This post
was written by Hugh Nourse. The photos are by Don Hunter. You can find more of
Don’s photos of the ramble here.

Thirty
Ramblers assembled at 8:30AM at the Arbor by the Lower Parking Lot.  Anne Shenk read a paragraph from Emerson’s
“Nature” essay:

In the woods too, a man casts off his years, as the
snake his slough, and at what period soever of life, is always a child. . . .
In the woods, we return to reason and faith. . . . Standing on the bare ground—my
head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space—all mean
egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eye-ball; I am nothing; I see all; the
currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of
God.

Yes, it was
definitely a transcendent thought for the day.

At the Arbor:

Dale led a
discussion of the male cones now appearing on the Ginkgo trees.  Though they

Male Ginkgo cones

have cones, Ginkgoes are not
classified as conifers.  Their closest
living relatives are probably the Cycads (both Ginkgoes and Cycads have motile
sperm). Fossils recognizable as Ginkgoes have been found in deposits laid down
270 million years ago. Ginkgoes shared the planet with dinosaurs! They are extinct
in the wild but survive as landscape trees. 
There are male and female trees. In a landscape you want male trees
because the female tree produces a very unpleasant smelling fruit. 

The leaves
were bursting forth on the Beech tree this morning. On the pavement beneath we
saw sharp pointed sheaths, which only Tim and Sue were able to identify.  Dale described them as the scales from the
sharp pointed buds on the American Beech tree. 
We were reminded that on our earlier walks we had noted these sharp
points on these trees.  As the buds swell
the scales that protected them all winter are shed, littering the ground below.

Beside the
plaza was a redbud in full bloom.  We
noticed that there were flowers all up and

Redbud flowers spiral around trunk

down the trunk of the tree.  A closer look reveals that the flower
clusters spiral around the trunk as you follow them upward. This is the same
developmental pattern that produces alternate leaves on a tree branch—the leaves
also spiral around.

Today’s route:

Then we
started on today’s route through the Shade Garden to the Dunson Native Flora
Garden, then walking the right hand paths to the end.  From there we went down to the river through
the power line right-of-way.  Returning
to the fence we detoured to the right to visit a plant site, returned, and then
went back through the Dunson Native Flora Garden, this time taking the opposite
path back through the Garden and up the mulched path to the parking lot.

The Shade Garden:

In the Shade
Garden we found a ground cover plant in bloom along the sidewalk from the
Oleander plaza to the Camellia plaza.  No
one knew its name.  Later we asked Joey
Allen, the Curator of the Garden, who didn’t know either, but looked it up and
told us later in Donderos that it was a Brunnera.  I think it was a cultivar of Brunnera macrophylla.  Deer apparently love to eat this plant so
much that it was about gone last year. 
Joey started using deer fence on it, and it is now coming back nicely.  In the Camellia plaza we noted the blooming Camellia japonica ‘Monah
Johnstone.’  It was developed by the
first director of the Garden, Francis Johnstone, who named it for his
wife.  After passing the Redbud plaza we
found a white cultivar of a redbud tree in bloom.  Also the dogwood blossoms were just opening
with a yellowish color.  They always seem
to arrive by Easter.

The Dunson Native Flora Garden:

Our next
stop was in the Dunson Native Flora Garden. Here many of the spring flowers

Early meadow rue male flowers

were bursting into bloom before the trees leaf out and reduce the light
reaching them. The first find was a Sessileleaf bellwort, Uvularia sessilifolia, which is sometimes called wild oats. There
were lots of trilliums:

Chattahoochee trilliums

sweet Betsy and Chattahoochee trilliums.  On the right we found a bluebell with pink
flowers. As they open fully they turn blue. Spring beauties were closed still
and had not opened to show off the pink stripes in their petals.  We were somewhat confused by the sign on the
meadow rues.  It identified them as Thalictrum aquilegifolium which does not
occur in the southeast. These plants are Early meadow

Early meadow rue female flowers

rue,Thalictrum dioicum, they have male and female flowers on separate
plants.  These were in bloom and did have
different flowers on each plant.  It was
hard to see if the many trout lilies some distance behind the meadow rue had
any flowers.  These trout lilies are Yellow
trout lily, Erythronium americanum.  Others across the dry stream were Dimpled
trout lily, Erythronium umbilicatum.  The difference is that the latter has ears on
its tepals at their base.  You need to
nearly tear a flower apart to see them. More of the latter were in bloom and up
close so they could be easily seen. Beside the dry stream was a blooming

Perfoliate bellwort

Perfoliate
bellwort, Uvularia perfoliata.  The petioles (stems) of the leaves go right
through the leaf so that the leaf surrounds the petiole.

