Leader
for today’s Ramble: Linda 

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

Insect
identifications: Heather
Larkin, Bill Sheehan, Don Hunter

Number
of Ramblers today: 28

Today’s
emphasis: Seeking what we find in grasslands and forests

Continue reading →

Leader
for today’s Ramble: Gary
Crider, the Botanical Garden’s invasive plant control technician

Authors
of today’s Ramble report: Gary Crider and Linda

All
the photos
that appear in this report, unless otherwise credited, were taken by Don
Hunter. Some photos were also taken from the internet, with gratitude to the
photographers who make their work freely available to the public through
Wikimedia Commons.

Number
of Ramblers today: 10

Today’s
emphasis: The Garden’s invasive plant removal program

Reading: Gary read two quotes
that sum up the critical importance of controlling exotic species:

 “…the two great destroyers of biodiversity
are first, habitat destruction and, second, invasion by exotic species.” E.O.
Wilson

“We
have allowed alien plants to replace natives all over the country. Our native
animals and plants cannot adapt to this gross and completely unnatural
manipulation of their environment in time to negate the consequences. Their
only hope for a sustainable future is for us to intervene to right the wrongs
that we have perpetrated.” Douglas W. Tallamy, Bringing Nature Home: How
Native Plants Sustain Wildlife in Our Gardens 

Continue reading →

 

Ramble Report for September 22, 2022

Leader for
today’s Ramble: Linda

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

Insect
identifications: Don
Hunter. Don’t miss some amazing insect photos taken by Don earlier in the week.

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.

Number of
Ramblers today: 14

Today’s
emphasis: Warm-season grasses

Continue reading →

 

 

Leader for
today’s Ramble: Linda

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

Insect
identifications: Heather Larkin and Don Hunter

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.

Number of
Ramblers today: 20

Today’s
emphasis: Fall Wildflowers

Continue reading →

September
8, 2022 Nature Ramble Report

Co-leaders
for today’s Ramble:
Heather and Bill

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

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.

Number
of Ramblers today:
16

Today’s
emphasis: Heather took care of the spiders, caterpillars, and other insects;
Bill took care of the galls and fungi.

Continue reading →

 

Ramble Report: September 1, 2022

Leader for
today’s Ramble: Jim
Moneyhun, Flower Garden Curator

Authors of today’s
Ramble report: Linda and Don (please send comments and corrections to Linda: Lchafin@uga.edu)

Insect
identifications: Don
Hunter, Heather Larkin

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.

Number of
Ramblers today: 29

Today’s
emphasis:
Jim, one of two curators of the Flower Garden, took us on a walk through his
domain, concentrating on flowers and plants that attract and support pollinators.

29 Ramblers today

Today’s Reading: Jim
read from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s 1790 book The Metamorphosis of Plants:
“Anyone who observes, even a little, the growth of plants, will easily discover
that certain of their external parts sometimes undergo a change and assume,
either entirely, or in greater or lesser degree, the form of the parts adjacent
to them. So, the simple flower, for example, often changes to a double flower
if the petals develop at the place of stamens and anthers.” 

Jim Moneyhun, Flower Garden Curator

Show-and-Tell: 
Jim brought Dahlia and Zinnia flower heads, with examples of singles and
doubles of each flower head. Both Dahlias and Zinnias are in the Aster family
which is characterized by flower heads with two types of flowers. In the center of each head,
there is a disk (or sometimes a raised cone) of many tiny, tightly packed fertile flowers that produce
nectar. Being fertile, they have stamens and pistils and, if pollinated, will produce seeds. The disk is surrounded by one or more whorls
of large, colorful sterile flowers whose purpose is attracting pollinators–they
have no stamens or pistils and produce neither nectar or seeds. (There are, of course, some exceptions to this to be discussed on later rambles this fall.) Through breeding techniques, horticulturists have developed Aster family plants
that produce heads composed mostly of the showy ray flowers with few or no disk
flowers (marigolds are another good example). Since there is little or no nectar on
offer, pollinators quickly learn to bypass these flower heads as they search for nectar. And since these
sterile flowers produce no seeds, they provide nothing for seed-eating birds
or small mammals. A flower bed composed only of doubled flower heads will not
see many bees or butterflies in the summer or finches in the fall.

