Leader for today’s Ramble: Linda Chafin
Authors of today’s Ramble report: Linda. Comments, edits, and suggestions for the report can be sent to Linda at Lchafin (at) uga.edu.
Insect, fungi, and gall identifications: Bill Sheehan
The photos that appear in this report were taken by several people whose names are given under each photo.
Number of Ramblers today: 6
Today’s emphasis: At 9:00a.m., thunder and lightning and rain were pounding the parking lot at the Garden. Still, six of us showed up and waited in the Visitor’s Center for about 30 minutes. The rain let up and we went out, seeking what we found between rain storms, which started back up about 11.
Clearing skies around 9:30.
Photo by Gary Crider
Reading: Linda chose a poem by Byron Herbert Reese, “The Sound of Rain” for today’s rainy ramble. It was published in his 1952 collection, A Song of Joy. (See last week’s Ramble Report for another of Reece’s poems.)
The Sound of Rain
I said to myself beneath the roof
One rainy night while fast they fell
From clouds with many in store for proof:
What raindrops most resemble, tell.
The answer that my fancy gave,
Since it could say the thing it chose:
I think the rain sounds like a wave
As sucking down the shore it goes.
The rain was always like the sea,
I told my fancy, try again.
And then my fancy said to me:
A lot of sticks are like the rain,
A lot of sticks cut from the brakes
Of cane that by the river crowd,
And set in rows like slender stakes
With top ends reaching to the cloud.
Announcements and other interesting things to note:
Next week’s ramble will be led by expert birders Eugenia and Tom. The book group will meet afterward at 11am to discuss Slow Birding: The Art and Science of Enjoying the Birds in Your Own Backyard, by Joan E. Strassmann.
Here’s Ed Yong’s take on birding: When I Became a Birder, Almost Everything Else Fell into Place.
Interesting article from the BBC. Why you should let insects eat your plants.
Note from Linda on the changes to the trails in the Dunson Native Flora Garden: I met on Tuesday with Jenny Cruse-Sanders, the Garden’s Director, to discuss the proposed changes to the trails in Dunson. Jenny is working with the University’s architects to make all the trails in the Garden’s developed areas accessible to wheelchairs, strollers, walkers, rollators, etc. She is committed to getting folks at all levels of ability from the parking lots to the river without obstacles. The trail surfaces in Dunson will be altered to facilitate this but the plan does not include paving with concrete. Jenny stressed that every effort will made to minimize disturbance to trees and other plant populations. She invited the Ramblers to contribute to the effort to protect existing plant populations in Dunson by working with the Botanical Garden’s Horticultural staff to assist with mapping and photographing plants, helping with controlling the weedy natives, and in other ways–please be thinking of ways you’d like to contribute. Some proposed changes are long overdue, e.g. cameras to discourage poaching and updated signage.
It takes a village…. The Nature Rambles have always been a team effort, starting in 2009, when Anne Shenk and Shirley Berry started the Circle of Hikers, continuing when Dale Hoyt and Hugh Nourse came on as leaders to the more accurately named Nature Ramblers. Don Hunter joined in 2013 and has faithfully contributed his recorded notes and amazing photographs, week in and week out, ever since; he has also contributed his vast knowledge of fungi, lichens, and geology on many rambles. Critical to the ongoing rambles are the talented Ramble leaders, 2022-2024: Emily Carr, Kelly Carruthers, Catherine Chastain, Roger Collins, Gary Crider, Liana and Aubrey Cox, Connie Gray, Holly Haworth, Don Hunter, Heather Licklighter-Larkin, Jean Lodge, Roger Nielsen, Jim Moneyhun, Bay Noland-Armstrong, Jim Porter, Bill Sheehan, Tom Shelton, Kathy Stege, Sandy Shaull, John Schelhas, Kaitlin Swiantek, Eugenia Thompson, and Dan Williams. Bill is now wearing multiple hats since he began in April to set up and manage the ramble leader calendar, a huge help. Now, the latest addition to the village is Merrill Morris, a long-time friend and website expert, who has moved the Ramble Report, as of this week, from the old, clunky, unsupported Google Blogger to WordPress, a modern, user-friendly website manager. This transition is in progress, so if you have any comments or questions about the new site, please contact Linda or Merrill (merrill.morris@gmail.com). My heartfelt thanks to all of these folks and, of course, to all the Ramblers who turn out Thursday mornings to learn, ask great questions, share their readings and observations, point out cool stuff, and just have a good time!
Today’s Route: We met in the Visitor Center for about 30 minutes then headed outside when the rain let up. We walked through the International Garden to the Scout Connector Trail to the Callaway Building and from there down the White Trail spur to the White Trail along the river. We followed the White Trail downriver and then returned to the Visitor Center on the Purple Trail, just as the next downpour arrived.
OBSERVATIONS:
While the rain came down, we toured the Conservatory, and spotted a Cope’s Gray Tree Frog resting on a bromeliad leaf. The artwork on its back is amazing. Photo by Bill Sheehan
Traditional Japanese gate – a torii gate – to the Asia Section in the International Garden.
Photo by Bill Sheehan
We stopped outside the Asia Section when Jenny stopped to wonder if the gate was a Chinese or Japanese character. As a fanatic NY Times Spelling Bee player, I remembered a recent acceptable spelling bee word “torii” – a traditional Japanese garden gate. Sure enough, a later internet search confirmed that the entry to the Garden’s Asia Section is a Torii gate, a symbolic gateway found throughout Japan at Shinto shrines. Torii gates identify entryways into sacred spaces, and are usually colored red, symbolizing vitality and protection against evil.
