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.

Today’s Focus:
Dunson Garden and Silverbells on the White Trail Spur

27 Ramblers met today.

Today’s reading:
Eugenia read The Cleverness of Seeds by Pat
Brisson

Show and Tell:

Praying Mantis egg case (hatched)

Carla brought a praying mantis egg case and a weirdly deformed evergreen
bough.

Announcements: Emily announced a herp walk at SCNC next
Wednesday at 9:00 a.m.

Emily also
announced birthdays for three of the Ramblers and said a very pretty chocolate
cake would be served at the post-Ramble social hour.

Today’s
Route:   We headed straight to the new Children’s
Garden for a bit before taking the mulched path down to the Dunson Garden.  We omitted the upper sections and made our
way down to the lower Dunson Garden before heading out into the ROW.  We then returned via the White Trail Spur
back to the Visitor Center and the Cafe Botanica for our social hour.

LIST OF
OBSERVATIONS:

Alice H. Richards Children’s Garden:

Fothergilla (also called Dwarf Witch-alder) was planted at
the entrance of the Children’s Garden and is coming into flower. This is likely
the cultivar known as ‘Mt. Airy,’ discovered by Michael Dirr before he came to
UGA and was working at the Mt. Airy Arboretum in Cincinnati. There are two
species of Fothergilla native to
Georgia and southeast, the low-growing Coastal Witch-alder and the Large
Witch-alder. It’s believed that a cross between these two produced ‘Mt. Airy,’
which is halfway between the two in height. The genus Fothergilla was named in honor of Dr. John Fothergill, a London
physician-botanist during the 1700s.

Fothergilla ‘Mt. Airy’		‘

Close inspection of the Fothergilla flower clusters
reveals two interesting things: they smell great, like honey, and the individual
flowers have no petals. The showy, white structures are stamens, each tipped
with a yellow pollen-producing anther, surrounding a single pistil. Both scent
and color attract bees.

Pinxter Azalea

The
native Pinxter Azalea, also known as Piedmont Azalea, are also in bloom near
the Children’s Garden entrance.

Mulched Path to
Dunson Garden:

Flowering sedge; Staminate flower at end, pistilate flowers below.

Sedges in the genus
Carex are flowering now. This particular species bears a small,
bristly spike of pale yellow, pollen-producing flowers atop an erect
stem–the bristles are stamens. Below, the female flowers are just
developing–their white style branches are protruding
from between the uppermost leaves. The female and male flowers will
mature at different times to prevent self-pollination. If
cross-pollination does occur and fruits develop, we’ll be able to
identify these plants to species. Because sedges don’t usually attract
much attention, most lack common names. Until this one produces fruits,
we’ll just call it a Carex.

Hybrid trillium; possibly a cross between Sweet Betsy and Lance-leaf Trillium.

Among the many hybrid trillium plants that occur in the
Dunson garden, there are some that appear to be hybrids between Sweet Betsy and
Lance-leaf Trillium. The broad leaves are mottled like Sweet Betsy’s and lack
the central silver stripe of the Chattahoochee Trillium. The narrow, clawed,
upright petals that allow you to look through the flowers from the side suggest
Lance-leaf Trillium parentage. Or maybe Spotted Trillium, which also has clawed
petals? It’s anybody’s guess in the Dunson Garden, where trilliums from all
over the state have been brought together in combinations that don’t occur in
nature. (“Clawed” petals are narrow at the base and widen abruptly above the
middle.)

Chattahoochee Trillium, with the bright silvery green stripe down the middle of each leaf.

Golden Ragwort is peaking now all over the Dunson Garden.

Decumbent Trillium has spread over much of the Dunson Garden

Christmas Fern and newly expanding fiddleheads. (Fern fiddleheads are also called croziers because of their resemblance to shepherd’s crooks, also known as croziers; Roman Catholic bishops also carry croziers as a symbol of their pastoral duties.)

Sensitive Ferns are also unfurling their sterile fronds.

 

Rattlesnake fern fronds, both sterile and fertile, have recently emerged.

Virginia Bluebells continue to look nice but are beginning to wane.

Celandine Wood Poppies

Blue Phlox could be seen at several locations.

Three-parted Violet

Several Ramblers observed a Red-Headed Woodpecker getting
a little too close to the Red-Shouldered Hawks nest.

Georgia Trillium

The Georgia Trillium is still in flower, but the
petals have turned pink, indicating that the flower is on its way out after
being pollinated. In contrast to the Sweet Betsy, Chattahoochee, Spotted, and
Lance-leaf Trilliums, the Georgia Trillium flower is on a stalk and its leaves
are solid green, not mottled. This is an extremely rare species, found in only
four locations in Georgia. The plants here in Dunson were rescued from one of
those sites when it was threatened with development.

