN EXPERT! Here’s what’s involved: think about which trail or part of the Garden you’d like to visit, then show up on Thursday, lead the
introductions, contribute a reading if no one else has brought one, and lead
the group on the trail you chose, staying mindful of our time limit
(approx 9:00am to 10:30-11:00am). Other leaders and knowledgeable folks will almost always be part of the group and
will be on hand to answer questions and point out interesting things along the
way, so, as I said, you do not need to be an expert. If you are considering it, I’ll be glad to answer questions and provide
suggestions. I also have compiled an archive of readings from past rambles, organized
by season, from which you can choose if you’d like. Please… let me hear from you
at Lchafin@uga.edu
Richard announced that Saturday night is the annual “Dancing with the Athens’ Stars” fundraiser for Project Safe. 7:30 pm at the Classic Center.
Reading:
An excerpt from Quiet Until the Thaw, a novel by Alexandra Fuller, set on the Pine Ridge Oglala Lakota Indian Reservation in southwest South Dakota.
“The Moon of Fattening:
The earth turned, and the sun grew stronger.
Snow around the teepee finally melted completely and
puddled up in the tufts of last year’s old grass. Shoots of grass, fluorescent
with youth, emerged from the yellow thatch.
Life returns furiously fast when it can.
Before month’s end, spiderlike harvestmen appeared, leggy
emissaries from winter’s dark soil. After that, small clouds of blue
butterflies showed up, coagulating from the sky in fragments. Robins returned
and sheltered from spring storms in tangles of cottonwood branches. Then
bluebirds descended, flashing iridescent in the meadow; and the tiny wrens with
their big songs. Tree swallows postured and dallied in the cottonwoods.
Chickadees held noisy counsel.
Then the mares started to drop their foals, and by the
time the little creek was running ice free, all but three of them had colts at
their flanks. In another two weeks, the cottonwoods were glittering with lime
green, shiny leaves. The ravens began courting and chuckling along the creek.
Red-wing blackbirds shrilled from the willows, where their nests held clutches
of eggs. Snakes sunbathed on the dark south-facing rocks.
The sun warmed the canvas of the teepee, and lit its
interior yellow. We held the babies’ tiny faces toward the sun so that they’d
always and in all ways be able to find their ways back to this place.”
Show and Tell: I forgot to bring this up at Show and Tell, so now….here’s Slime Flux! As if dog vomit slime mold was not gross enough, we now have something known to its friends as “deer vomit” — and to scientists as “slime flux.” It’s not a slime mold and not even a single fungus. Multiple species of fungi may be involved perhaps along with yeast and bacteria. It occurs in the spring, especially on wild grape vines, but also on trees, where it is a passing thing and not fatal. More info, and better photos, on Slime Flux are here and here. Thanks to Elizabeth Little and Bill Sheehan for identifying and explaining this weird phenomenon!
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| Slime Flux on Muscadine Grape vine in Hard Labor Creek floodplain, Morgan County. Photo by Linda Chafin |
Today’s Route: We followed the White Trail Spur behind the Children’s Garden down to the Orange Trail Connector, turned left, and walked along the lower slope to the Orange Trail. We returned uphill to the vicinity of the Visitor Center on the Purple Trail.
Today’s Observations:
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Gingko’s fan-shaped leaves are emerging on the trees in the Children’s Garden. Gingko |
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| Columbine plants have found a home in the cracks of the sidewalk that leads from the Children’s Garden through the Shade Garden. Concrete sidewalks are made of limestone and other high pH materials, all of which makes Columbine, a calciphile (calcium-loving plant), very happy. |
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| Chattahoochee Trillium leaves, with their distinctive silvery-green midvein stripe, emerge in a tight whorl. Elsewhere in the Garden, many of these trilliums are already in full bloom. |
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| Sap leaking from a wound in a Red Hickory trunk. Don tasted the sap and found it pleasantly sweet. |
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| Red Hickory nuts, probably cached last fall by a squirrel and recently retrieved for a late winter meal. Red Hickory was for many decades treated as a subspecies of Pignut Hickory. Along these lines, I recommend viewing this very short Instagram video submitted by Catherine. You don’t have to be an Instagram member to see it. |
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| Feathery evidence of nature red in tooth and claw. |
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| Spotted Trillium flowers sit directly atop the stem and its leaves are mottled in several shades of green, two characteristics of trilliums in the subgroup called toadshades. |
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| Spotted Trillium petals are conspicuously narrowed at the base, exposing the stamens. The oval structures below the petals are sepals that enclosed and protected the developing flower. |
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| With their very short stems and twisted petals, Decumbent Trillium is easy to separate from the other toadshade trilliums. |
[All of the photos may be enlarged by clicking on them or by tapping your screen.]
