Leader for today’s
Ramble: Dr.
Kelly Carruthers, Academic Professional Associate and
Undergraduate Program Coordinator for UGA’s Entomology Department, was our
guest Ramble leader today. Kelly has a Ph.D. in Entomology from the University
of Florida. At UGA she hopes “to bring together my love of education with my
love of insects.”

Kelly assembling a sweep net in preparation for the day’s ramble

Authors of today’s Ramble
report: Linda and
Don. Comments, edits, and suggestions for the report can be sent to Linda at Lchafin@uga.edu.

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. Photos may be enlarged by
clicking them with a mouse or tapping on your screen.

Number of Ramblers
today:
31

Today’s Emphasis: Insects in various
areas of the Garden

Fiery Skipper probing a Lantana flower

Show-and-Tell:

Roger Collins visited
the Kenney Ridge area off of Tallassee Road after last Thursday’s severe storm
and collected a large limb from a toppled Beech. He measured the fallen trunk
and also did a ring count on a cross-section of the limb, estimating the age of
the tree to be approximately 250 years old. This agrees fairly closely with the
age of the largest Beech trees on the slopes below the Children’s Garden, as he
discussed on the Ramble on July13. 

Roger passed around a section of the limb showing the very narrow annual rings, indicating the slow growth that is typical of Beech trees.

Reading:  Avis brought a poem
by Mary Oliver that Hugh Nourse, one of the original Ramble leaders, read on July 5, 2015.

The Summer Day

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean —
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down—
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

Announcements/Interesting things:

Don mentioned that GPTV (Channel 8) showed a Georgia
Outdoors episode about the Georgia Plant Conservation Alliance this past weekend. It will be
re-broadcast again soon. The Botanical Garden of Georgia is
prominently mentioned, with a few familiar faces in the episode.

The US Geological
Survey is asking people to mail in already dead butterflies to help establish a
Research Scientific Collection. The collection will enable  scientists
to have specimens from various regions in the US, allowing them to identify
contaminants and environmental factors which could be contributing to the
decline of butterfly populations. More info here.

Peter Wohlleben, author
of The Hidden Life of Trees, has a new book out: The Power of Trees:
How Ancient Forests Can Save Us If We Let Them. Here’s a review.

Today’s Route: We headed over to the Discovery and Inspiration garden
behind the Porcelain Arts Museum by way of the Visitor Center Plaza, then moved
down into the Herb and Physic Garden and through the Heritage Garden to the
Flower Garden. We returned to the Visitor Center via the rose garden path.

OBSERVATIONS:

The colorful
flower beds around the Visitor Center Plaza are always a great place to see
insects during the summer.

Sleepy Common Eastern Bumble Bee (above and below) visiting the unopened flower heads and branches of ‘Little
Joe,’ a dwarf cultivar of the native Three-nerved Joe-pye Weed.

Zinnia’s brilliant flower heads (below) are popular with skippers and
butterflies that are attracted to reds and yellows. Surprisingly, bees also
love Zinnias even though they don’t see colors in the red end of the spectrum –
there are ultra- violet patterns on Zinnia’s ray flowers that are invisible to human eyes but call in
the bees.

Silver-spotted Skipper probing the disk flowers of a Zinnia flower head

Porcelain Museum garden

There are seven native
Magnolias in Georgia, two of them evergreen: Sweet Bay and Southern. Both are
more or less naturally restricted to the Coastal Plain, though Sweet Bay does occur
in a few Piedmont and Mountain wetlands. Both species are widely planted in the
Piedmont, especially the large, showy Southern Magnolias, which have become
invasive in forests near neighborhoods. Like all Georgia’s magnolias, Sweet Bay has
beautiful, fragrant flowers, but unlike the others, its leaves are also
aromatic and reminiscent of those of the culinary herb, Bay Laurel. Magnolias
are an ancient flowering plant family – belonging to a group of plant families
called “basal angiosperms”– that appeared on the scene before other flowering
plants evolved. Like other ancient plants, such as Sweet Shrub (Calycanthus
floridus), their flowers are pollinated mainly by beetles, which were an early evolving group of insects.
All magnolias produce distinctive cone-like aggregate fruits – many small
fruits called follicles are fused together, each follicle opening in late summer
to release seeds that have bright red seed coats.

Sweet Bay’s flower (left) resembles those of its more famous cousin, Southern Magnolia, but on a smaller scale. In the close-up of its pistil (right), you can see the small green fruits, each tipped with a yellowing style, fused into a single “cone.” The stamens, recently shed, had been attached to the stalk of the cone.