On our way down to the floodplain, we found this well camouflaged American Toad in the base of an oak tree.
Photo by Linda Chafin
Honewort is a member of the Parsley family found in moist, nutrient-rich sites such as forests or floodplains over mafic bedrock. These plants were common along the base of the slope.
Photo by Linda Chafin
The slough in the Middle Oconee River floodplain.
Photo by Linda Chafin
Sloughs (sometimes called back swamps) are periodically flooded wetlands that often form in the low area between the base of a slope and a river levee. When the river overflows its banks, water is trapped behind the levee and may stand for months, especially during a rainy winter. Tree trunks in sloughs are swollen at the base and marked with high-water mud lines many feet above the ground. Sloughs are important to frogs that lay their eggs in the shallow pools.
Roger explaining the source of the lumps on this Red Maple trunk. When a nearby tree fell, it opened up a gap in the canopy, allowing light to reach the previously shaded maple trunk, which responded by sprouting hundreds of twigs from buds hidden under the bark. These buds repeatedly failed and after numerous attempts, left behind lumps. Each bud leaves its mark in the wood, creating the well known pattern in Bird’s Eye maple wood that is valued for use in veneered furniture and cabinets.
Photo by Gary Crider
Fowl Manna Grass, a cool season wetland grass abundant in the floodplain, is just starting to flower. Photo by Linda Chafin
Lurid Sedge, a common wetland species, is in fruit. A single three-sided seed is enclosed in each of the pointed, teardrop-shaped sacs that make up the fruiting cluster. Photo by Linda Chafin
River Cane in flower
A small patch of River Cane on the levee is in flower. The flower clusters, called spikelets, contain 8-12 florets, each with three dangling stamens. River Cane plants flower only once then die after setting seed.
Photos by Linda Chafin and Bill Sheehan
Lizard’s Tail is starting to flower in the slough.
The long, showy flower spikes with curving tips inspired both the common name and the genus name Saururus, from the Greek word for lizard, sauros. The flowers have neither petals or sepals, and are primarily wind pollinated, but the glowing white stamens, pistils, and flower stalk do attract insects. Lizard’s Tail occurs abundantly at the Garden in the floodplain. Photo by Don Hunter
Wingstems are abundant along the Orange Trail Extension that overlooks the slough. Bill spied a webbed structure on a Wingstem leaf.
Photo by Bill Sheehan
The webbed dome was created by a Tussock Moth caterpillar to protect it as it spun its cocoon. Note the black hairs incorporated into the webbing.
Photo by Bill Sheehan
Tussock Moth pupa.
Photo by Bill Sheehan
Bill noticed a patch of webbing on a Wingstem leaf and stopped to investigate what turned out to be the pupa stage of a Tussock Moth. Within the loose webbing, a papery structure held a fat pupa that had just molted from the caterpillar stage. Before turning from a caterpillar into a pupa, the Tussock Moth caterpillar constructed a webby dome incorporating stinging black hairs it plucked from its own body. Once safely covered under the webby dome, the caterpillar spun a cocoon, inside which it molted into a pupa. The pupa itself will molt several times over the course of 10 to 14 days, finally emerging as an adult moth. Bill has placed the pupa shown here in a dish at home and is waiting the ten days required for the pupa to molt into an adult moth before making a final identification.
Both Slippery Elm and American Elm occur in the slough and are hard to tell apart. Both have rough, sandpapery leaves that have asymmetrical bases, toothed margins, and parallel veins. Roger shared a tip: many of the lateral veins in Slippery Elm leaves fork before they reach the margin of the leaf.
Photo by Roger Collins
Slippery Elm was named for the mucilaginous inner bark which has been used medicinally for centuries for sore throats. Slippery Elm is less subject to Dutch Elm disease, and both Slippery and American Elms are less affected in the south than northern and midwestern trees.
Slippery Elm leaves bearing aphid galls.
Photo by Bill Sheehan
Slippery Elm gall dissected showing the adult aphids within.
Photo by Bill Sheehan
Leafy liverwort branches and leaves
Photo by Bill Sheehan
Leafy liverwort leaves are only one cell thick and must absorb moisture directly from the surface on which they live. These plants were growing on a rock at the base of the slope where it receives downslope seepage and stays wet much of the time. Bill photographed them under his microscope. Despite what seems like a precarious lifestyle, leafy liverworts have been around for 500 million years, surviving five extinction events.
Leafy liverworts are delicate plants that, like mosses, lack vascular tissues and reproduce by spores. Unlike mosses whose leaves are spiraled around the stem, leafy liverwort’s tiny leaves are in two rows along the sides of a stem, with a third row of even tinier leaves attached to the underside of the stem.
SUMMARY OF OBSERVED SPECIES:
Cope’s Gray Tree Frog Hyla chrysoscelis
American Toad Anaxyrus americanus
Honewort Cryptotaenia canadensis
Red Maple Acer rubrum
Goose Grass, Fowl Manna Grass Glyceria striata
Lurid Sedge Carex lurida
River Cane Arundinaria gigantea
Lizard’s Tail Saururus cernuus
Wingstem Verbesina sp.
Tussock Moth Orgyia sp.
Slippery Elm Ulmus rubra
Slippery Elm Gall Aphid Kaltenbachiella ulmifusa
Leafy Liverwort Porella platyphylla (tentative)
