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

Today’s Ramble was led by
Linda Chafin; the post was written by Don Hunter and Linda Chafin; assembled by Dale Hoyt.

Twenty-two Ramblers met
today .

Announcement: Sandy Creek Nature Center offers their monthly guided walk next Weds.,
May 4, at 9:00AM. Halley Page will show you around the areas being prepared for
the managed forest project. Come out and learn!

Today’s reading: Dale read an excerpt from the book Crow Planet by Lyanda Lynn Haupt;
Little, Brown & Co., 2009, pp. 4-5:

Many nature writers send dispatches from their
wooded homes with the brook babbling outside the ever-open window; they go on
weeks- or months-long solitary rambles in remote places. They bring us along,
in their writing, on these adventures and in the musings they inspire. And they
do inspire. Certainly, I believe that wilderness experiences are both
restorative and essential on many levels. . . . But in making such experiences
the core of our “connection to nature” we set up a chasm between our
daily lives (“non-nature”) and wilder places (“true
nature”), even though it is in our everyday lives, in our everyday homes,
that we eat, consume energy, run the faucet, compost, flush, learn, and live.
It is here, in our lives, that we must come to know our essential
connection to the wilder earth, because it is here, in the activity of our
daily lives, that we most surely affect this earth, for good or for ill.

Today’s route:  From the
arbor we walked past the American South garden, over the Flower Bridge to the
Threatened and Endangered Species Garden and the Bog Garden overlook. From
there we went down the Purple trail to the river, then left on the Orange trail
and up to the Heath Bluff. We then retraced our steps back to the Visitor
Center and Donderos’.

The Arbor: We discussed the presence of many blooming chinaberry trees in the
Athens area. The consensus was that this is an unusually heavy flowering year
for the chinaberry trees.  Several
Ramblers had noticed them blooming in areas where they had not been noticed in
the past. There are even several blooming on the road into the Garden from
Milledge Ave. This tree has been in the US at least since 1776, when John
Abbott began to paint American plants and wildlife. There is currently an exhibit
of his paintings on display at the Hargrett Rare Book and Manuscript Library;
one of them depicts a chinaberry tree. Chinaberry berries are toxic and were
used to kill fly maggots in the latrines of Chinese prison camps.

American South Garden: 

Eastern bluestar

Fringed bluestar

Spiderworts, Blue Stars, Amsonia, two
species, Eastern bluestar, with narrowly oval or lance-shaped leaves, and Fringed bluestar, with very narrow, needle-like leaves. The latter
is adapted to the high light, high heat, droughty conditions of Coastal Plain
sandhills.

Rosa’s Blush Blueberry,
cultivar of Vaccinium darrowii.

Yellowwood, mountain
species of tree, with compound leaves with alternate leaflet pattern on some
leaves and opposite leaflet pattern on others.

Blue wild indigo

Blue wild indigo…..saw
two colors of blooms, blue and cream white, probably same species

American wisteria at base
of Michaux’s oak, can be difficult to distinguish from the invasive Chinese
species when not in flower as leaf differences are subtle 

Big leaf magnolia

Big leaf magnolia….we
saw one or two large, cream white flowers high in the tree

Pitcher Plant Mountain Bog Overlook:

The pitcher plant bog inhabitants

Three or four species
blooming now….white, yellow green, green and red species blooming
currently….Sweet pitcher plant (red) and Hooded pitcher plant and yellow
trumpet (yellow)

Carolina mantle slug  on top of rock wall

Purple Trail:

Partridgeberry foliage

Elliot’s blueberry AKA
Mayberry….small leaves and green twigs, even through winter….only very few
berries remaining…squirrels and birds eat them

Lion’s foot showing variation in leaf shape

Lion’s foot AKA
gall-of-the-earth…..highly variable leaf shapes…in composite family

Net-wing beetle on lion’s
paw

Horse sugar shrub  

Jeff noticed several
small trees with deer rubs

Bud scales of American Beech; dropped when new growth emerges

American beech….we saw
many bud scales scattered along the trail and noticed the new growth, which
followed shedding of the scales, is green.