 

Top, a Zinnia flower head with two whorls of sterile ray flowers (white-and-red-striped) surrounding a disk with many yellow fertile flowers that produce nectar and, if pollinated, seeds. Bottom, a “doubled” Zinnia flower head where the fertile disk flowers have been replaced by sterile ray flowers, which produce neither nectar or seeds.

Dahlia flower head with a single whorl of ray flowers and many yellow disk flowers.

Dahlia flower head with many whorls of ray flowers and no disk flowers.

 A similar thing
happens with flowers in other plant families. There is a Bloodroot cultivar
named ‘Multiplex’ where all the stamens and pistils have been converted to
petals, creating a showy flower that looks more like a Peony than a Bloodroot. With
no reproductive parts, these flowers are incapable of sexually reproducing and are
increased only by manual division or other forms of cloning. Doubling occurs
naturally in many plant families and was written about as long ago as 286 BC.
It is also used by modern horticulturalists to create showier flower clusters. However it occurs, doubling
happens at the expense of reducing the numbers of and availability of the
pollen-, seed-, and nectar-producing structures in the flower or flower head. 

Bloodroot, Sanguinaria canadensis ‘Multiplex’ Photo by Brunk-Tan, Wikimedia Commons

Monarch nectaring on the disk flowers of a Mexican Sunflower. The orange ray flowers attracted the insect and also provide a platform as it feeds.

The main thrust of Jim’s presentation was to say that the Garden has
examples of single flowers, as well as doubles of many species, scattered
throughout the Garden. The doubles are primarily for show but he and other
curators recognize the need for a balance between the single and double
varieties, and make sure the more pollinator-friendly single flowers are well
represented. 

Jim also mentioned that the Japanese recognize 24 seasons in a solar
year, further broken down into 72 micro-seasons that are based on subtle but observable
changes in nature, such as ‘Spring Winds Thaw the Ice’ and ‘The Maple and the
Ivy Turn Yellow.’  The Japanese
micro-season for where we are now is described as “the heat starts to die down.”  Perfect!

Today’s Route: 
We left the Children’s Garden, heading towards the Visitor Center,
passing between the Ceramics Museum and the Visitor Center, and through
the corner of the Heritage Garden, before dropping down into the Flower
Garden.  We eventually reached the lower
sections of the Flower Garden and made our way along all of the paths before
heading back up into the Heritage Garden, past the Pawpaw patch and on into the Physic
Garden and Herb Garden.

OBSERVATIONS

IT’S SPIDER SEASON! 

Spiny-backed Orb Weaver in its web

Joro Spider in its seemingly chaotic and multi-layered web. Hopes that Joros had diminished in number this year have been dashed.

Yellow Garden Spider in its dewdrop-bejeweled web.

Heather’s keen eyes spotted this very well camouflaged Citrid Flatid Planthopper on a branch overhanging the sidewalk from the parking lot to the Visitor Center.

The Pecan tree in the Heritage Garden is swarming with caterpillars whose frass litters the sidewalk beneath

As Jim led us through the Flower Garden, he pointed out a
number of cultivars that have been selected for color or extra petals
or ray flowers but that have retained their attraction for insect pollinators.

Zahara® Starlight Rose Zinnias are a horticultural selection focused on the color of the ray flowers that has left the fertile disk flowers intact.

Eastern Tiger Swallowtail nectaring on a flower head of Zahara® Starlight Rose Zinnias

Pink Celosia is a favorite of several wasp species, including Thread-waisted Wasps. There are two types of ornamental Celosia, “rooster-comb” with large triangular inflorescences and “wheat” with spiked inflorescences. Native to Africa, Celosia is a genus in the Amaranth family, along with lots of edible plants such as spinach, beet, quinoa, and lamb’s quarters. Some species of Celosia are cultivated in the tropics for their tasty greens and edible seeds.