Sweet Bay’s aggregate fruit (left) composed of many fused, maturing follicles. In the right-hand photo of an old fruit, still remaining on the tree since 2022, the follicles have opened and the red-coated seeds have burst out.

Swamp Milkweed in the Porcelain Museum’s garden hosting dozens of Oleander Aphids. Oddly, there were no ants in attendance on these aphids.

Large Milkweed Bug on Swamp Milkweed. These true bugs are a lesson in aposematic coloration – bright orange or red colors that warn potential predators that an insect is poisonous. Their eggs are bright orange, juveniles are mostly red with a few black spots, and adults are patterned with black and reddish-orange markings.

Wild Bergamot flowers are popular with Eastern Carpenter Bees and Common Eastern Bumble Bee (left) and an uncommon Black-and-Gold Bumble Bee (right).

The pond and surrounding wet area on the north side of the Discovery and Inspiration Garden support several interesting native wetland species, including
White-topped Sedge and Horsetails (above) and the ‘Lone Star’ white-flowered
cultivar of the Scarlet Swamp Mallow (below).

Close-up of the reproductive parts of the Mallow’s flower. Five stout styles tipped with rounded stigmas (upper left) emerge from a white tube formed by the fused filaments (stalks) of the stamens. The anthers jutting from the sides of the tube are conspicuously tipped with bright yellow pollen grains.

Ramblers gathered around Heather’s dead male Red Velvet Ant, below. Photo by Chuck Murphy

Heather found a dead male Red Velvet Ant, tangled in a Joro web. The presence of wings indicated it was a male (females lack wings).

A live, winged female Red Velvet Ant captured by Kelly later in the Ramble displaying brilliant aposematic coloration. Also known as “cow killers,” female Red Velvet Ants defend themselves with extremely painful stings that leave long-lasting scars (just ask Dale!). These are not pleasant creatures: the females don’t make nests but instead search for the nests of other wasps and deposit their eggs onto the larvae within. When an egg hatches, the grub eats the body of its host larva.

Plants in the Herb and Physic Garden, especially the Black-eyed Susans,
were busy with a large number of insects, including wasps, bees, butterflies, and skippers.

Fiery Skipper

Furrow or Halictid Bee

Common Eastern Bumble Bee

American Lady

Thread-waisted Wasp Photo by Heather Larkin

Horace’s Duskywing

Carpenter-mimic Leaf Cutter Bee

…and there’s always an Anole!

Chuck Murphy captured Heather and Don in characteristic insect-photography mode

Zinnias and Lantanas in the Flower Garden also hosted a lot of insects…and
another reptile, this one exploring a rambler elbow.

Five-lined Skink

Kelly netted an Eastern Tiger Swallowtail and showed us the patches of blue and reddish-orange scales on the hind wings (above and below) that identify this individual as female.

Silver-spotted skipper photo by Heather Larkin

Ocala Skipper

Thread-waisted Wasp

Honey Bee with pollen baskets loaded with red pollen photo by Heather Larkin

Ramblers seeking what we could find….in the shade! Just another mid-90s day in the Flower Garden…

Gaura (aka Beeblossom) is a wonderful, showy native species for gardens. In the close-up photo below of the flowers, you can see their flowers’ eight stamens and four-parted stigma.

Woodland Spiderlily somehow thriving in the full sun and high temps in the Flower Garden. Its flowers open at night, when they are visited by moths, and close the next morning. One flower (right) has already withered.

This species of Rain Lily typically flowers in late September through early October but it seemed to be successfully braving mid-summer heat and humidity.

Another practitioner of aposematic coloration, a Red Admiral
butterfly was resting on the red-graveled path next to the Rose Garden.

