Leaders
for today’s Ramble:
Bill Sheehan and Heather Larkin

Authors of today’s Ramble report: Linda and Don. Comments, edits, and suggestions for the report
can be sent to Linda at Lchafin@uga.edu.

Insect, fungi, and slime mold identifications: Bill, Heather, and Don

Link to Don’s Facebook album for this Ramble. All the photos that appear in this report, unless otherwise
credited, were taken by Don Hunter. Photos may be enlarged by clicking them
with a mouse or tapping on your screen.

Today’s
emphasis:
 Fungi, Slime
Mold, and insects in the Upper Shade Garden and along the Orange and Purple Trails

Number
of Ramblers today: 33

Ramblers on the Orange Trail

Announcements:

Don urged everyone to participate in the 2023 Great Southeast Pollinator Census on Friday and
Saturday.

Halley reminded everyone that the “Inspired by Nature”
art exhibit at the Athens-Clarke County Library will be closing on Sunday.

Linda
led us in a rousing singing of “Happy Birthday” for Dale, who will be
celebrating the 24^th anniversary of his 60^th birthday on
Saturday.

Show-and-Tell:

Cathy Payne brought a large Carolina Wren nest she recovered from a Bluebird box and told us of the competition among the Bluebirds, Carolina Wrens, and House Wrens for nesting spaces in their yard this summer. With the use of a camera inside the Bluebird box, she watched the Carolina Wrens build the nest in just one day before the female began laying. After she had laid two eggs, a House Wren entered the nest, broke open each egg with her beak, and tossed the eggs out of the nest. After that, Cathy and her husband cleaned out the box, allowing a Bluebird pair to occupy it.

Bill brought a Cordyceps-infected Polyphemus moth pupa that he collected during his and Heather’s pre-ramble walk yesterday. He suspects the fungus is Cordyceps militaris, a common Cordyceps fungus seen on Lepidopteran pupae.

Bill
also shared a short video he captured on his iPhone yesterday during his and Heather’s
walk. A Spider Wasp had stung and paralyzed a large spider
just before Bill and Heather came upon the scene. The video captures the wasp
dragging and maneuvering the hapless spider into its nest burrow under a tree root. The
spider will remain alive but paralyzed as the wasp’s larvae eat it.

Still photo taken from the Spider Wasp video.

Myrna
has already won awards for best t-shirt; now she returns with the best
plant joke: If a plant is sad, will neighboring plants
be photosympathetic?

Today’s
Route:From the arbor in the Children’s Garden, we visited the woods in the Upper Shade Garden and then took the mulched path to the parking lot. Locating the trailhead, we started downhill on the Orange
Trail to the beaver pond. After crossing the beaver pond boardwalk, we took the Purple Trail back uphill towards
the Visitor Center, the Herb & Physic Garden, and the Discovery & Inspiration Garden.

OBSERVATIONS

Before the ramble, Don found a beautiful Handsome Meadow Katydid hanging out on the Rattlesnake Master in the Children’s Garden.

After leaving the arbor,
Bill led us to a patch of woods in the Upper Shade Garden, where he showed us
two common forest fungi, an Amanita and a Bolete.

An Amanita mushroom, with its diagnostic partial veil and rounded, bulbous base. The cap was roughened with warty patches of the universal veil that had completely enveloped the mushroom when it first emerged from the ground.

 

Boletes are typically short and stout, as here, with pores (instead of gills) on the underside of their caps. Their stalks are covered with a finely reticulate pattern. A snail is browsing on the pore surface of this individual.

 

Close-up of the reticulate stalk and pore surface of another bolete mushroom seen later in the ramble.

The pore surface (underside of cap) of another bolete

Agaricus mushrooms

While on the mulched
path through the Upper Shade Garden, we stopped at a flush of several Agaricus
pocillator (no common name), a common woodland mushroom. Another species in
this genus is the “button mushroom” widely sold in grocery stores. Bill
pointed out the drooping partial veil — a distinguishing feature — on the stems. Fresh partial veils, such as on the mushroom to the right, are pale pinkish-tan in color. As
the mushroom ages, such as the mushroom on the left, the veil’s color changes to tan, then to dark brown. This
color change occurs because brown spores falling from the underside of the cap are coating the veil. Accumulated spores darken the veil to brown.Both Agaricus and Amanita mushrooms have veils, and are easily confused. But Amanita
veils will always be white or pale yellow while the veils of
Agaricus begin pinkish and gradually turn tan then dark brown.