Great Black Digger Wasp visiting Pink Celosia flowers in this “wheat” type inflorescence. The flowers bloom from the bottom of the spike up, with the unopened buds being the most colorful and newly opened flowers providing nectar. The spikes elongate as the season progresses, remaining erect and a silvery-pink well into the fall. Each flower consists of a colorful calyx, five stamens, a pistil, and several nectaries that ring the base of the pistil; there are no petals.

Rattlesnake Master flower heads are another wasp favorite. Most plants in our area with spherical flower heads are in the Aster family, but Rattlesnake Master is in the Carrot Family, along with Queen Anne’s Lace, Poison Hemlock, and Meadow-parsnip, species that have the familiar dome-shaped flower heads more typical of this family.

Eastern Carpenter Bee nectar-robbing through the calyx of a Russian Sage flower. With a head far too large to access nectar through the front of the flower, Carpenter Bees pierce the base of the calyx and corolla to reach the nectaries.

Holy Basil is in the same genus as the familiar culinary Basil but is widely used for religious and medicinal purposes in India.

Holy Basil flowers with their prominent, pollen-laden anthers and open throats are welcoming to bees. (Photo by Pranav, Flickr)

Wildflowers in the genus Gaura are aptly named Bee-blossom. Bee-blossom is a nectar-rich perennial – native to the southern U.S. – that thrives in full sun, heat, and humidity. The genus was recently merged with Oenothera, the evening-primroses, along with several other genera, creating a large and unwieldy group that will likely be split again soon.

Honey-bee visiting a Bee-blossom flower

Cosmos, a native of Mexico, is a genus in the Aster family with about 26 species. Numerous hybrids and cultivars have been bred for a wide range of flower colors and plant sizes. Most have retained their pollinator appeal and ability to reproduce by seed. The genus name is also used as the common name and trade name.

 

Abelia is an old-fashioned Southern landscape plant that provides nectar for bees and butterflies throughout summer and fall. The genus Abelia is native to east Asia and Mexico. There are numerous cultivars offering different leaf and flower colors, stem heights, and fall leaf colors. None are known to have spread from cultivation and become invasive. Here’s a link to in-depth information on this genus and its landscape uses.

 

Pink Agastache is pollinated by long-tongued insects and hummingbirds. In case you were wondering, that name is pronounced: “Ah-GAS-tuh-key”

Blue Mealy Sage

Angelonia, a genus of about 30 species and many cultivars, is related to snapdragons. They are native to Brazil. A Common Buckeye caterpillar is exploring its flowers, though whether they use this species as a host plant is not known.

Honeybee nectaring on Garlic Chives flower

Ligated Furrow Bee gathering pollen from the disk flowers of a Zinna flower head. Photo by Heather Larkin

Cloudless Sulphur butterfly nectaring on the disk flowers of a Mexican Sunflower

Horace’s Duskywing nectaring on Lantana flowers Photo by Heather Larkin

Eastern Carpenter Bee, nectar robbing on Anise-scented Sage

Warmer winters and hardy cultivars have made it possible to grow bananas in Athens. This cultivar will come back year after year.

Banana flowers consist of modified leaves (reddish-purple) that enclose elongated yellow ovaries (future bananas) topped with small sepals, petals, stamens, and styles.

A “hand” of developing bananas (bottom) and some newly opened flowers (top). For a very in-depth look at banana flowers and fruits, here’s a great webpage.

Ginger Lily is not a true lily, but it is a true ginger – it’s in the ginger family,  Zingiberaceae, native to Asia. There are about 75 species in this genus, with many cultivars. Flower color ranges from white (Butterfly Lily, Hedychium coronarium), to yellow, pink, and orange. Almost all species are incredibly fragrant. In their native habitats, they are pollinated by insects, nocturnal moths, and birds.