SUMMARY OF OBSERVED SPECIES

Common Eastern Bumble Bee  Bombus impatiens
Three-nerved Joe Pye Weed    Eutrochium dubium cv. ‘Little Joe’
Silver-spotted Skipper              Epargyreus clarus
Carolina Anole                         Anolis caroliniensis
Swamp Milkweed                     Asclepias incarnata
Large Milkweed Bug                Oncopeltus fasciatus
Sweet Bay Magnolia                Magnolia virginiana
Oleander aphid                        Aphis nerii
Bee Balm/Wild Bergamot        Monarda fistulosa
Eastern Carpenter Bee           Xylocopa virginica
Black-and-Gold Bumble Bee  Bombus auricomus
Rough Horsetail                      Equisetum hyemale
White-topped Sedge               Rhynchospora colorata
Scarlet Swamp Mallow, white-flowered cultivar  Hibiscus coccineus cv. ‘Lone Star’
Red Velvet Ant                       Dasymutilla occidentalis occidentalis
Thread-waisted Wasp           Sphex nudus
Furrow bee                           Halictus sp.
Black-eyed Susan               Rudbeckia hirta
Horace’s Duskywing skipper    Erynnis horatius
Fiery Skipper                           Hylephila phyleus    
American Lady butterfly         Vanessa virginiensis
Carpenter-mimic Leaf Cutter Bee    Megachile xylocopoides
Common Five-lined Skink               Plestiodon fasciatus
Eastern Tiger Swallowtail butterfly  Papilio glaucus
Ocola Skipper        Panoquina ocola
Rain Lily            Zephyranthes candida
Woodland Spider Lily    Hymenocallis occidentalis
Gaura/Beeblossom    Oenothera lindheimeri (probably)
Red Admiral butterfly    Vanessa atalanta
 

Leader
for today’s Ramble: Roger Collins

Authors of today’s Ramble report: Roger and Linda. Comments, edits, and
suggestions for the report can be sent to Linda at Lchafin@uga.edu.

Insect
and Fungi identifications: Don
Hunter

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. Photos may be enlarged by clicking them with a mouse or tapping on
your screen. 

Today’s emphasis: Roger Collins shared with us the results of his ongoing research into the land use history of the Botanical Garden, a project that has involved research into tax and property ownership records, dendrochronology, newspaper archives, and reading and interpreting the appearance of trees, soil, and landscape. Citing all these types of evidence, he discussed the changes in the landscape, from initial clearing and planting in the late 1700s, through the recovery that has been going on for the past 90 years.

Number
of Ramblers today: 35

Reading:  Roger read a poem, Can You Imagine?, by Mary Oliver

For example, what the trees do
not only in lightning storms
or the watery dark of a summer’s night
or under the white nets of winter
but now, and now, and now—whenever
we’re not looking.  Surely you can’t imagine
they don’t dance, from the root up, wishing
to travel a little, not cramped so much as wanting
a better view, or more sun, or just as avidly
more shade—surely you can’t imagine they just
stand there loving every
minute of it, the birds or the emptiness, the dark rings
of the years slowly and without a sound
thickening, and nothing different unless the wind,
and then only in its own mood, comes
to visit, surely you can’t imagine
patience, and happiness, like that.

Show and Tell: Bill brought a copy of the new Georgia mushroom field
guide, “Field Guide to the Mushrooms of Georgia”, by Alan Bessette, Arleen Bessette,
and Michael Hopping.

Announcements:

Linda
reminded us of the opening reception for the Sandy Creek Nature Center
art exhibit, “50 Years: Inspired by Nature,” in the Bogue Gallery (second floor, beyond the computers) at the Athens-Clarke
County Library, Sunday afternoon at 3:00 p.m. The exhibit includes work by ramblers
Susie Criswell and Don Hunter, among many others. The exhibit will be up
through August 1.

Don
mentioned that Sally Bethea’s book “Keeping the Chattahoochee: Reviving and
Defending a Great Southern River,” is now available from UGA Press.

Today’s
Route:   From the Children’s Garden, we walked
through the Lower Shade Garden, and crossed the road to the White Trail spur
and the right-of-way, and from there to the first section of the Blue Trail.

Pre-Ramble
Observations:  Don arrived early and photographed
fungi on the mulched path from the upper parking lot and insects in the
Children’s Garden.

Blewits, a beautiful and tasty mushroom, growing in the mulched path

A small puffball mushroom dissected to show solid interior filled with spores

Common Eastern Bumble Bee on a Rattlesnake Master flower head

Same bee species on a Short-toothed Mountain-mint flower head

Western Honey Bee on the Mountain-mint

Katydid Wasp on Mountain-mint

Trees, Forests, and
Land Use

(Quotes from Roger are in quotation marks; some notes added by Linda.)

“To
see the forest, you have to look at the trees. There is a story to be learned from
this forest. By looking at the trees, we are going to see the forest in an
entirely new perspective.  This is a ‘secondary
growth forest,’ meaning this forest is in recovery. If we are in a hospital and
they put us in recovery, we are there to get our strength back, to let our
scars heal a little. So, when I’m looking at trees, I’m looking at how the
forest is recovering from human activities of farming and logging. The
three main objectives of the Ramble today are:

I want to introduce some trees that are over
100 years old.

