Leader
for today’s Ramble:
Heather
Authors of today’s
Ramble report: Linda and Don. Comments,
edits, and suggestions for the report can be sent to Linda at Lchafin (at) 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.
Today’s emphasis: Butterflies, caterpillars,
and their host plants in the International, Herb & Physic, Heritage, and
Flower Gardens.
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| Common Buckeye caterpillar |
Number
of Ramblers today:
30
Reading: Cathy
Payne recited a poem, The Little Turtle, by Vachel Lindsay, from her first grade.
There was a little turtle.
He lived in a box.
He swam in a puddle.
He climbed on the rocks.
He snapped at a mosquito.
He snapped at a flea.
He snapped at a minnow.
And he snapped at me.
He caught the mosquito.
He caught the flea.
He caught the minnow.
But he didn’t catch me.
Announcements and other interesting things:
Emily reminded us of Pie Day and Annual Meeting at Sandy Creek Nature Center, this coming Sunday, September 24, 3:00 – 5:00pm, and encouraged everyone to come. If you are not a member, you can join
during the event.
The 34th Annual Insectival is happening
Saturday, September 30, 9am – 1pm at the State Botanical Garden. Join
Garden staff and educational partners to celebrate and learn about six-legged creatures. There will be puppet shows, activity stations,
bugs of all shapes and sizes, entomologists,
performances, Insect Café, and food trucks, and the popular Monarch Butterfly release!
Roger Collins will present “Before
there Was the Garden,” the fascinating landscape history of the last 12,000
years of what we know as the State Botanical Garden to the Friends First Friday
breakfast on October 6. The registration deadline is Noon on Friday, September
29. The registration fee of $10 for Friends members, $12 for mon-members includes
breakfast. Roger has spent the last year researching land use history in the 2,000
acre area around the Garden, tracking down old tax maps and aerial photos, and
analyzing tree rings and land formations to interpret land use history. Register here.
Roger Nielsen announced a get-together sponsored
by the Oconee River Land Trust to celebrate their 30th Anniversary on Sunday, October 8, 3:00 – 6:00 p.m., at Smith
Wilson and Dianne Penney’s farm. The event will be catered by Lee Epting, with music and adult
beverages, and
hikes and mule-drawn wagon rides.
Wonderful nature website to check out: Focus on Natives: Nature Photography and Observation Close-up. Here’s a nice example of a blog entry.
Interesting article: “The
Most Misunderstood Birds in North America.”
Show-and-Tell: Carla
brought some Sicklepod (Coffee Weed) plants with flowers
and bean pods. Sicklepod, native to the New World tropics and now widely naturalized in the U.S., is in the genus Senna, a group of plants that are larval hosts for Sulphur butterflies. Smooth, white, slender eggs
were visible on both the tops and bottoms of the leaves of Carla’s specimen, apparently the eggs of
Cloudless Sulphur butterflies. The native Maryland Wild Senna flourishes in the right-of-way through the floodplain at the Garden.
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| Sicklepod plant (above) and egg of Cloudless Sulphur butterfly (below) |
Today’s
Route: We crossed the Flower Bridge into the American
South Section of the International Garden, walked through the Mediterranean, Middle
East, and Spanish Sections, arriving at the Herb and Physic Gardens. After
spending some time in the Physic Garden, we headed to the Heritage Garden
before taking the steps down into the Flower Garden. We meandered down to the lowermost
areas of the Flower Garden before returning to the Visitor Center and the flower beds in the plaza.
OBSERVATIONS:
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| Don photographed this Gulf Fritillary butterfly probing the spent flower heads of Rattlesnake Master in the Children’s Garden. Most photos of this butterfly focus on the bright orange upper wings; this photo shows how lovely the coppery-silvery lower wing surfaces are. |
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|
Heather photographed a Genista Broom Moth caterpillar on a Baptisia stem. |
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| Appalachian Pink Turtlehead, cultivar ‘Hot Lips,’ is in flower in the Bartram section of the International Garden. |
Appalachian Pink Turtlehead is rare in Georgia, barely
making it into Rabun County, a stone’s
throw from North Carolina. It is more common but still rare
in moist, high elevation forests in North Carolina, South Carolina, and Virginia. Both the common name and
scientific name, Chelone, refer to the shape of the flower when viewed
in profile: it is an inflated tube with two lips that resembles a side view of a
sea turtle’s head – Chelone is the genus of sea turtles.
