Twenty Ramblers assembled on this chilly morning – what
happened to spring?

Don
Hunter’s facebook album for today’s ramble can be found here.

First up was an important announcement: Hugh and Carol are
this year’s recipients of the Alec Little Environmental Award, to be presented
this evening (April 17) at the Athens GreenFest Awards Ceremony.

Today’s reading was a short piece pertinent to the season:

Gazing
in the distance you will now see a long-awaited green mist, the stirring of
tree leaves emerging from their buds. Soon we will be able to hear them
rustling in the wind and this soft sound signals a change in the short life of
the ephemeral flowers on the ground below. The closing of the canopy deprives
them of sunlight and they must rush to produce their fruits and seeds and the

n
retire until next spring.

Dale Hoyt, April, 2014

I pointed out the remains of the male “flowers” on the
Ginkgo tree near the arbor. (Flower is
in quotes because the Ginkgo is not a flowering plant. It is a distant relative
of the pines, classified in its own plant phylum, Ginkgophyta. All the Ginkgos
in the US today are descendants of a few trees found in Buddhist temples in
Japan and China. There are, apparently, no surviving natural populations
anywhere else. Ginkgo trees are dioecious, meaning that the tree is either male
or female. Only male trees are usually planted because the fruits of the female
tree are so foul-smelling when stepped on.)

The route today was from the parking lot, down the walkway through
the Shade Garden, from which we wandered through the Dunson Native Flora Garden
and returned back through the Shade Garden.

Shade Garden Walkway:

Alongside the walkway we found
several plants blooming: Solomon’s Seal (a cultivated variety with variegated
leaves), Spanish Bluebells, and a single individual of Trillium discolor, an
escapee from the Dunson Garden.

Spanish Bluebells — pretty plant, pretty invasive

The Spanish Bluebells are invasive. Earlier
this week some of our Rambler volunteers spent 21 man hours digging them up
from the Dunson Garden.

Witch Hazel nipple galls

Split gall showing brown aphid inside

We also stopped to look at the
“nipple” galls just now appearing on the American Witch Hazel tree leaves. This
gall is produced by an aphid. The aphid lays an egg in the emerging leaf tissue
and this causes the development of the nipple gall. Inside the gall the egg
hatches and the newborn aphid inserts its sucking mouthparts into the leaf
tissue to feed. Earlier I split open a gall to reveal its single inhabitant.
This single aphid will asexually produce many offspring inside the gall. Some
of them will develop wings and emerge from the gall and fly off to a different
host plant. Right now the galls have no openings, but last year, at a later
time in the year, we looked at these galls and discovered that they were open
on the lower surface. How the opening is made is a mystery.

 

Many plants in the Dunson Garden are in bloom and we spent
the reminder of our time there today. Some of these plants were in bloom last
week, so I’ll comment on the latest bloomers unless there are new observations
to make. The list of all the plants observed is found at the end of this post.

New York Fern

New York Fern is recognized by the shorter pinnules at both the bottom and the top of the frond. The mnemonic is that New Yorkers burn their candles at both ends. (If that helps you to remember it, fine. If not, make up a better one and share it.)

Cinnamon Fern

Cinnamon Fern has two types of fronds, sterile and fertile. The fertile fronds are tall and bear cinnamon-colored sporangia. The sterile fronds are green and lack any reproductive structures.

Golden Seal

Golden Seal is a medicinal plant.

Painted Buckeye flowers

Painted Buckeye is hummingbird pollinated, even though the flowers are not red in color. 

Mayapple flower

Mayapples only bear flowers when there are two leaves on the stalk. Plants with a single leaf will not flower.

Silverbell flowers

Common Silverbell is an understory tree that typically is found in moist situations. The bark of young trees has a unique green striped appearence.

Wild Chervil

Wild Chervil or Cow Parsley is sometimes confused with Corn Salad, but the leaves are very different. The Chervil leaves resemble those of carrots, whereas Corn Salad leaves are not finely dissected.