I want to look at farm terraces that were built
about 1935.

I want to show you evidence that this whole forest was
heavily logged about 60 years ago.”

Our first stop of the morning was this Northern Red Oak, approximately 145 years old, growing near the beginning of the paved Shade Garden path.

“I am going on about
how old these trees are so that we can have a conversation about the history of
this forest. This Northern Red Oak tree is 145 years old. When I say that,
there is a big asterisk beside that number. Of course, a tree may be older or
younger because of variations in growing conditions and the amount of
competition from trees around it.  So,
when I say this tree is 145 years old, picture a bell curve with 145 in the mid-peak
of the bell curve. And then assume a 10 percent variation on either side of
that peak, more or less. Even if we were to go with a 20 percent variation for
this tree, this oak tree would still be at least 116 years old.”

“Here we have a Scarlet Oak which is 143 years old, approximately the same age as the Northern Red Oak. These two oak trees have been growing here since about the year 1880.”

“This American Beech, though approximately
the same size or perhaps even smaller than the two oaks, is older than the oaks,
at slightly over 200 years old, and has been growing here since the year 1818. Beech
trees are the slowest growing trees in the forest. In more northern latitudes
around the Great Lakes where the growing season is shorter, a Beech tree this size
would be estimated at 288 years old.“

“These Beech trees, if they are indeed 200 years old, represent the very
beginning of the recovery of this landscape in the early 1800s to become the
forest that exists today. By 1820, this hillside would have been a gully-washed
landscape after cotton farming and would have been abandoned to forest
succession. That is when these Beech trees and other hardwoods began growing.”

“These three trees – Northern Red Oak, Scarlet Oak, and Beech – are among the oldest trees here in the Shade and Dunson Gardens.”

“I grew up in the South
Georgia piney woods and never saw a Beech tree. But learning about the Beech
tree has given me insights into the dynamics that go on in this forest. Each
species of tree has evolved its own strategy and found its own ecological niche
in the forest. On the one hand, the Beech tree’s strategy is to be the slowest
growing tree in the forest. Compare that to the Loblolly Pine whose strategy is
to have its seed blown by the wind into a barren open field – where there is no
competition and lots of sunshine – and then grow very fast to get ahead of the
hardwoods.”

“What does the presence
of the 100-year-old or possibly 200-year-old trees here on this hillside tell
us? Settlers came into this landscape in 1785 and cleared the forest to plant cotton
and other crops. Standing here 200 years ago, we would have been able to see
from hilltop to hilltop – because there were no trees in the way. On every
hilltop and slope, we would see fields of cotton. The farmer with his mule and
plow would have plowed straight downhill all the way to the river to plant his
cotton. Within one or two decades, this hillside would have become unfit for
cultivation and, by 1820 would have been abandoned to the ecological process of forest
succession.”

This diagram from Duke University illustrates the process that the Bot Garden landscape underwent over the last 200 years.

1-2 years after agricultural abandonment – weedy grasses and asters dominate

3-18 years – grasses, especially Broomsedge, persist and Loblolly Pine comes in

19-30 years – young pine forest

30-70 years – mature pine forest with understory of young hardwoods

70-100 years – pine to hardwood transition

100+ years – Oak-Hickory forest.

This process varies depending on the type of disturbance, the availability of seed sources, and the topography of the site.

“While the Loblolly pine
has to have lots of sunshine and needs to grow fast, the Beech is very shade
tolerant and grows very slowly  – it does
not have a fast gear for growing. It will abide for decade after decade in the shady
understory – waiting for a big oak or pine to fall over and create a gap in the
canopy, allowing sunlight to reach its leaves. Its strategy is to wait it out
and eventually take its place in the canopy.” While it is waiting, its branches
grow horizontally to allow the leaves to capture as much of the sunlight falling
through the canopy as possible.

“This
Beech tree is literally standing there holding its breath. The Beech has a very
low respiration rate and its stomata (pores on the lower leaf surface that
control respiration) are more responsive to light than other trees such as Red
Maple, Tulip Tree, or Red Oak. The stomata of the Beech open more quickly when
light suddenly increases and rapidly close when light intensity diminishes.”

Loblolly Pines typically live 80-120 years, dying of old age or insect disease. As hardwoods begin to dominate, pines die out since their seedlings and sapling cannot thrive in the shade.