Saddleback caterpillars are well known to many ramblers, who shared their stories of bumping up against the painfully stinging hairs found on knobs all over their bodies. This caterpillar will soon spin a tough, spherical cocoon surrounded by silk webbing in which a pupa will overwinter. Come spring, the Saddleback Caterpillar Moth emerges, mates, and lays up to 50 eggs at a time on leaves of various shrubs and trees. The hairs contain a venom that may induce migraines, asthma, anaphylactic shock, and hemorrhaging. The stinging hairs should be removed as soon as possible to prevent the venom from spreading.

Saddleback Caterpillar Moth Photo by Gary Maness, Moths of North Carolina

Tiger Lily flowers look a lot like our native Turk’s-cap Lily, but this species is from Asia. Unlike our native lily species, they reproduce vegetatively by producing bulbils in the leaf axils. The plants that derive from the bulbils are clones of the parent plant. Tiger Lilies also reproduce sexually from seed.

Forktail damselfly Photo by Heather Larkin

Redbud Leaf-folder caterpillar surrounded by pellets of frass Photo by Heather Larkin

Last summer, Flower Garden curators and volunteers enjoyed a watermelon break that included a seed-spitting contest. This year they were rewarded with a small crop of watermelons.

 

Citrus
Flatid Planthopper     Metcalfa pruinose

Mexican Sunflower    
Tithonia rotundifolia

Monarch
butterfly    Danaus plexippus

Eastern
Tiger Swallowtail     Papilio glaucus

Rattlesnake
Master     Eryngium yuccifolium

Pecan    
Carya illinoensis

Zahara®
Starlight Rose Zinnia     Zinnia sp.

Russian
Sage     Perovskia atriplicifolia

Eastern
Carpenter Bee     Xylocopa virginica

Purple
Basil    Ocimum basilicum

Pink
‘Wheat’ Celosia, Celosia spicata

Holy
Basil     Ocimum tenuiflorum

Cleome/Cat’s
Whiskers     Cleome gynandra

Zinnias,
not specified     Zinnia sp.

Cosmos    
Cosmos sp.

Gaura    
Gaura sp.

Western
Honey Bee    Apis mellifera

Abelia 
   Abelia x grandiflora ‘Kaleidoscope’

Butterfly
Weed milkweed     Asclepias tuberosa

Oleander
aphids     Aphis nerii

Midges    
Family Chironomidae

Yellow
Garden Spider     Agriope aurantia

Banana
plant     Musa sp.

Golden
Alexander     Zizia aurea

Smooth
Sumac     Rhus glabra

Saddleback
caterpillar     Acharia stimulea

Ginger
Lily     Hedychium sp.

Tiger
Lily     Lilium lancifolium syn. Lilium tigrinum

Watermelon  
Citrullus lanatus

Angelonia    
Angelonia augustifolia

Agastache    
Agastache rupestris

Blue
Mealy Sage     Salvia farinacea

Common
Buckeye caterpillar     Junonia coenia

Job’s
Tears    Coix lacryma-jobi

Buckwheat
‘Takane Ruby’     Fagopyrum esculentum

Blackberry
Lily     Iris domestica

American
Sycamore     Platanus occidentalis

Garlic
Chives     Allium tuberosum

Peacock
Gladiolus     Gladiolus murielae

Anise-scented
Sage       Salvia guaranitica

Online Show & Tell for the week of Aug 20 – 24, 2022

Reminder: there is no Ramble on August 25. We will resume meeting at the Children’s Garden Arbor on September 1 at 9:00am, as usual.

Many
thanks to the ramblers who sent in photos and stories for this week’s
Online Show & Tell! Keep sending your stories to LCHAFIN@UGA.EDU and
put “Show & Tell” in the subject line so I can keep track of them. The last Online Show & Tell will be posted August 31.

