Leader of Today’s Ramble: Dan Williams
Authors of Today’s Report: Linda Chafin, Don Hunter
The photos that appear in this report were taken by Don Hunter unless otherwise credited. Photos may be enlarged by clicking them with a mouse or tapping on your screen. Not all of Don’s photos from today’s ramble made it into the Ramble Report, so be sure to check out his Facebook album at this link.
Nature Ramble Rainy Day Policy: We show up at 9:00 a.m., rain or shine. If it’s raining, we will meet and socialize in the conservatory (bring your own coffee); if there is a break in the rain, we’ll go outside and do a little rambling.
Today’s Emphasis: Piedmont forests and trees
Announcements and other interesting things:
Jason Young, the Garden’s Director of Horticulture and Grounds, met with us to introduce current plans for renaming the trails in the Garden’s trail system, with the goal of improving user access and safety, and facilitating access by emergency response personnel to all sections of the trail system. Please scroll to the bottom of this report to see the trail map and read the recommendations for trail safety and trail naming changes. Please share any feedback or concerns with Jason: jason.young@uga.edu or (706) 369-6089.
Slug eggs! Mary Holland’s excellent nature blog takes a look at slug eggs this month.
Number of Ramblers Today: 32
Today’s Route: We left the Children’s Garden through the American Chestnut tunnel and walked through the Forest Play Area to the Orange Trail Spur, which we took to the lower slope above the Middle Oconee River floodplain. Downed trees stopped our progress into the floodplain and we returned uphill by bushwhacking up to the Callaway Building and the road back to the Visitor Center.
Don’s Pre-Ramble Observations:
Asian Tiger Mosquito, with its black-and-white striped legs, on a Rattlesnake Master inflorescence
Magnolia Green Jumping Spider on a Castor Bean leaf
Observations:
As always, Ramblers welcomed Dan Williams and his encyclopedic knowledge of trees and forests. He opened his walk with recent thoughts about the legacy that forests create: rich, organic soil; flood control and mitigation by slowing and absorbing rainwater; carbon sequestration – forests absorb twice as much carbon as they emit; and peace – the forest as a temple and a place of beauty and retreat. Dan also shared some facts: Before Europeans arrived in what is now the United States, as much as 90% of the eastern U.S. was in forest or woodland, with the remainder in natural prairies or openings created by fires set by Native Americans. By 1900, that percentage had declined to 30% due to demand for lumber and clearing for agriculture. Today, about 50% of the eastern U.S. is forested, with the increase due to abandonment of farmland or its conversion to silviculture. Currently, only 2% of the original eastern deciduous forest remains in virgin condition, best seen in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.
Dan paused in the American Chestnut tunnel to talk about the Fraser Magnolias planted along the trail. Fraser Magnolia leaves have “ears” – rounded lobes at the base of the leaf. Ears are also found on Bigleaf Magnolia leaves, distinguishing these two Magnolia species from Umbrella and Cucumber Magnolias, two other species of deciduous magnolia found in north Georgia. Cucumber Magnolia leaves (below) have tapered bases.
Cucumber Magnolia photo by Janie K. Marlow
As ramblers gathered around a Black Oak in the Forest Play area, Dan read a passage from William Bartram’s Travels where Bartram describes a grove of Black Oaks about 50 miles southeast of Athens.
“…we continued eight or nine miles…to the north branch of the Little River, [where] we entered an extensive fertile plain, bordering on the river, and shaded by trees of vast growth, …the most magnificent forest I had ever seen…with the most stately forest trees, such as the gigantic black oak (Quercus tinctoria), Liriodendron, Juglans nigra, Platanus, Juglans exalta, Fagus sylvatica, Ulmus sylvatica, Liquidamber styraciflua, whose mighty trunks, seemingly of an equal height, appeared like superb columns… Describing the magnitude and grandeur of these trees, would, I fear, fail of credibility; yet, I think I can assert, that many of the black oaks measured, eight, nine, ten, and eleven feet in diameter five feet above the ground, as we measured several that were above thirty feet girt, and from whence they ascend perfectly strait, with a gradual taper, forty or fifty feet to the limbs…”
Black Oak leaves have pointed lobes and shallow sinuses between the lobes. They resemble Northern Red Oak leaves but the difference in the bark of these two species, below, is so distinctive and easy to spot that there should be no confusion.