These two wood pucks dramatically show the difference in growth rate for Beech versus Loblolly Pine. The smaller of the disks, taken from a large limb of the +200-year old Beech tree, represents over 15 years of growth, while the larger Loblolly Pine disk represents five or so years of growth.

“Growth Rings and Growth Rates: The most accurate way to know the age of a tree is to cut it down and count the number of growth rings on the stump. Each growth ring represents one year of age [NB: each growth ring consists of two differently colored bands: a light colored band of spring/early summer growth and an outer, darker colored band of late summer/fall growth]. Each growth ring adds to the diameter of the tree. If a tree grows one inch in diameter, the circumference of its trunk will increase by 3.14 inches, since Circumference = Diameter x Pi. We can estimate the number of growth rings (age in years) by dividing a tree’s circumference by its circumference growth number (the amount its circumference increases on average in a year).” [Circumference growth numbers can be found on various forestry websites.]

This Sycamore was cut down this spring, perhaps due to storm damage, leaving a flat stump. The tree responded by sending up massive, healthy shoots, a regeneration process known as coppicing.

“Coppiced trees are evidence that a forest has been logged. These trees regenerate from the stumps of hardwood trees after a logging episode. There are often conjoined trunks – two trunks fused together, having grown from the same stump. Coppiced trees such as this example are found throughout the Botanical Garden and are evidence that this landscape was heavily logged about 60 years ago.”

Other evidence that this land was logged in the early
1960s are “before and after” aerial photographs from 1960 and 1967
which show the loss of forest canopy at that time.

The trunks of coppiced trees often grow together, their bases fusing into a single trunk.

A Tulip Tree Beauty moth was spotted high up on the double-trunked Tulip Tree. With a wingspan of up to 2 inches, it is one of the larger geometer moths. It is found throughout the eastern US, wherever its caterpillar host, the Tulip Tree, grows.

Terracing the slopes

In response to the frightening dust
storms that swept the American west in the early 1930s, and in hopes of restoring ruined
farmland across the south, Congress passed and President Franklin Roosevelt
signed the Soil Conservation Act in 1935. One of the methods for soil
conservation that was promoted across the south was terracing, which converts slopes into wide
steps that can then be planted. Terracing prevents erosion by slowing down runoff
and allowing rain to soak into the soil; terracing has been employed by farmers since
antiquity, in both the old and new world.

1935 Red and Black article about terrace training at UGA

“This
newspaper article from 1935 tells of a terracing course in Athens to train 25 ‘terracing
supervisors’ who would oversee the terracing of farm land in Clarke, Madison,
and Jackson counties. This was the first terracing project in the state of
Georgia. The project would ultimately install over 104,000 acres of terracing on
farm land to control soil erosion in these three counties.”  Terraced land leaves a tell-tale striped
appearance visible on aerial photographs; the terraced land at the top of this
photo is now traversed by the Blue Trail, west of the right-of-way, and
supports a mixed forest of loblolly pine and hardwoods. 

Ramblers standing on an old terrace along the Blue Trail

Another example of terraced land in Clarke County is the slope north of the granite outcrop at Rock and Shoals Natural Area. The parallel lines are clearly visible in this Google Earth image.

The scar of an old farming road runs up the slope between Roger and Kathy. Such roads often turned into gullies.

Roger and Kathy measuring an old Loblolly Pine near the Blue Trail for an age estimate.

On our way back to the Visitor Center, we saw some very interesting fungi on the Blue Trail.

Green Cheese Polypore is usually found at the base of old oak trees

Train-wrecker mushrooms can be identified by their sawtooth-edged gills and the scales on their caps and stems. They grow on dead conifers.

Old Man of the Woods Sliced open, the flesh of this mushroom turns pinkish red then black over the course of an hour

SUMMARY OF OBSERVED SPECIES

Blewit mushroom     Lepista nuda
Pill woodlouse     Armadillidium sp.
Common Eastern Bumble Bee     Bombus impatiens
Katydid Wasp     Sphex nudus
Western Honey Bee     Apis mellifera
Puffball mushroom     Lycoperdon sp.
Northern Red Oak     Quercus rubra
Scarlet Oak     Quercus coccinea
Beech     Fagus grandifolia
Loblolly Pine     Pinus taeda
Sycamore     Platanus occidentalis
Red Maple     Acer rubrum
Tulip Tree     Liriodendron tulipifera
Tulip-Tree Beauty moth     Epimecis hortaria
Green Cheese Polypore     Niveoporofomes spraguei
Trainwrecker mushroom     Neolentinus lepideus
Old Man of the Woods     Strombilomyces floccosus