Deciduous
holly/possumhaw……..long shoots, short shoots     mono layer tree, typical of many
understory trees, optimizing light gathering for all leaves

Sourwood….we saw
several along this section of trail, all twisting their way in search of
available sunlight

Solomon’s plume….we saw
several small examples, none even budding at this time. Linda talked about the
difference in appearance of the leaves of Solomon’s plume and Solomon’s
seal…..Solomon’s seal leaves are a paler green with a waxy appearance

Cleavers…different
species than we’ve been seeing…..no sticky hairs

Poa grass

Tulip tree flower

Tulip tree flowers on the
trail….squirrels chew the twig from the tree in the process of getting to the
nectar …Dale suspects it’s to get to sugar from the nectaries at the base of
the petals.

Red shouldered hawk
serenade;.there was some spirited discussion about whether this was a red shouldered
hawk or a red tailed hawk. I think red shouldered hawk was the consensus.

Wild ginger…..no little
brown jugs visible on the examples we saw, but lots of new, bright green  leaves eclipsing last year’s dark and
tattered leaves.

Filmy dome spider web, a
sheet weaver spider

Chalk maples….common in
this section of the Garden due to the more basic soils that are higher in
calcium and magnesium than other locations, where chalk maples are absent.

Yellow wood sorrel

Eggs of unknown insect on newly emerged grape leaf

Muscadine/grape with unknown
insect eggs on it

Christmas fern

Hop hornbeams….loved by
sapsuckers;Hornbeam disk mushrooms

Orange Trail:

Snakeroot: growing where
the Purple Trail joins the Orange Trail.

Musclewood trunk; note “sinewy” shape

Musclewood

Hop hornbeam…covered
with sapsucker holes

Silverbells

Lyre-leaf sage

Heath bluff:

Includes several mountain
species that extend south from the Appalachians along river valleys and bluffs.

American toad; note the large glandular swellings behind eyes

American toad (red color variant).
Toads have large glands on the head behind the eyes that secrete a poisonous
alkaloid compound…emetic for dogs, can even kill them; Hog nosed snakes can
eat them with impunity, however.

Veiny Hawkweed

Veiny Hawkweed
(Rattlesnake weed)

Mountain laurel flowers

Mountain laurel flowers: their
anthers are tucked into tiny pockets in the petas; the weight of an insect
crawling on the stamen’s filament will trigger the release of the anther from
the pocket, showering the insect with pollen. When the insect visits another
Mountain Laurel plant it transfers the pollen to its flowers.

Galax;.a few flowers at
base of several of the immature inflorescences

American holly

Dwarf Pawpaw

SUMMARY
OF OBSERVED SPECIES:

American South Garden
Spiderwort	Tradescantia ohioensis
Eastern bluestar	Amsonia tabrernaemontana
Fringed/Texas bluestar	Amsonia ciliata
Rosa’s Blush Blueberry	Vaccinium darrowii (cultivar)
Yellowwood	Cladrastis kentukea
Blue wild indigo	Baptisia australis
American wisteria	Wisteria frutescens
Michaux’s oak	Quercus michauxii
Big leaf magnolia	Magnolia macrophylla
Hooded pitcher plant	Sarracenia minor
Yellow trumpet pitcher plant	Sarracenia flava
Carolina mantle slug	Philomycus carolinianus
Purple Trail
Partridgeberry	Mitchella repens
Elliot’s blueberry AKA Mayberry	Vaccinium elliottii
Lion’s paw AKA gall-of-the-earth	Prenanthes trifolata
Net-wing beetle	Coleoptera: Lycidae
Horse sugar	Symplocos tinctoria
American beech	Fagus grandifolia
Deciduous holly/possumhaw	Ilex decidua
Sourwood	Oxydenrum arboreum
Solomon’s plume	Maianthemum racemosum (= Smilacina racemosa)
Cleavers (non-sticky)	Galium sp.
Poa grass	Poa sp.
Tulip tree	Liriodendron tulipifera
Red shouldered hawk	Buteo lineatus
Arrow-leaf ginger	Hexastylis arifolia
Chalk maples	Acer leucoderme
Yellow wood sorrel	Oxalis stricta
Muscadine grape	Vitis rotundifolia
Christmas fern	Polystichum acrostichoides
Hophornbeam	Ostraya virginiana
Hornbeam disk mushroom	Aleurodiscus oakseii
Orange Trail
Snakeroot	Sanicula sp.
Musclewood	Carpinus caroliniana
Silverbell tree	Halesia carolinana
Lyreleaf sage	Salvia lyrata
Heath Bluff
American toad	Bufo americanus
Hawkweed (Rattlesnake weed)	Hieracium venosum
Mountain laurel	Kalmia latifolia
Galax	Galax urceolata
American holly	Ilex opaca
Pawpaw	Asimina triloba