Today’s Ramble was led by Linda Chafin.

Here’s the link
to Don’s Facebook album for today’s Ramble. (All the photos in this post are
compliments of Don, unless otherwise credited.)

Today’s post was written by Linda Chafin and Dale Hoyt.

Today’s Focus: Seeking what we find in the
Heritage and Flower Gardens.

24 Ramblers met today.

Today’s reading:
Linda read from The Urban Bestiary: The Lost Art of Urban Tracking by
Lyanda Lynn Haupt.

Today’s
Route:   We walked through the Visitor Center to the
back plaza area, then through Freedom Plaza, then through the Heritage Garden and
down into the Flower Garden.  We traveled
across the lower Flower Garden and then returned to the Visitor Center using
the steps up the far (east) side of the Flower Garden.   Many of us then retired to the Café Botanica
for refreshments and conversation.

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 Note: To enlarge any photo click on it. Click again to reduce the size.

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LIST OF
PLANT OBSERVATIONS:

Back
Patio/Plaza:

Downy Goldenrod

Purple-flowered Ast

Freedom Plaza:

Muhly Grass

Muhly Grass was one of the first
native grasses to appear in the horticulture trade, and according to one
nursery website, there are few cultivars since the species is spectacular enough
without any human tinkering. (There is a white-flowered cultivar called ‘White
Cloud,’ though why anyone would want a white-flowered version is beyond me.)
One reason Muhly Grass has become so popular in southern gardens is that it is both
drought-resistant and heat-tolerant. Muhly grasses (and there are either three
species or one, depending on whether you are a splitter or a lumper) are native
to the southeast US, where one species grows inland in poor clayey or rocky
soils, and another occurs in spectacular swathes among beach dunes and around salt
marshes. Also known as Sweet Grass, Muhly is the preferred grass of the famous
basket makers of Sapelo Island, GA, and Charleston, SC.

Swamp Black-eyed Susan is a rare native found in a few sunny wetlands in the Coastal Plain of Georgia, Florida, and Alabama.

Joe Pye Weed has set seed and no longer attracts the clouds of butterflies from weeks past.

Flowering Dogwood – red berries from this year’s flowers and buds for next year’s flowers are both present on twigs. The turban-shaped flower buds will continue to expand until frost, go dormant for the winter, then bloom next April. (Smaller buds for next year’s vegetative growth are also present on the twigs but not seen in this photo.)

Winged Sumac has compound leaves with numerous leaflets (up to 23 per leaf), each connected to its neighboring leaflet by a narrow wing of leaf tissue. It’s sometimes called Shining Sumac because the upper surface of the leaflets are hairless and glossy.

Perforated Ruffle Lichen growing on Tall Pawpaw stems.

American Beautyberry

American
Beautyberry is another one of the first native plants to be brought into formal
gardens, and it’s easy to see why. Native to the SE US, as well as Mexico and
the West Indies, it will thrive in just about any kind of soil.

Butterfly Ginger (or White Ginger Lily)

Butterfly
Ginger, also known as White Ginger Lily, is thought to be native to the
Himalayas but it has been so widely cultivated throughout Asia that it’s hard
to be certain. It is the national flower of Cuba, where it is known as mariposa. Not surprisingly, it is in the
same Ginger plant family (Zingiberaceae) as the ginger (Zingiber officinale) we cook with. Although its rhizome is eaten
and used medicinally, it does not have the aromatic qualities as ginger spice.

Gareth is the curator of the Heritage Garden

The Heritage
Garden is looking great this summer, with lots of interesting heirloom crop
plants as well as some intriguing non-traditional plants. The Ramblers give a
big shout-out to Gareth Crosby for her hard work and creativity as curator of
these beds. Gareth was also recognized by her fellow SBG employees, who voted
her Employee of the Year this week.

Indigo dye vats

Gareth’s Indigo dye vats are bubbling away–fermentation (accompanied by
an incredibly noxious odor) is a key step in the process of producing the dye. A
step-by-step walk through the process of indigo dye making is here: https://thekindcraft.com/the-process-indigo-from-plant-to-paste/

Swamp Sunflower is found in the wild in wet habitats but thrives in upland gardens as well

Luffa, gourds, melons, squash, cucumbers, pumpkins: all are members of
the Cucurbit family and all have hairy, 5-angled stems and single-sex flowers.
Sometimes the female and male flowers are present on the same plant but often
they are on separate plants. The flowers must be cross-pollinated to produce
fruit and are bee-pollinated. They are one of the many North American crops
that rely on commercial honeybee keepers to truck their hives from field to
field.