Field Madder

Field Madder can be mistaken for a type of Bluet with a casual look. Both have tiny, pinkish four-lobed corollas. But Field Madder has whorls of six leaves surrounding its stems, which Bluets do not.

Toadflax flower

Blue Toadflax has an unusual flower with a long, curved spur. In many flowers the spur holds nectar, forcing a pollinator to reach deep into the flower and come in contact with the anthers and/or stigma. What insect would be able to reach this spur? I can only think that some butterfly might be able to do it — they have long, tubular “tongues” that can suck up nectar. Someone has to sit and watch the plants to see if this is the case.

Conservatory Mealy Bug Control Project

Mealybug Destroyer larva

Mealybug eggs (brown), larvae & adults

 Some Ramblers were able to see the Mealybugs that are infesting some of the plants in the conservatory. The garden staff are attempting to use biological control to limit the infestation. They are using a beetle that is related to Ladybugs and is a voracious predator of Mealybugs. Both the adults and the larvae of the beetle eat all stages of the Mealybug. Don Hunter captured some photos of both the predator and the prey. The beetle is named Mealybug Destroyer (Cryptolaemus montrouzieri); its larva resembles the Mealybug itself.

As usual, we ended the ramble with beverages and conversation at Donderos’.

 

SUMMARY OF OBSERVED SPECIES:

Common Name	Scientific Name	Comment
Ginkgo tree	Ginkgo biloba
American Witch Hazel	Hamamelis virginiana	nipple galls
Solomon’s Seal	Polygonatum odoratum	Flowering
Spanish Bells	Hyacinthoides hispanica	Invasive
Small Yellow Toadshade	Trillium discolor	Flowering
Wild Geranium	Geranium maculatum	Flowering
Columbine	Aquilegia canadensis	Flowering
Piedmont Azalea	Rhododendron canescens	Flowering
New York Fern	Thelypteris noveboracensis
Cinnamon Fern	Osmundastrum cinnamomeum	fertile fronds present
Chattahoochee Trillium	Trillium decipiens	Flowering
Sulfur Shelf Mushroom	Laetiporus sulphureus
Blue Haw	Viburnum rufidulum	Buds, but no flowers
Threepart Violet	Viola tripartita	Flowering
Green and Gold	Chrysogonum virginianum	Flowering
Virginia Bluebells	Mertensia virginica	Flowering
Perfoliate Bellwort	Uvularia perfoliata	?
Small-flowered Paw Paw	Asimina parviflora	Flowering
Early Meadow Rue	Thalictrum dioicum	Finished flowering
Black Cohosh	Actaea racemosa	No flowers
Bloody Butcher Trillium	Trillium recurvatum	Flowering
Shooting Stars	Primula meadia	Formerly Dodecatheon
Yellow Trillium	Trillium luteum	Flowering
Spider Lily	Lycoris radiata
Native Azalea	Rhododendron austrinum	Lisa’s Gold cultivar
Leatherwood	Dirca palustris	No longer flowering
Dwarf Crested Iris	Iris cristata	Flowering
Golden Seal	Hydrastis canadensis	Flowering
Small’s Ragwort	Packera anonyma	Flowering
Foam Flower	Tiarella cordifolia	Flowering
Rue Anemone	Thalictrum thalictroides	Flowering
Painted Buckeye	Aesculus sylvatica	Flowering
Mayapples	Podophyllum peltatum	Flowering
Common Silverbell	Halesia carolina	Flowering
Wild Chervil	Chaerophyllun tainturieri	Flowering
Unidentified Red Mushroom
Beaked Corn Salad	Valerianella radiata	Flowering
Field Madder	Sherardia arvensis	Flowering
Blue Toadflax	Nuttallanthus canadensis	Flowering
Goose Grass, Cleavers	Galium aparine
Dooryard Violet	Viola soraria	White morph
Sweet Shrub	Calycanthus floridus	Yellow flowered Cultivar