How are the closed flowers of
Turtleheads pollinated? The flowers produce seeds only as a result of
cross-pollination. Large bumblebees that can force their way inside the tube by
parting the “lips” are effective at carrying out cross-pollination. Smaller
bees that do enter the tube are not the right size and shape to effect
pollination because they do not brush against both the stamens, collecting pollen,
and pistils, depositing pollen. Other bees “rob” nectar from turtlehead flowers
by chewing a hole near the base of the tube and extracting nectar but do not
effect pollination.
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| Appalachian Pink Turtlehead is close kin to White Turtlehead (Chelone glabra) which is blooming now along the Orange Trail where the trail nears the beaver marsh from the north (not seen on the path we took on this ramble, this photo is from October 2022). Its flowers are white, sometimes with pink or purple “lips.” |
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| An American Toad jumped out of the duff onto one of the large rocks edging the path through the American Section of the International Garden. |
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| The caterpillars of Giant Swallowtails look enough like bird droppings to discourage predators. Photos by Heather Larkin |
Bill
made the find of the day, spotting numerous “bird dropping” caterpillars on Northern
Toothache Tree (aka Northern Prickly-ash, planted along the southern edge of the Physic
Garden, near the woodland). These are the caterpillars of the
Giant Swallowtail Butterfly, the largest butterflies in North America, with
some males’ wingspans reaching more than 7 inches. Very rare in Georgia, Toothache-tree
is a member of the Citrus family (Rutaceae). Giant Swallowtails use only plants
in the Citrus family as larval hosts. Other native Rutaceae species in Georgia
include the fairly common coastal Southern Toothache Tree (Southern Prickly Ash or Hercules’
Club, Zanthoxylum clava-herculis) and less common but not rare Wafer-ash (Ptelea trifoliata),
a shrub of calcareous soils.
 |
| If the bird-dropping imitation does not discourage bird predators, Swallowtail caterpillars will raise up an osmoterium, a red, Y-shaped organ that resembles a snake’s tongue. And if that is not scary enough, the osmoterium will also produce foul-smelling and toxic terpene compounds. Photo by Heather Larkin |
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| Fruits are still maturing in the Tall Pawpaw patch. |
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| Beautiful, deep blue flowers caught our attention in the Heritage Garden. Blue Pea vines are growing out of a pot of marigolds and twining through holes in the brick wall. Blue Pea is native to tropical Asia, and has a long history as a dye plant, a sacred flower used in rituals, and a natural food coloring. It is also used in traditional Ayurvedic medicine for treating a variety of ills. |
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| The Gourd arbor in the Heritage Garden is covered in Loofah vines bearing large, yellow flowers and producing gourds of different sizes. |
The Flower Garden is ablaze in
color now and swarming with insects.
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| Fork-tailed Bush Katydid nymph on a Lantana shrub |
 |
|
Heather |
Bright, red-flowering Salvia species are planted in several areas of the Flower Garden, appealing
to Cloudless Sulphur butterflies and other long-tongued butterflies whose tongues are long enough to reach the
nectar produced at the base of the flower tube.
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| Pineapple Sage, a native of Mexico and Guatemala Photo by Gabriele Kothe-Heinrich |
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| Scarlet Sage, a native of Brazil |
Sages are in the genus Salvia, in the mint family. Pineapple
Sage is native to Mexico and Guatemala, Scarlet Sage to Brazil.
There are three red-flowered mint species native to Georgia, two occurring naturally only in the Coastal Plain, the third in the mountains. Scarlet Sage (Salvia coccinea) is questionably native, and occurs in dry woodlands, flowering almost year round. A true native, Scarlet Calamint (aka Scarlet Wild
Basil, Clinopodium coccineum) flowers April-May, and occurs in Longleaf Pine sandhills and pine flatwoods. Scarlet Beebalm (aka Oswego Tea, Monarda
didyma) is endemic to the Southern Appalachians and blooms July-September.