Black Oak bark (left) is uniformly dark, nearly black, while Northern Red Oak bark is vertically striped with broad white ridges.
The yellow inner bark of Black Oak was used to make a dye called Quercitron that produced shades of yellow, orange, and tan, and was mixed with metals to create brighter yellows and olive green.
The scientific name of Black Oak is Quercus velutina, the species name “velutina” meaning velvety. If you rub a Black Oak leaf between your fingers you can feel a layer of soft, velvety hairs on the lower surface. This highly magnified photo shows the dense coating of branched hairs on the lower surface of a Black Oak leaf. Photo by H.M. Ling of the New Jersey Native Plant Society.
Oaks are divided into two subgenera: the white oaks and the red oaks. Georgia’s white oaks include White Oak, Post Oak, Chestnut Oak, Swamp Chestnut Oak, and Live Oak (Georgia’s state tree). Members of the white oak subgenus have acorns that mature in one growing season and germinate in the fall. White oak acorns have less of the bitter-tasting tannins than do red oak acorns, and were preferred eating by Native Americans. Even so they need leaching in multiple changes of water before grinding into a flour. Here‘s some good info about preparing acorn flour.
White Oak is the most common of the white oaks in Botanical Garden forests, though there are also lots of Post Oaks around too. White Oak bark is distinctively flaky: the flakes are usually large, longer than wide, and attached along one side. The loose bark of both White Oak and Shagbark Hickory provide important roosting sites for small bats. White Oak is an intermediate shade-tolerant tree. It will grow into the subcanopy and wait there until an opening occurs in the canopy from the death of another tree. Then it grows up into the sunlight.
Northern Red Oak, Scarlet Oak, and Southern Red Oak are all common in the Garden’s forest. Distinctive traits of members of the red oak subgenus:
-Leaf lobes are pointed, with a bristle tip
-Acorns mature in their 2nd year on tree
-Acorns have higher tannin content, which protects the slowly developing acorns from insects and rodents
Northern Red Oak bark (left) has broad white ridges aka “ski trails.”
Oaks in the white oak group have leaves with rounded lobes that are not tipped with bristles. Red oak group leaves have pointed lobes tipped with tiny bristles.
Oak-Hickory forest once blanketed the uplands of the Georgia Piedmont and is still the most common forest type in this part of Georgia. It is sometimes referred to as a matrix forest in which are included moister cove forests, wetland and bottomland forests, and nearly treeless prairies. The hickory species we see most often in the Botanical Garden uplands are Mockernut and Red Hickories. In an area between the White Trail and Green Trail that has higher pH soils there are a few Shagbark Hickories. Bitternut Hickory is found in a few wet areas. And the driest ridges at the Garden support Sand (or Pale) Hickory. Bartram reported seeing Native Americans collecting hickory nuts by the bushel and making hickory milk to mix with cornmeal.
Last year when Dan joined us on the ramble, Gary presented him with a mug of homemade hickory milk, inspired by Dan’s earlier description of making the milk. Dan was obviously disappointed that Gary had not made hickory milk this time around. For those who missed last year’s talk, Gary described his method: “After removing the thick husks, I didn’t finely crush the shells, but simply used vise-grips to crack open the nuts. No need to pick out the meats! Just boil shells and meat together for a long time to extract the milk and a marvelous room-filling aroma.” For a similar traditional Cherokee method for making hickory milk, watch this sweet video.
Mockernut Hickory has the most conspicuously “braided” bark of all our hickories. The ridges look more like diamonds or expanded metal than braids to some people. Mockernut leaves have five or seven leaflets, and the leaf stalk and the rachis that holds the leaflets is very hairy. Photo by Janie K. Marlow, Name That Plant.
Red Hickory bark (right) is more or less braided, but the braids are broken and looser than Mockernut; loose enough that this species has sometimes been called False Shagbark, but y’all know how we feel about those “false” names….so, no. Red Hickory leaves and leaf stalks are not hairy. The husk of Red Hickory nuts splits completely from top to bottom. Red Hickory is often lumped in with Pignut Hickory which has tighter bark that is not at all shaggy, and husks that open only about one-third the length of the fruit.
Farther along the White Trail Spur, we encountered several trees blown over in the recent storms. This downed Winged Elm gave us the chance to share with Dan the Rambler way to describe this species’ bark: the plates look like tongue depressors. Or like interlocking pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.