Gary Crider offered this week’s reading as a perfect follow-up to the Great Georgia Pollinator Census last weekend.

Valediction

by Charles W. Pratt

Now the bumbling bees that hover

Over loveliness in flower

Important with their store of pollen

Have had their hour;

Time has come for you to shed your

Silken petals and declare

Whether you are apple, cherry,

Plum or pear,

And all summer take your pleasure

Nourishing the ripening fruit

With the sun and rain you welcome

Through leaf, through root.

Rosemary Woodel sent a wonderful video she made at Wesley Woods Athens in July 2022, entitled “Flight — Birds, Flies, Bees, Wasps, Butterflies and Moths.” Rosemary and her compatriots at WWA created a Connect to Protect Garden, planting
native plants and pollinator-friendly flowers. The results are stunning! Click here to watch the 12 minute video. Here’s a still snipped from her video of a Hummingbird Clearwing Moth visiting a verbena flower cluster.

Thank you, Rosemary!

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

This week just happened to include the Great Georgia Pollinator Census. Nature Ramblers were there!

Don Hunter sent in these photos and accompanying narrative about his GGPC adventures…

2022
Great Georgia Pollinator Census, My Madison County Adventures

I
had been really looking forward to this year’s Great Georgia Pollinator Census
so I was quite happy when the weather turned out more favorable than
expected. I was able to go out right after lunch on Friday and do two
counts in the Wild Quinine in a power line right-of-way at the end of our
street. On Saturday, I headed over to the large Georgia Power
right-of-way I have “adopted” to count the pollinators at five different flowering native
plants. 

DAY
ONE – GGPC

Wild Quinine (Parthenium integrifolium) with Carpenter Bee

I
chose to count insects on Wild Quinine because it is a reliable pollinator magnet, drawing in a variety of flies, wasps, bees, and other insects and
bugs. I stopped by to check it out on the 17th and there was a lot of
activity, so I was confident it would be a good location for the count. As
it turned out, at the two locations where I counted, I counted a single
carpenter bee, quite a few small bees, mainly halictid bees, and several
species of wasps. Here are a few pics from the Wild Quinine:

Noble Scoliid Wasp, center, and a furrow/halictid bee, upper left, on Wild Quinine

Norton’s Alkalai Bee/Norton’s Nomia, a large sweat bee, on Wild Quinine

DAY TWO – GGPC

On
day two, I drove over to the miracle acre beneath the big Georgia Power power
line in southern Madison County. This is proving to be, perhaps, a relic prairie from the earlier
days when prairies were more commonplace in our neck of the woods.  Linda
and I have identified over 60 species of native plants here, excluding the trees
and grasses. There’s a lot of blooming going on now so it was a natural
for a counting location. I counted at five different plant species,
Southern Mountain Mint (X2), Greater Tickseed, Roundleaf Boneset, Woodland
Sunflower, and Kidneyleaf Rosinweed. I saw mostly wasps, small bees, and
butterflies, with a few flies and other critters. Here are a few photos
from day two, with a story or two.

Great Golden Digger Wasp on Southern Mountain Mint (Pycnanthemum pycnanthemoides)

My first census location was at a large, bushy Southern Mountain Mint. I found a
place and sat down to lower my profile, and enjoyed a very pleasant 15 minutes of counting, starting off with this Great Golden Digger Wasp. How lucky I was! As I stood up to move on, I looked at
where I was just sitting and saw fire ants boiling all over the place. I
looked around on my legs and pants and only found a few of the ants and started
waiting for the biting to begin. I never got the first bite.  All I
can figure is that one of my butt cheeks must have been planted directly over
the mound entrance, blocking their exit.  On a related note, two years
ago, during the 2020 census, I had just gotten five minutes into one of my counts
when I noticed the unmistakable sensation of fire ants biting my ankles and
shins.  Not one wanting to waste a count, I stood my ground, enduring the
bites, which probably numbered in the twenties or thirties, until the fifteen
minutes were up.  I then bailed off to a safe locations to pull of my
shoes and socks and remove any remaining ants. 