Luffa gourd; photo credit: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Luffa_aegyptica.jpg

The Luffa arbor was alive with Carpenter Bees, Bumblebees, syrphid flies,
yellow jackets, and Carolina Anoles. Luffa, or Sponge Gourd, is an annual vine
native to southern Asia. It is cultivated for its edible fruits which look like
zucchinis but, if left on the vine, dry to a large, fibrous, sponge.

‘Carolina Gold’ rice

‘Carolina
Gold’ rice was once an important staple crop in coastal South Carolina and
Georgia, where it was cultivated by enslaved African rice-farmers who had been selectively
kidnapped from the rice-growing regions of West Africa (See “The Carolina Rice
Kitchen: The African Connection” by Karen Hess). Following the end of southern
slavery, Carolina Gold almost disappeared from cultivation and culinary memory.
The story of its re-discovery and revival as an heirloom crop is told at this
link: https://www.seriouseats.com/2016/05/carolina-gold-heirloom-rice-anson-mills.html

Eve told us
an amazing story: Her grandmother in Switzerland had a container of rice in her
kitchen labeled Carolina Gold Rice from South Carolina!

LIST OF ANIMAL OBSERVATIONS:

A Five-lined skink (Plestiodon sp.)

We often see skinks on our rambles. These are mostly the
young, immature animals. We know this because they have blue tails and yellow
stripes on their body. As they mature the striped pattern fades and the lizard
becomes brown. The stripes may be faintly visible, but they are a lighter shade
of brown, not the yellow of the immature individuals. Adult males have
prominent reddish coloration on their head during the breeding season

. There are three species of five-lined skinks in our
area and they can only be told apart if you have an animal in your hand to
examine details of its scales. The Broad-headed skink is the only one to spend
time in trees, so if you see a skink high up on a tree trunk you know what it
is.

This is a nymph of a Scentless Plant bug, Niesthrea louisianica. The black and orange structure at the “shoulders” are the wing buds. They are not functional at this stage of development.

This is an adult stage Scentless Plant bug, Niesthrea louisianica. The wings are fully developed, but difficult to see. They have an orange base and membranous part extending out from the base.

A Scentless Plant bug, Niesthrea louisianica, attacks plants
in the mallow family. We found them on the seed pod of a Hibiscus. Like many plant feeding insects it is neither wholly bad
nor wholly good. On the negative side, it feeds on the seeds of cotton, okra,
and Rose of Sharon. On the positive, it feeds on Velvetleaf, a serious weed in
corn and soybeans.

About that name: Many plant bugs have scent glands that dispense
repugnant odors when the bug is disturbed. On our rambles we often see Stink
bugs and Leaf-footed bugs. Both of those bugs emit foul odors when picked up. Members
of the bug family Rhopalidae all lack the glands that produce the smelly
chemicals. That is why the group is called “Scentless Plant” bugs.

Spotted Cucumber Beetle

Spotted Cucumber Beetle (AKA Southern Corn Rootworm). The other
common name refers to the larval stages of the beetle. The adults eat the
leaves of cucumbers, squash, soybeans, cotton, beans and corn. The larvae look
wormlike and eat the roots of various plants. They do significant damage to
corn.

Carolina Anole

Carpenter Bee gathering pollen from Luffa flower.

Bumble Bee gathering pollen from Luffa flower.

Syrphid fly eating pollen from Luffa flower.

Syrphid flies are common visitors to flowers, especially those with
abundant pollen. The adult flies feed on pollen but their larvae are predators –
they feed on aphids. The black and yellow pattern is common to many of the
adult syrphids and is thought to mimic the coloration of bees and yellow
jackets.

Residents or Visitors?

Not all of our butterflies or
moths are permanent residents. They can be found in some seasons but absent in
others, especially winter. By absent I mean not just the adults forms but the other
life history stages as well: the eggs, larvae (caterpillars), and pupae. (The
pupal stage of butterflies is called a chrysalis. For moths, it is a pupa that
is either naked or surrounded by a cocoon.)

Our resident species can
survive our winters in some form. A few can overwinter as adults, hiding in
protected places like loose bark or crevices.

Some overwinter as eggs. Eastern
Tent Caterpillars hatch in spring from eggs that were laid in late summer/fall of
the preceding year. Before school is out you can find them crawling over
sidewalks, looking for a sheltered place to pupate. The adults emerge from
their cocoons a few weeks later. They mate and the female lays a mass of eggs
on the branch of a food plant, like Black Cherry. She covers her eggs with a
protective secretion that shelters the eggs throughout the fall and winter. The
next spring the eggs hatch, having survived as eggs for 7+/- months.