Winged Elm leaves are small, toothed, and oval with slightly uneven bases.
Aging a Tree
Finding a large tree in the woods almost always elicits the question: how old is this tree? Dan has a formula for aging trees based on their shade tolerance and their diameter at breast height (DBH, 4 feet above the ground). The following is taken from his book, Tree Facts and Folklore: Identification, Ecology, Uses Traditional and Modern, and Folklore of Southeastern Trees.
Shade tolerant trees can germinate, grow to seedling stage and on to maturity in nearly full shade, though it can also prosper in full sunlight. Examples: Hickories, Southern Magnolia, Basswood, American Beech, Redbud, Persimmon, Sugarberry, Hop Hornbeam, Musclewood, and Silverbell.
Shade intermediate trees can germinate and grow to seedling stage in moderate or even full shade, but must have moderate to full sunlight of an opening in the forest canopy in order mature. Examples: White Pine, White Oak, Red Maple, Southern Red Oak, Fraser Magnolia, Bigleaf Magnolia, Sourwood, Black Gum, Winged Elm, Hackberry, and Yellow, Black, and River Birch.
Shade intolerant, pioneer trees require full sunlight from seedling to maturity. It will die if shaded for extended periods. Examples: Tulip Tree, Sweet Gum, Loblolly Pine, Longleaf Pine, Shortleaf Pine, Eastern Red Cedar, and Black Cherry.
The Four-Five-Seven rule for aging trees:
4 – If it’s a shade intolerant, pioneer tree, multiply the DBH X 4
5 – If it’s a shade intermediate tree, multiply the DBH X 5
7 – If it’s a shade tolerant tree, multiply the DBH X 7
On our way down to the floodplain, Dan stopped to discuss Chalk Maple, a somewhat shrubby version of Sugar Maple. Chalk Maple leaves are smaller than Sugar Maple’s and are softly hairy and bright green on the lower surface (below). Chalk Maple usually has two or three trunks rising from a single crown. A similar southern tree not yet seen at the Garden is Florida Maple, a single-trunked tree whose leaves are chalky-white on the lower surface. It typically grows where the soil pH is circumneutral.
The Middle Oconee River floodplain slough is still holding rainwater
from Hurricane Helene.
Once we reached the floodplain, Dan stopped to talk about Box Elder, pointing out its bright green, opposite twigs, and the compound leaves that look a lot like Poison Ivy’s trifoliate leaves (photo, below). Box Elder is not a desirable tree for landscapes: it is short-lived and bears zillions of seeds that can create dense thickets. Cherokee Indians made tattoo ink from the ashes of burned Box Elder wood. Box Elder is actually a maple sometimes called Ash-leaved Maple.
Scattered patches of River Cane are found along the trail, prompting Dan to discuss the history of canebrakes that once stretched for miles along southern rivers. How did they originate? Dan speculates that the slash-and-burn practices of Native Americans contributed to their formation. When the cleared crop sites were abandoned, River Cane seeds, and possibly rhizome fragments, washed in and became established. Native Americans used cane for many purposes, including flutes, baskets, fish traps, shelter, arrow shafts, blowguns, and mats.
And where did all the canebrakes go? Rich, bottomlands were quickly occupied by European settlers who kept these sites in continual cultivation, destroying the cane. Also, erosion from hillside farms filled the bottomlands with silty sediments, burying the cane. Many such farms were abandoned by mid-20th century, and Chinese Privet and wetland trees such as Box Elder invaded, outcompeting whatever remnants of River Cane had survived.
Small patches of River Cane, photo left, are scattered along the Middle Oconee River levee and throughout the floodplain. River Cane has two kinds of leaves: a “topknot” of 6-8 large, evergreen leaves, conspicuous in the left photo; and, smaller, deciduous stem leaves shown in the photo on the right. Like all grass leaves, River Cane leaves consist of two parts: a sheath that wraps tightly around the stem and a blade that spreads from the top of the sheath. The sheath is softly hairy and topped by a ring of stiff bristles.
Don snapped this photo of a White-headed Prominent Moth caterpillar making its way along a Viburnum twig.