There was a
long discussion about squirrel corn and Dutchman’s breeches.  They have similar dissected leaves, which to
me are as beautiful as the flowers.  The

Dutchman’s britches

Dutchman’s breeches flower has the shape of upside down breeches .  Squirrel corn is also a white flower but it
is shaped more like a heart.  Sue asked
how we were sure that the leaf we called squirrel corn was that plant.  Well, because the sign beside it named it
so.  The flower was not yet blooming.

Common blue
violets were everywhere, as were golden ragwort.  The latter is something of a thug.

Along here
we saw the common Piedmont trillium that we call ‘sweet Betsy.’  The garden sign made its common name to be

Sweet Betsy trillium

Whippoorwill .  Along the path here was Rue
anemone.  We would see a lot of this outside
the Dunson Garden today.  On the right we
found shooting star leaves and stems with buds, but not blooming yet.  The name has recently been changed from Dodecatheon meadia to Primula meadia.  That is great! For once a new name simpler
than the old.  Toothworts were next.  These were cutleaf

Cut-leaf toothwort

toothworts.  On the other side of the trail before the
bridge were a number of Sharp lobed hepaticas, sometimes called liverleaf
because of the shape of their leaves. 
These are a different species than the Round lobed hepaticas we see on
the Orange Trail, and which bloom much earlier in the year.  They both have hairy stems and buds.

Crossing the
bridge we found painted buckeye, Aesculus

Painted Buckeye inflorescense

sylvatica.  They were just budding
and were not in bloom yet.  Here we
stopped to discuss the many hybrids between the red and painted buckeyes in the
Piedmont.  Steve Bowling speculates that
hummingbirds are responsible for carrying the pollen from the Coastal Plain,
where red buckeye is common, to the painted buckeyes which bloom as the birds
are migrating north.  The reverse, of
course, cannot happen because the birds are going north, not south, when the
plants are in bloom.  Thus hybrids are
found in the Piedmont, but not in the Coastal Plain.  Next to the painted buckeye was a Dwarf pawpaw
its small flower buds not yet open.

We passed
the decumbent or trailing trillium in full bloom.  We were reminded that the

Yellow wood poppy

Yellow wood poppy
or Celandine poppy, Stylophorum diphyllum,
Virginia bluebells, and the decumbent trillium are common plants at the pocket
at Pigeon Mountain.  This

Virginia bluebells

weekend is the
traditional time for the Botanical Society to visit the Shirley Miller
Wildflower Trail in the pocket because it will be peak bloom time there.  A Cranefly orchid leaf that was along the
path several weeks ago has now disappeared. 
We shall see if the orchid flowers actually come up along the path in
summer.  It doesn’t always generate a
blooming plant.

The next
point of interest was the Dwarf trillium, Trillium
pussilum.  Three were in bloom.  Over 15 years ago we photographed the newly
found population in an industrial park near Dalton.  It was a great find for Tom Patrick, one of
the State botanists, because he is a specialist in trilliums, and because it
made Georgia the state with most trillium species.  These plants must have come from a plant
rescue operation at that site.  Crossing
the dry

Foam flower

stream again, we found many more Virginia bluebells, wood poppies, and
trout lilies.  On one side of the trail
the spice bush was in bloom.  On the
other was a new find, Foam flower, Tiarella
cordifolia.  I mentioned that Carol
and I had tried to grow this in our Piedmont yard.  The first year was fine but it declined and
disappeared after a few years.

We found a
reddish stalk with leaves just unfolding at the top, which we think was the

Blue Phlox

beginning of Black cohosh, Actea racemosa.  Across the path was the first Blue phlox, Phlox divaricata.  We wondered about why there seem to be so few
blue flowers among the early spring woodland wildflowers.  Mayapples were spreading, as they are on the
trails in the natural areas.  Next was a
nice scene that I hope we see more of in the future, a mix of the yellow wood
poppy and the Virginia bluebells.  Yellow
and blue make a striking combination.