Eastern Tiger Swallowtail on Southern Mountain Mint

My
original intentions were to count and photograph the swallowtails at a large
patch of Joe-Pye Weed across the road from the “miracle acre,” but this
was not to be. When I was at the location just a day earlier, the
swallowtails were swarming a ditch full of Joe Pye Weed. When I arrived today, I
was met with this sight:

Former Joe-Pye Weed patch, now a mown right-of-way

A bee fly showdown was underway when I arrived at this Greater Tickseed (Coreopsis major) flower head (below). I’ve been seeing the Geron sp.
flies for the past several years, but the Exoprosopa is a new species for
me. Katherine has also seen this larger species in her yard in the past
several days.

Small bee fly (Geron sp.) on the tip of upper ray flower, and a larger bee fly, Exoprosopa brevirostris, nectaring on disk flowers.

A lovely Horace’s Duskywing on Greater Tickseed. There were quite a few of these around.

Beautiful Golden-reined Digger Wasp on Southern Mountain Mint

Looking
forward to my fifth year of counting in 2023!

 

Thank you, Don!

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

From Roger and Betsey Collins who have rambled Alaska the
past three weeks: 

We have enjoyed being in a Maritime Rainforest ecology.  High temperature
is usually 55. Just want to share a couple of items. 

I was wearing my blue Ramblers t-shirt the day I climbed Flat Top Mountain (3,510 feet elevation) near Anchorage.

I made this photo of Roundleaf Sundew (Drosera rotundaflora) on a nature trail near Homer, Alaska. This is the same species as the sundew, 3000 miles away in the pine woods of South Georgia, of my childhood. Despite its sparkly dew appearance, it can be inconspicuous on a forest floor. I learned that a major part of their diet is mosquitoes.

 

One morning a pair of Sand Hill Cranes came by our front door. While related to the cranes that migrate over Georgia, these guys will be flying back to California and Mexico.

Thank you, Roger and Betsey!

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

From Cynthia Beane

My sweet dog Henry has a nose for finding box turtles in our woods. Look closely under the leaves and you can see her shell. So far we have located a male and a female living in our small forest.

I found this Carolina Lily, Lilium michauxii, on the Blue Ridge Parkway growing on a slope above a roadside ditch. Carolina Lily has fewer flowers per plant than Turk’s Cap Lily, and its leaves are widest above the middle.

Not too far away from the Carolina Lily, I found a small field of Yellow Fringed Orchid, Platanthera ciliaris. There is also a smaller population of these fringed orchids in North Carolina’s Stone Mountain State Park. The Stone Mountain orchids were found growing in an open power line field.

Note from Linda: It is a mystery to me why this species is named Yellow Fringed Orchid when it is clearly orange. By whatever name, it is a highlight of the mountains in August.

Thanks, Cynthia!

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

Emily recommends this article from the Washington Post: “Want to see how climate change is stressing bees? Look at their wings.” Thanks, Emily!

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

Dale recommends this “In Defense of
Plants” podcast about native azalea pollination by way of swallowtail wings. Look for episode 376, featuring the researcher Mary Jane Epps who discovered the phenomena of wing pollination in Flame Azalea pollination.
Almost all of the hundreds of podcasts “In Defense of
Plants” are interesting. 

Further recommendation by Dale: a PBS Nature video (Season 36, episode 12) with remarkable footage
of butterflies: “Sex, Lies, and Butterflies.” The story of the wing-pollinated azalea begins at minute 16 and lasts about 4 minutes, but the whole video is fascinating with gorgeous photography. If you were about skeptical wing-pollination, seeing the strands
of sticky pollen being pulled from anthers may convince you. You can also view the program here.

Thank you, Dale!

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

Gary Crider
is spending the dog days of August roaming the woods at the Botanical
Garden and other public lands in Clarke County and killing invasive
plants, especially Perilla, aka Beefsteak Plant (Perilla frutescens).