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| Left to right, Georgia’s red-flowering native mints: Scarlet Sage, Scarlet Calamint, and Scarlet Beebalm. Photos by Alan Cressler |
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| Ants were busy nectaring on Garlic Chives flowers |
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| Carolina Anole making its way through a tangle of Lantana stems. |
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| Moth Mullein in bloom in the Flower Garden |
A
native of Europe, Asia, and North Africa, Moth Mullein has spread throughout
most of North America since its introduction here in the early 1800s. Moth
Mullein, like its common sister species, Woolly Mullein, is a biennial. The
first year after germination, it forms a rosette of large leaves and a deep
taproot with many fibrous side roots. The next year, it bolts, producing a 2-3 foot-tall stem bearing many white or pale yellow flowers. The stamens are showy,
covered in purple hairs that, due to their resemblance to a moth antenna, earn
the common name. The orange tips are anthers at the tip of the stamens.
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| Common Buckeye caterpillars were abundant on Angel’s Mist/Angelonia, an ornamental species native to Mexico and the West Indies. It is in the same family (Snapdragon) as Moth Mullein. |
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|
Don |
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| Red-spotted Purple butterfly on Blue Mistflower |
The Red-spotted Purple is one of
several look-alike butterfly species that mimic the toxic Pipevine Swallowtail.
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| Pipevine Swallowtail Photo by Sandy Shaull |
The mimics include: the dark form of the female Eastern Tiger Swallowtail, female
Black Swallowtail, Spicebush Swallowtail, and Red-spotted Purple. Mimicking an
unpalatable or toxic species is called Batesian mimicry. What makes the
Pipevine Swallowtail so toxic? Its caterpillar feeds exclusively on members of
the Pipevine family, Aristolochiaceae. These plants are loaded with aristolochic
acid, a highly toxic compound.
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| Leaf and flower of Dutchman’s Pipevine, a common woody vine in the Appalachian Mountains. There are two other “pipevines” in Georgia, Woolly Pipevine and Virginia Snakeroot. Photos by Richard and Teresa Ware |
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| An Eastern Fence Lizard crossed our return path to the Visitor Center and stopped for a photo op. |
The Zinnia, Mexican Sunflower,
and Lantana beds in the Visitor Center plaza are reliable places to view butterflies and caterpillars
at the Garden.
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| Eastern Tiger Swallowtail caterpillar Photo by Heather Larkin |
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| A tail-less Long-tailed Skipper on Lantana |
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| Monarch butterfly on Mexican Sunflower |
SUMMARY OF OBSERVED SPECIES
Gulf
Fritillary butterfly Agraulis
vanillae
Genista
Broom Moth caterpillar Uresiphita
reversalis
Appalachian
Pink Turtlehead Chelone lyonii
American
Toad Anaxyrus americanus
Eastern
Giant Swallowtail (caterpillar) Papilio
cresphontes
Northern Toothache-tree, Northern Prickly-ash Zanthoxylum americanum
Tall
Pawpaw Asimina triloba
Blue
Pea, Asian Pigeonwing Clitoria
ternatea
Smooth
Loofa Gourd Luffa aegyptiaca
Common
Eastern Bumble Bee Bombus
impatiens
Lantana Lantana camara
Fork-tailed
Bush Katydid (late instar nymph), tentative ID Scuderia furcata
Eastern
Tiger Swallowtail butterfly Papilio
glaucus
Pineapple
Sage Salvia elegans
Red
Salvia Salvia splendens
Cloudless
Sulphur butterfly Phoebis sennae
Garlic
Chives Allium tuberosum
Zinnia Zinnia sp.
Carolina
Anole Anolis carolinensis
Moth
Mullein Verbascum blattaria
Dusky
Stink Bug Eushistus tristigmus
Angel’s
Mist, Angelonia Angelonia
angustifolia
Common
Buckeye (caterpillars) Junonia
coenia
Red-spotted
Purple butterfly Limenitis
arthemis
Eastern
Fence Lizard Sceloporus undulatus
Monarch
Butterfly Danaus plexippus
Mexican
Sunflower Tithonia rotundifolia
Long-tailed Skipper
Urbanus proteus