Edna’s
trillium, Trillium persistens, was in
bloom.  This is a rare plant from South
Carolina

Edna’s trillium

and Georgia along the Savannah River north of Toccoa.  The Athens members of the Georgia Botanical
Society call it Edna’s trillium because she was the one who found it and
wondered what it was.  She and her
husband, the chemist, John Garst, took it to Wilbur Duncan.  Wilbur said it was like a trillium he had
seen years ago and did not know what it was. 
Wilbur and John ended up writing it up as a new species in the early
1970s.  In amongst these beauties was the
halberd leaf yellow violet.

Passing
along the wetland we saw a number of bloodroot flowers, as well as many more

Blueberry flowers

painted buckeyes.  We talked about how
the dry stream we followed through the Garden takes runoff from the slopes,
bringing the water to this wetland with its Bald cypress and Ogechee lime
tree.  Across the wetland was an Ilex decidua with red berries.  Along the rail fence were two blooming
blueberry bushes, Vaccinium corymbosum.

Power line right-of-way:

Purple dead-nettle

Next of note
were the three European imports in the power line right-of-way.  We were able

Henbit

to see the distinction between
henbit, purple dead-nettle, and ground ivy. 
Interestingly, all are mints. 

Ground Ivy

There were a lot of Johnny-jump-ups, a few grape hyacinths, and even
star chickweed.  A yellow flower from the
Indian strawberry was spotted in a couple of places in the power line
right-of-way.  Another yellow flower was
the Kidney leaved buttercup.

We came
across a red flag designating a bird count spot.  There are a number of these flags scattered
around the natural areas of the Garden. 
Ben, a high school student, is conducting a study to determine what
birds can be heard or seen at these sites. 
The idea is to see what is happening as privet is removed and the
natural environment is changed around the Garden.

We turned
around at the river and started back to the lower parking lot.  First stop on the

Rue Anemone

return was a really fine
group of Rue anemone on the White Trail going back up the hill to the parking
lot.  After viewing them, however, we
returned instead to the Dunson Native Flora Garden to walk areas we missed on
the first pass.  We found more rue
anemone, toothworts, and spring beauties. 
Some new finds were Trillium
maculatum, Spotted trilliums, and Running ground pine, Lycopodium digitatum.  There
were also a number of Black cohosh plants that had leafed out, but will not
bloom until summer.

Returning to
the Lower Parking Lot, many of us retired to Donderos for conversation and
refreshment.

Hugh Nourse

SUMMARY OF OBSERVED SPECIES:

Common Name	Scientific Name
At the Arbor
Ginkgo	Ginkgo biloba
American beech	Fagus grandifolia
Redbud	Cercis canadensis
Shade Garden
Camellia “Monah Johnstone”	Camellia japonica
Siberian bugloss	Brunnera macrophylla
Dunson Garden
Sessileleaf bellwort	Uvularia sessilifolia
Perfoliate bellwort	Uvularia perfoliata
Virginia bluebells	Mertensia virginica
Chattahoochee trillium	Trillium decipiens
Sweet Betsy trillium	Trillium cuneatum
Spring beauty	Claytonia virginica
Early meadow rue	Thalictrum dioicum
Yellow trout lily	Erythronium americanum
Dimpled trout lily	Erythronium umbilicatum
Dutchman’s breeches	Dicentra cucullaria
Common blue violet	Viola sororia
Rue anemone	Thalictrum thalictroides
Golden ragwort	Packera aurea
Painted buckeye	Aesculus sylvatica
Sharp lobed hepatica	Anemone acutiloba
Bloodroot	Sanguinaria canadensis
Cutleaf toothwort	Dentaria laciniata
Wild ginger	Hexatylis arifolia
Foam flower	Tiarella cordifolia
Blue Phlox	Phlox divaricata.
Halberdleaf yellow violet	Viola hastata
“Edna’s” Trillium	Trillium persistens
Mayapple	Podophyllum peltatum
Natural Area (Powerline ROW)
High bush blueberry	Vaccinium corymbosum
Herb Robert	Geranium robertianum
Henbit	Lamium amplexicaule
Purple deadnettle	Lamium purpureum
Ground ivy	Glechoma hederacea
Indian strawberry	Duchesnea indica
Star chickweed	Stellaria pubera
Johnny Jump Ups	Viola bicolor
Kidneyleaf buttercup	Ranunculus abortivus
Grape hyacinth	Muscari armeniacum