Identifying Perilla can be tricky. Perilla will always have the typical mint family traits of a
square stem, opposite leaves, and aromatic leaves, in this case a
distinctive, basil-like
smell. But there’s
a lot of variation in the height of
mature plants, anywhere from 5 inches to 5 feet. And the leaf margins can vary
from
merely toothed to almost frilly and may be purple-ish or just plain
green.

Perilla patch along the new ADA Trail in the powerline right-of-way at the Botanical Garden. These plants were 4 feet tall before treatment.

 

Perilla patch after treatment with a mix of hand-pulling and herbicide

Patch of Perilla seedlings surrounded by mature plants, showing how densely this species can occur.The good news is that the species is an annual; if you kill a plant before it sets seed, that plant will not be back.

 

Perilla patch soon after spraying with a low concentration of Triclopyr. This herbicide is specific to broad-leaf plants and does not affect grasses or needle-leaved conifers. A few minutes of spraying wiped out thousands of these plants. Triclopyr is not harmful to animals and does not persist in the environment.

Thanks, Gary!

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

Note from Linda: there’s been a lot of talk on my neighborhood listserve lately about what to do with rescued wild animals. Here’s a suggestion from a neighbor that might be of interest: “The
Atlanta Wild Animal Rescue Effort (AWARE) is a wonderful organization at Arabia
Mountain (near Atlanta). They will take injured or abandoned wildlife and try
to save and restore the animal to good health to be released back into its
natural habitat.”

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

Linda has been doing some late summer botanizing around the county. Here are a few mostly terrible photos to prove it.

Sparkleberry (Vaccinium arboreum) leaves with a fungal gall called Fly-speck Leaf Spot, Ophiodothella vaccinii. I identified this gall using Gallformers.org, thanks to Bill Sheehan’s class a few weeks ago.

Mockernut Hickory (Carya tomentosa) fruits

Chalk Maple (Acer leucoderme) fruits

Flowering Dogwood (Cornus florida) fruits – and leaves that seem to have given their all to support biodiversity

Hop Hornbeam (Ostrya virginiana) has already produced next year’s staminate (pollen) catkins at the tips of twigs. They will overwinter and expand early next spring, releasing pollen. Pistillate (fruiting) catkins develop in the spring.

Butterfly Pea (Centrosema virginianum) tightly twined around a Wingstem plant

Elephant’s Foot (Elephantopus tomentosus)

Flowering Spurge (Euphorbia corollata)

Low St. John’s-wort (Hypericum stragulum)

Pencil Flower (Stylosanthes biflora)

Arrow-arum (Peltandra virginica) growing with False Nettle and Lizard’s Tail in the Middle Oconee River floodplain

False Nettle (Boehmeria cylindrica) with the last of this year’s flowers

Lizard’s Tail (Saururus cernuus) with pale, long, narrow fruit clusters

 Leader for
today’s Ramble: Heather

Authors of
today’s report: Heather and Linda

Insect, gall,
and plant identifications: Don
Hunter, Heather Larkin, Dale Hoyt, Linda Chafin

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.

Number of
Ramblers today: 30 

Show and
Tell: Gary brought an Elderberry twig and recommended planting it in floodplains after removing Chinese Privet. Elderberry twigs will root if you just stick them into wet soil in
late winter – a technique called “live staking.”  It’s a great wildlife species: the large
flower clusters attract butterflies and other pollinating insects, and the berries
are eaten by as many as 45 bird species. The leaves are also eaten by the
caterpillar of the Cecropia moth, North American’s largest moth. Kathy mentioned that
various plant purveyors are marketing selections from wild examples that have
many more and much larger berries. It’s an easy plant to grow, with hers doing
well and growing to large size.

Elderberry leaf and fruit

Myrna brought a tiny Pipevine Swallowtail butterfly caterpillar.