Russula mushrooms may have white or brightly colored caps

Russula mushrooms are common forest species and fairly easy to identify: the stalk is smooth and white, almost
chalk-like and, when fresh, snaps in half like a piece of chalk. The cap is chalky
in texture too and crumbles when crushed in your hands. Russula species
also lack any hint of a partial veil, distinguishing them from Amanita species.
However, Russula are difficult to identify to species in the
field.

Small, button-like cap of one of the Milk mushrooms in the genus Lactarius. Bill cut across the gills and beads of milky latex welled up across the wound.

Large, yellow plasmodial Slime Mold (above) photographed on Wednesday during Bill’s and Heather’s pre-ramble walk. This is probably Dog Vomit Slime Mold. Photo by Bill Sheehan

By Thursday, the plasmodial mass had begun to dry out and change appearance. Close-up view of the edge of the Slime Mold on Thursday

Two forms of Coral Tube Slime Mold, one with round masses of close-packed tubes, the other with scattered, isolated tubes. Below, a third species of Slime Mold found on a nearby log — the White Carnival Candy Slime Mold.

WHAT ARE SLIME MOLDS
AND WHY AREN’T THEY FUNGI?

Slime-molds check a lot of fungi boxes, both scientific
and non: they reproduce by spores; they make a living by digesting dead plant
material; and they have multiple, non-binary “mating types” rather than the egg-sperm
mating system of plants and animals. On a casual walk through the woods, we
clock that they are colorful, live in damp places on decaying plant material, and
have a more or less slimy appearance (even though most fungi aren’t slimy, we
tend to think of them that way). Plus, they are called “molds”! Isn’t this enough
to qualify as a fungus? Well, no. On a cellular level, they have an important difference: Slime Mold cell walls are made of cellulose while those of fungi
are made of chitin (like insect exoskeletons). And, amazingly, Slime Molds have behavior. They have pseudopods
(“false feet”) that allow them to move across a surface and, utterly without a brain
or a nervous system, they can navigate to a food source and remember how
they got there. Even through mazes! Slime molds can separate then fuse back
together then share knowledge between the formerly separated parts. No mere
fungus can do this!

So, what exactly are they? Unfortunately for us humans who
like to classify things, Slime Molds don’t fit well into any of the five existing
“kingdoms.” Instead, for lack of a better idea, they are stuffed into the
catch-all kingdom called Protoctista (or protists) along with other life forms
that have nuclei in their cells but that are neither a plant, animal, or fungus.
Other examples: amoeba, algae (seaweed!), paramecia.

Even within the group of organisms called “Slime Molds,”
they aren’t one coherent thing, but two – cellular and plasmodial – described here by the National Park
Service: “During the life cycle of cellular slime molds, they remain as
single cells. When an individual cell encounters a food source, it sends out a
chemical signal which attracts others of its kind, drawing them in until they
form a mass which is capable of movement in an amoeba-like fashion, with each
cell maintaining its individual integrity. The fruiting bodies of cellular
slime molds release spores, each of which becomes a single amoeboid cell when
it germinates. Cellular slime molds are rarely visible to the naked eye. On the
other hand, plasmodial slime molds start out as individual amoeboid
cells, but join together to form a multi-nucleate mass having only one cellular
membrane (a “super-cell” containing multiple nuclei). This mass is
referred to as a plasmodium and is frequently observed as threads of
“slime” on rotting wood. The plasmodium matures into a network of interconnected
filaments, which slowly moves as a unit as its protoplasm streams along the
network. These plasmodia can be quite large; some species have been recorded to
be over thirty square meters in size!”

*************

An impressive colony of Woolly Beech Aphids occupying several of the lower branches of a Beech tree beside the Orange Trail. Woolly Beech Aphids are native to eastern North America, from Florida north to Maine, and do not threaten the trees they inhabit. If you’ve never seen them do their boogie-woogie defensive dance, now’s your chance: video.

Woolly Beech Aphids are constantly sucking sap from Beech twigs and branches through their needle-like mouthparts. They remove amino acids and other
nutrients then expel the rest as liquid waste onto nearby branches, leaves,
and soil. We could actually see the liquid, backlit by the sun, dripping from this colony. This liquid waste is called honeydew because it is loaded with
sugars. Sooty Molds (true fungal mold) quickly colonize the honeydew, living off the
sugars.When the Sooty Mold is fresh, it is a golden-tan color; it turns gray then black as it ages.

Fresh Sooty Mold, golden-tan in color, on leaves and twigs below the aphid-occupied branches. It will turn gray, then black, as it ages. “Sooty Mold” is a collective term for many different fungi that grow on sugary exudates. It is not harmful to plants.