The caterpillar and pupa are the
commonest overwintering stages. The key to their survival is anti-freeze. In
the fall Wooly Bear caterpillars begin to convert some of their carbohydrates
to alcohols that serve as antifreeze, allowing them to survive temperatures as
low as -22 degrees Fahrenheit. Bernd Heinrich even froze Wooly Bear caterpillars
solid and thawed them out – twice! They survived, unharmed, and pupated later.

The pupal stage can only
survive the winter with similar biochemical adaptations. If a species is not
capable of producing an antifreeze substance it will freeze to death during
winter.

Most of the butterflies seen
today are visitors because they lack the adaptations that enable them to
survive our winters. Climate change may alter conditions to enable them to
become residents in the future.

The visitor species we saw
today: Cloudless Sulphur, Ocola Skipper, Long-tailed Skipper, Painted Lady and
Gulf Fritillary. The most famous of our visitors, the Monarch, was not seen
today.

Butterfly visitors seen today:

Butterflies, including this Cloudless Sulfur, imbibe Sodium salts where they can find them.

Cloudless Sulfur butterflies are attraced to red flowers with tubular corollas, like this Salvia.

Gulf Fritillary

Silver-spotted Skipper on Lantana

Painted Lady nectaring on Lantana

Butterfly visitors seen on previous rambles:

Long-tailed Skipper

Ocola Skipper

 

Fiery Skipper

Are the visitors migrants?
Distinguishing simple dispersal from migration?

When food is scarce or
population density high animals tend to leave their current location and seek
better places with more food or fewer competitors. This tendency will
automatically lead to the dispersion of individuals from areas with high
population density to places with fewer competitors and/or more available food
for themselves and their offspring. This process will lead to the spread of a
species over larger and larger areas. You can imagine butterflies slowly
dispersing north from overwintering locations in peninsular Florida and
gradually working their way through Georgia into the Carolinas and Virginia
and, in a year with good weather, as far as New York.

Two butterflies, the Gulf
Fritillary and the Cloudless Sulfur, are suspected to be migrants, not simple
dispersers. Each year the northern populations of both species are eliminated
by cold weather. Neither species can survive over winter. Each year both
species reappear in the landscape, having flown north from sources in Florida
that have warmer climates. What makes them migrants rather than simple
dispersers?

Much of what we know about
the Gulf Fritillary comes from the work of T. J. Walker and his associates at
the University of Florida. Walker noticed that in the spring Gulf Fritillarys flew
across his property low to the ground and when they encountered an obstacle
they flew up and over it, rather than around it. Their flight seemed intent on
moving in one direction. To gather information on flight behavior he built a
trap that separated butterflies flying in different directions. Butterflies
flying into the trap from the south were diverted into a holding cage so that
he could record the number of each species before releasing them. Similarly,
for butterflies coming from the north. He operated the trap during the fall and
spring months for 6 years. The results for the Gulf Fritillary were
unequivocal. In the spring he recorded a total of 135 Gulf Fritillarys, of
which 98% were traveling north. In the fall a much larger number were captured,
1355, and 99% were traveling south.

Walker also collected data on
Cloudless Sulfurs. In the spring 84% of 106 captured were flying north. In the
fall 93% of 493 captured were flying south. These results also suggest that the
Cloudless Sulfur may be a true migrant.

SUMMARY OF OBSERVED SPECIES

Downy Goldenrod	Solidago petiolaris
Purple Aster	Symphyotrichum sp.
Hibiscus	Hibiscus sp.
Scentless Plant Bug	Niesthrea louisianica
Muhly Grass	Muhlenbergia capillaris
Swamp Black-eyed Susan	Rudbeckia auriculata
Joe Pye Weed	Eutrochium fistulosum
Flowering Dogwood	Cornus florida
Winged Sumac	Rhus copallinum
American Beautyberry	Callicarpa americana
Butterfly Ginger	Hedychium coronarium
Swamp Sunflower	Helianthus angustifolius
Smartweed	Persecaria sp.
Five-lined Skink	Plestiodon sp.
Spotted Cucumber Beetle	Diabrotica undecimpunctata
‘Carolina Gold’ Rice	Oryza sativa cultivar
Loofah	Luffa aegyptiaca
Carpenter Bee	Xylocopa virginica
Bumble Bee	Bombus sp.
Syrphid flies	Family Syrphidae
Yellow Jacket	Vespula sp.
Carolina Anole	Anolis carolinensis
Cloudless Sulphur	Phoebis sennae
Scarlet Sage	Salvia coccinea
Ocola Skipper	Panoquina ocola
Long-tailed Skipper	Urbanus proteus
Silver-spotted Skipper	Epargyreus clarus
Painted Lady	Vanessa cardui
Gulf Fritillary	Agraulis vanillae
Unidentified Skippers	Family Hesperiidae