Several recently toppled trees blocked further access to the trail and the floodplain, so we headed uphill, bushwhacking toward the Callaway Building. We paused in a ravine to admire some of the shapely leaves and tall, straight trunks of Tulip Trees, aka Tulip Poplars and Yellow Poplars. These are shade intolerant, pioneer trees that quickly occupy moist sites after disturbance or when a gap opens up in the canopy. But unlike some other pioneer trees, Tulip Trees don’t drop out as the forest matures but continue on their upward path, reaching up to 60 meters in height and 9 meters in circumference. The oldest Tulip Tree in North America is in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park; it is 424 years old, give or take 150 years. (Data from this website)
1959 National Park Service photo of a Tulip Tree in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park
A correction: An unusual evergreen shrub, clearly not a native, caught our eye on the way up the hill. I identified it as Chinese Fir at the time but discovered later it’s actually Japanese Plum-yew, a common landscape shrub planted elsewhere at the Garden. Photo by Fernando Lopez Anido.
This fungus, Trametes aesculi, has no common name. It lives on down and dead wood of hardwood trees.
Dan’s books on southeastern trees and geology are highly recommended and available from Amazon.
Dan D. Williams (2014), Tree Facts and Folklore: Identification, Ecology, Uses (Traditional and Modern), and Folklore of Southeastern Trees.
Dan D. Williams (2011),Tree ID Made Easier: A full color photo guide, plus helpful hints for identifying major trees of the Southern U.S.
Dan D. Williams (2010), The Forests of Great Smoky Mountains National Park: A Naturalist’s Guide to Understanding and Identifying Southern Appalachian Forest Types.
Dan D. Williams (2012),The Rocks of Georgia: A full-color photo guide to Georgia’s rocks, including what they look like, how they formed, and where to find them.
Dan D. Williams (2012), The Rocks of Great Smoky Mountains National Park: A full color guide to the rocks of the Park, including how they formed, what they look like and where to
find them.
Also check out (and subscribe to) Dan’s geology videos on Youtube.
There are also lots of Dan’s “van & tiny house living” videos on Youtube. Subscribe and make Dan happy!
SUMMARY OF OBSERVED AND DISCUSSED SPECIES
Asian Tiger Mosquito Aedes albopictus
Rattlesnake Master Eryngium yuccifolium
Magnolia Green Jumping Spider Lyssomanes viridis
Fraser Magnolia Magnolia fraseri
Cucumber Magnolia Magnolia acuminata
Black Oak Quercus velutina
Northern Red Oak Quercus rubra
White Oak Quercus alba
Red Hickory Carya ovalis
Mockernut Hickory Carya tomentosa
Shagbark Hickory Carya ovata
Winged Elm Ulmus alata
Chalk Maple Acer leucoderme
Hop Hornbeam Ostrya virginiana
Box Elder Acer negundo
River Cane Arundinaria gigantea
Linden Viburnum Viburnum dilitatum
White-headed Prominent Moth Symmerista albifrons
Tulip Tree Liriodendron tulipifera
Japanese Plum-yew Cephalotaxus harringtonia
Trametes aesculi, no common name
Trail Safety, Renaming, and Color: Recommendations as of 10/10/2024
Overview: The goal of the proposed changes is to improve trail wayfinding by our users and improve emergency response of UGA police and Garden staff.
History: The trail safety proposal of 2017 laid the groundwork for the current plan. Trail posts were labeled with hang tags containing a map and unique trail identifier. The plan also included an access plan for trails using an ATV. This plan removes trails from garden paths, improves UGA Police Department response to 911 calls for trail emergencies, and clarifies wayfinding for trail users.
Proposed Updates:
Provide each trail with a unique name/ color (or name only for connectors)
New Trail posts-
o Plastic colored trail markers on posts will allow multiple trail directions on each face to help with direction confirmation.
o Mileage markers to each trail post to allow location identification by trail users
▪ Mileage will move clockwise around loop trails
▪ Towards the Visitors center on linear trails
▪ On Photo metal plates for long term durability
o QR codes will be fixed to all trail posts that will link to a map with trail mileage
▪ Mileage will help provide reference for location of user on trail
▪ On Photo metal plates for long term durability
▪ Identify emergency extraction points best suited for known sections of trail
o Ex. White loop from 1.0M to 1.95M use emergency entrance #3
o Emergency extraction locations will be signed and mapped in cooperation with UGA PD
Please share any feedback or concerns with Jason Young: jason.young@uga.edu
or (706) 369-6089