On the ground below the aphid
colony, where honeydew was collecting, a variety of insects, including ants,
yellow jackets, and flies, were availing themselves of this sugar-rich
resource. When we cut down trees or stand passively by as exotic diseases and
invaders kill our trees, we seldom consider the complex web of relationships
that are lost in their wake.

A Blue-Green Bottle Fly (left) dining on the honeydew coating on a leaf; a Chestnut Carpenter Ant is eating honeydew on the ground beneath the aphid colony.

Fairy Parachutes are delicate, translucent mushrooms with widely spaced gills that grow on decaying hardwoods.

Several tiny, kidney-shaped, delicately gilled fungi attached to a stem are possibly Variable Oysterling.

Thin-walled Maze Polypore is a common bracket type of fungus.

Jellied False Coral Mushrooms growing near the trail. These are tough mushrooms, often lasting thoughout the summer and fall.

Leaving the forested Orange Trail, we emerged into the full sun of the Beaver
Pond and crossed on the boardwalk. The marsh is densely packed with Rice Cutgrass, flowering Duck
Potato, and (sadly) the Asian invasive, Marsh Dewflower.

Eastern Calligrapher flower fly, left, as well as another unidentified fly, on the Duck Potato flowers.

 

Bill found several galls on the midveins of leaves on a Jewelweed growing next to the boardwalk.

After crossing the boardwalk, we turned uphill on the Purple Trail, where Don noticed a new-to-him stink bug, a Banasa calva, no common name, on the foliage of a small Hop Hornbeam tree.

Fuller’s Rose Weevil hugging a Fennel stem in the Herb and Physic Garden.

The new garden behind the Porcelain Arts Museum is called the Discovery and Inspiration Garden, and it’s rare to pass through without discovering something interesting, plant or animal. The ‘Little Joe’ cultivar of Coastal Plain Joe Pye Weed was busy today with Western Honey Bees.

Though Bill pointed out early on that today’s was a “non-plant
ramble,” devoted to fungi and insects, Don couldn’t resist taking a few plant photos along the way.

Naked Tick Trefoil leaning out over the edge of the trail

Crane-fly Orchid was seen in flower in several places along the Orange Tail and in the woods near the Upper Shade Garden.

In this shot of Cranefly Orchid, you can see fruits developing at the base of the spent flowers.

SUMMARY OF OBSERVED SPECIES

Handsome Meadow Katydid    
Orchelimum pulchellum

Amanita mushroom    Amanita
sp.

Bolete mushroom     Boletus
sp.

Cranefly Orchid     Tipularia
discolor

Agaricus mushroom     Agaricus pocillator

Frost’s Bolete (tentative ID)    
Exsudoporus frostii syn. Boletus frostii

Russula mushroom     Russula sp.

Milk Mushroom     Lactarius
sp.

Dog Vomit Slime-mold (tent.)     Fuligo septica

Coral Tube Slime-mold    
Ceratiomyxa fruticulosa

White Carnival Candy Slime-mold     Arcyria cinerea

American Beech     Fagus
grandifolia

Woolly Beech Aphids   
Grylloprociphilus imbricator

Sooty Mold     Scorias
spongiosa

Blue-green Bottle Fly    
Lucilia coeruleiviridis

Chestnut Carpenter Ant    
Camponotus castaneus

Eastern Yellowjacket    
Vespula maculifrons

Fairy Parachute     Marasmiellus
candidus

Variable Oysterling (tentative).   Crepidotus variabilis

Naked Tick Trefoil    
Hylodesmum nudiflorum

Thin-walled Maze Polypore     Daedaleopsis confragosa

Jellied False Coral Mushroom     Sebacina schweinitzii

Barred Owl (feather)  
Strix varia

Duck Potato     Sagittaria latifolia

Rice Cutgrass     Leersia oryzoides

Marsh Dewflower         Murdannia keisak

Eastern Calligrapher Flower Fly     Toxomerus geminatus

Another Milk Mushroom    
Lactarius subplinthogalus

Spotted Jewelweed    
Impatiens capensis

Jewelweed gall midge    Neolasioptera impatientifolia

Stink bug     Banasa
calva

Hop Hornbeam     Ostrya
virginiana

Fuller’s Rose Weevil    
Pantomorus cervinus

Culinary Fennel     Foeniculum
vulgare

Coastal Plain Joe Pye Weed     Eutrochium dubium cultivar ‘Little Joe’

Western Honey Bee    
Apis mellifera