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| Coral Honeysuckle is native to Georgia, west to Texas and north to Connecticut. Its leaves are longer and narrower than those of Japanese Honeysuckle, and have a blue-green and purplish cast to them. When in flower, they are unmistakable, with long, coral-red trumpets (not seen today). |
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| Rue-anemone (or Wind Flower) Rue-anemone is one of the earliest wildflowers to bloom at the Garden, and often continues to bloom as late as May. It has no petals — those are white sepals, and they may be anywhere from five to ten in number. In the center of the flower, numerous stamens surround a cluster of pistils that will become tiny fruits. Deer ignore these mildly toxic plants, accounting for their abundance at the Garden. |
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| White Avens’s rosettes appear in early winter, their dark green- and-white leaves producing carbohydrates on warmer days, thanks to the winter sunlight that falls through the leafless canopy. In April, stems will emerge from the rosettes bearing bright green, three-parted leaves that look nothing like the winter leaves. Small, white, five-petaled flowers will follow in early summer. |
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Mystery plant in the floodplain! We scratched our heads, declared we know what it is, but just cannot place the name. The leaves are alternate and toothed, the stem is a waxy blue-green (glaucous) and arises from a horizontal rhizome. There are no wings on the stems, though one of the two alternate-leaved wingstem species is our first guess. Any ideas? Or do we wait till it flowers, when we can all say, I knew that! |
News flash: before this blog post was published, Don alerted me that he’d discovered a similar, though further-along, patch of plants on Friday — with glaucous lower stems AND winged upper stems. Mystery solved: these are Alternate-leaved Wingstem (Verbesina alternifolia) plants. Thanks, Don, Rambler Extraordinaire!
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| China Fir
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Immature cones of the China Fir
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| Basal leaf rosette of Woolly Mullein Woolly Mullein was introduced from Europe in the 1700s and now shows up throughout North America in disturbed sunny areas with poor, dry soils. It is a biennial, meaning that, in the year of seed germination, it puts up only a rosette of leaves (above); the next summer it sends up a leafy, six-foot stem with a dense spike of yellow, five-petaled flowers at the top — after which the plant dies. Each plant bears 100,000‑240,000 seeds in its single year of flowering and fruiting, pretty much guaranteeing that this is one exotic species that is here to stay. |
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| Soft Rush in the Middle Oconee River Floodplain. The floodplain will be full of grasses and grass-like plants, so-called “graminoids,” in the coming months, but Soft Rush leaves are the only ones that persist through the winter here at the Garden. It will send up flowering stems later in the summer that are round in cross-section …reminding us of the jingle that describes the stems of graminoids — “sedges have edges, rushes are round, and grasses have joints all the way to the ground?” Or …grasses are hollow all the way to the ground? Or… grasses have knees that bend to the ground. All of these are more-or-less accurate descriptions of grass stems, so take your pick. |
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| Kidney-leaved Buttercup Like almost all the Buttercups, this species has five, glossy yellow petals, though they are easy to overlook. Buttercups are aptly named since their glossiness derives in part from an oily pigment that impregnates the upper layer of cells in the petals. There are also white starch grains embedded in the petals that reflect yellow light back to our eyes. “Kidney-leaf” refers to the shape of the basal leaves that aren’t visible in this photo. The upper leaves, as shown, are deeply dissected and toothed. |
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| Bloodroot Bloodroot usually begins to flower in early March but, this year with our crazy 80-degree February days, Bloodroot flowered in February, and now has fruits. Bloodroot is not a spring ephemeral species; its leaves do not disappear when fruiting is over, but will continue to expand till mid-summer, sometimes up to 9 inches wide. |
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| Butterweed flowering in the floodplain |
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| Butterweed flower heads are composed of 8-13 sterile, petal-like ray flowers and a central disk of 35-50+ tiny disk flowers. |
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| The stalks of these Box Elder leaves have round, yellowish-green galls created by female Box Elder Gall Midges that have laid their eggs in the base of the leaf stalk. Later in the season, Box Elder leaf surfaces often sport galls caused by a different insect, the Box Elder Pouchgall Mite. |
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| Rare sighting of Bigfoot lurking among the Box Elders |
[All photos may be enlarged by clicking on them or by tapping your screen.]
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| Sochan, or Cut-leaf Coneflower Thanks to John Schelhas, who worked with the Cherokee Nation during his career with the Forest Service, we learned that this common floodplain species is a nutritious spring green traditionally eaten by members of the Cherokee Nation.