Goldenseal flower

Goldenseal plants are just emerging from the ground,
and one has even opened a flower before the leaves have developed. This is
another plant that has dispensed with petals and attracts its pollinators (bees
and syrphid flies) with showy white stamens.

May Apples

May Apples seem especially numerous this year with more
two-leaved, reproductive individuals than usual.

Edna’s Trillium (AKA Persistent Trillium)

Edna’s Trillium, also known as Persistent Trillium, is
blooming. This is another rare trillium, found only in three counties in NE
Georgia and one county in adjacent South Carolina.  The Persistent Trillium is another example of
a stalked trillium with solid green foliage.

ROW and adjacent
areas:

Spider egg sac on Highbush Blueberry

The Highbush Blueberry next to the road is covered
with flowers and bumblebees, and is also sporting an old praying mantis egg
case and a spider egg sac attached to twigs.

Blueberries are pollinated only by native bees (not
honeybees) that specialize in “buzz pollination” or sonication. These bees
grasp the stamens and vibrate their thoracic muscles, which shakes the pollen
out of a tiny pore at the tip of the specialized anther (“poricidal anther”).
The buzzing sound of sonication is higher pitched than the buzz made by the
bee’s wings. Watch and listen
to this 30-second video and you can hear the difference in the “buzzes” as the
bee visits some blueberry flowers.

 

Shooting Stars have poricidal anthers, which are also visited by sonicating bees.

Field Pansy is abundant in the right-of-way. We
checked for the characteristic wintergreen smell of the root, but it was very
faint.

Blue Toadflax in the right-of way.

Corn-salad

The native species of Corn-salad is blooming in the right-of-way.
The European species of Corn-salad is eaten as a salad in Europe and beyond.
The name comes from the fact that it grew wild in cultivated wheat fields in England. (The English call wheat: “corn.”) It was introduced to this country by English settlers and
has since become a widespread weed in disturbed areas. It looks very much like
the native species.

Black Cherry in flower along the edge of the right-of-way.

Black Cherry bark; the horizontal slits are lenticels.

White Trail Spur (from ROW to Children’s Garden):

Witch’s brooms in Hophornbeam

The witch’s brooms in the Hophornbeam growing on the
edge of the right-of-way are leafing out. These weird growths occur on many
types of trees, but in our area are most often seen on members of the Birch
family. Witch’s brooms are usually caused by some type of pathogen – a fungus,
virus, or phytoplasma – and even by insects. The tree responds to the alien
invasion by producing a cluster of short but multi-branched twigs rising from a
single point. Witch’s brooms can also result from a genetic mutation, resulting
in a permanent change to that part of the tree’s structure. In this case, the
broom can be removed from the tree and propagated vegetatively, resulting in
dwarf cultivars such as the diminutive “Tom Thumb” spruce. Here’s a story about
men obsessively hunting for witch’s brooms: 7

A few Silverbell flowers remain on the small trees next to the right-of-way.

SUMMARY OF OBSERVED SPECIES

 

Fothergilla	Fothergilla ‘Mt. Airy’.
Pinxter Azalea	Rhododendron periclymenoides
Sedge	Carex sp.
Hybrid Trillium, Sweet Betsy and Lanceleaf Trillium	Trillium cuneatum x. lancifolium
Cranefly Orchid	Tipularia discolor
Golden Ragwort	Packera aurea
Decumbent Trillium	Trillium decumbens
Christmas Fern	Polystichum acrostichoides
Rattlesnake Fern	Botrypus virginianus
Black Cohosh	Actaea racemosa (= Cimicifuga racemosa)
Red-headed Woodpecker	Melanerpes erythrocephalus
Red-shouldered Hawk	Buteo lineatus
Georgia Trillium	Trillium georgianum
Perfoliate Bellwort	Uvularia perfoliata
Sanicle, Black Snake-root	Sanicula sp.
Sensitive Fern	Onoclea sensibilis
Allegheny Spurge	Pachysandra procumbens
Goldenseal	Hydrastis canadensis
Devil’s Walking Stick	Aralia spinosa
Virginia Bluebells	Mertensia virginica
Shooting Stars	Primula meadia (= Dodecatheon meadia)
Celandine Wood Poppy	Stylophorum diphyllum
Woodland Phlox	Phlox divaricata
Mayapple	Podophyllum peltatum
Edna’s [Persistent] Trillium	Trillium persistens
Yellow Three-parted Violet	Viola tripartita
Highbush Blueberry	Vaccinium corymbosum
Blue Toadflax	Nuttallanthus canadensis (syn. Linaria canadensis)
Field Pansy	Viola bicolor
Purple Deadnettle	Lamium purpureum
Ground Ivy	Glechoma hederacea
European Corn-salad	Valerianella radiata
Butterweed	Packera glabella
Black Cherry	Prunus serotina
Hophornbeam	Ostrya virginiana
Silverbells	Halesia tetraptera