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| The bark on young Silverbell trunks sometimes has shallow grooves. |
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| The bark of Silverbell branches is distinctively striped with tan and gray. |
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| Mature Silverbells have dark gray bark with a purple-ish tinge. |
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| Not so many years ago, this rocky hillside was invisible from the Orange Trail, completely obscured by Chinese Privet. Determined effort by Garden staff and volunteers have cleared the floodplain and lower slopes of this invasive shrub, giving us a lovely late winter view. |
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| Turning left uphill on the Purple Trail, we began to see upland wildflowers like Green-and-Gold, a wonderful native groundcover. |
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| This recently fallen Northern Red Oak lived for 140+ years, according to Roger who counted the annual rings. Most of the recently blown down trees at the Garden are Northern Reds, a species that was hit hard by the droughts of the last 10-15 years. |
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| Myrna spotted an Inchworm, a caterpillar of the geometrid moth family, hanging over the trail from an almost invisible silk thread. |
Dale wrote about Inchworms in his July 8, 2021 blog report: “Inchworms are
almost never seen on their host plants because their shape and
coloration make them look like part of the leaves they are eating or
just another twig on a branch. They get their name, Inchworm, from the
way they walk: the rear end is brought up to the head end, making an
inverted “U” shape. The claspers on the hind end then grasp the surface
and the head end releases its attachment and extends forward in a
straight line. It looks like the caterpillar is measuring the surface
its crawling on, hence the “inchworm” common name.
In addition to
resembling twigs and leaves, inchworms have another defense against
being eaten: they drop off the tree they are dining on when danger
threatens. Put yourself in the place of a tasty Inchworm when a bird
lands on your branch. If you jump you can fall out of danger. But when
you hit the ground, you’ll be faced with another problem — how will you find your way back to that tasty leaf you were
munching? You could wander for hours and never even find your tree
trunk.
A safety line is the solution. Like most caterpillars, Inchworms can produce silk from silk glands in their head. When danger
threatens, they start releasing a silken safety line from these glands.
The Inchworm glues one end of the silk to the leaf or twig and then
jumps off. The weight of the caterpillar pulls the silk out of the gland
as the caterpillar falls. It happens fast enough to fool a bird! Not
only has the caterpillar escaped its predator, it has a way to return
home — climb up the silken thread. I have watched Inchworms climbing
their safety lines and can tell you that it involves winding the thread
up into a wad held by their thoracic legs, but I can’t provide any more
details. Perhaps Ramblers with more acute vision can find the answer.” Thank you, Dale!
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| Highbush Blueberry flowers are not quite open yet. |
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| Mosses reproduce in two phases, alternating between a gametophyte generation that produces gametes (eggs and sperm), and a sporophyte generation that produces spores. The tiny tear-drop shaped structures and the slender filaments supporting them (shown in this photo) are all there is of the sporophyte generation — they remain attached to the top of the gametophyte plant.
A cap on the tear drop opens and releases haploid (1n) spores that will germinate and develop into the green, leafy gametophyte plants that we think of when we think “moss.” These small plants are either female or male and will produce eggs or sperms respectively. If luck is on their side, sperm on a male gametophyte will be splashed by raindrops onto a nearby female gametophyte plant with eggs and fertilization takes place. If so, a diploid (2n) zygote will result. The zygote develops into the sporophyte that, while remaining attached to the top of the female gametophyte plant, releases spores. And so the cycle resumes…. |
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| Moss Life Cycle Copyright 2015 Encyclopedia Britannica |
SUMMARY OF OBSERVED SPECIES:
Columbine Aquilegia canadensis
Japanese Maple Acer palmatum
Chattahoochee Trillium Trillium decipiens
Red Hickory Carya ovalis
Decumbent Trillium Trillium decumbens
Lion’s Foot Prenanthes sp.
Coral Honeysuckle Lonicera sempervirens
Spotted Trillium Trillium maculatum
Rue Anemone Thalictrum thalictroides
Four-winged Silverbells Halesia tetraptera
White Avens Geum canadense
Mystery Plant aka Alternate-leaved Wingstem Verbesina alternifolia
Painted Buckeye Aesculus sylvatica
Chinese Fir Cunninghamia lanceolata
Thorny Olive Elaeagnus pungens
Bloodroot Sanguinaria canadensis
Blue Palm Sabal minor
Soft Rush Juncus effusus
Kidney-leaf Buttercup Ranunculus abortivus
Butterweed Packera glabella
Box Elder Acer negundo
Box Elder Gall Midge Contarinia negundinis
Virgin’s Bower Clematis virginiana
Common Elderberry Sambucus canadensis
American Sycamore Platanus occidentalis
Cutleaf Coneflower Rudbeckia laciniata
Moss (no ID) Bryophyta
White Oak Quercus alba
Hairy Woodrush Luzula acuminata
Green-and-Gold Chrysogonum virginianum
Possumhaw/Deciduous Holly Ilex decidua
Geometer moth caterpillar Family Geometridae
Northern Red Oak Quercus rubra
Crossvine Bignonia capreolata
Highbush Blueberry Vaccinium corymbosum