Pipevine Swallowtai adult (photo by Sandy Shaull)

Pipevine Swallowtail caterpillars eat only the leaves of Dutchman’s Pipevine and its close relatives in the Birthwort Family. As they eat the leaves, the caterpillars acquire a toxic plant compound – aristolochic
acid – to which they are immune, and then pass it on to the adult form of the butterfly. The acid is then passed along by the females to their eggs. Birds quickly learn to recognize and avoid all stages in the species’ life cycle: the red-spotted caterpillars, the bright blue and black adults, and the red eggs. Several other swallowtails, as well as the Red-spotted Purple butterfly, have evolved similar coloration, a form of mimicry that provides some protection from predators.

Announcements/Interesting
Things to Note:

Reminder: the new versions of Rambler t-shirts
(and a hoodie!) are on sale at the Satisfactory Printing website. Two of the shirts are cut for women and the other two are unisex. Note that the hoodie is a jacket with a zipper. The sale will end on August 13.
You will have the choice of paying for shipping OR picking up your shirts at
Satisfactory Printing; shirts will NOT be delivered at a ramble. All profits
from the sale will go to the Friends of the Garden. We must have at least 24
items ordered.

Emily passed along that Rambler Jim
McMinn reports that he is getting hip replacement surgery soon and will be
re-joining us in the fall.

The Great Georgia
Pollinator Census is approaching. This year, the counts will be conducted on
August 19 and 20. See the website for
more info. This is a great opportunity to participate in citizen science!

 Linda
introduced two visitors, former Athenians and avid environmentalists, Gary
Appelson, from Gainesville, Florida and Tom Clements, from Columbia, South Carolina. 

Fan-shaped Jelly Fungus growing in cracks of the split rail fence alongside the Children’s Garden

Today’s route: We left the Children’s Garden arbor and headed first to the fountain and pool outside the Visitor Center, then visited the new garden behind the Ceramics Museum. From there, we made our way to the Flower Garden and the Rose Garden, and returned to the Visitor Center by way of the Heritage Garden.

Today’s
emphasis:  Hydrophobic foliage and leaf-edge
guttation

Plants whose leaf surfaces repel
water are called hydrophobic plants. “Hydro” is a Greek root word that means water and “phobia” means fear. This
phenomenon has also been named “the lotus effect,” after the large,
water-repelling leaves of the Sacred Lotus and other species of Nelumbo.
Hydrophobia in the plant world is achieved by two modifications to the surfaces
of leaves – a
layer of waxy scales or a coating of hairs – that prevent water droplets from reaching the surface of the leaf. The hairs and scales do not
lie flat – they are formed so that they hold a droplet of water at
such an angle that the surface tension of the water overrides the shape of the
leaf. Meaning, that the water droplet holds the shape of a droplet rather than
spreading out and wetting the leaf (in-depth link). Many reasons exist for
plants to have evolved these kinds of surfaces, with one of the most obvious being self-cleaning.
Any dust or mud, insect parts or bird droppings are simply rolled up with the
water beads and swept away. This is especially helpful in areas where it mists
a lot but heavy rain isn’t common. The water beads on the leaf surface carry
away the dust and other dirt that accumulates without needing a torrential
downpour. Studies have shown that a build-up of dust and other debris on a leaf surface significantly reduces the photosynthetic capacity of the leaf.

The leaf of a Spurge plant sporting many large water beads.

The
fountain and pool outside the Visitor Center host a number of aquatic plants with hydrophobic leaves.
Bent Alligator-Flag leaves, held on tall, erect stalks, are covered with a powdery wax. (Note: this
striking plant is sometimes called a canna, but is not even in the Canna family; it
is a member of the tropical  Marantaceae / Arrowroot family. 

Bent Alligator-flag leaf blades dotted with beads of water

Bent Alligator-flag flowers attract Common Eastern Bumble Bees

The lower lip of a Bent Alligator-flag flower provides a perfect landing platform for pollinators.

Looking a lot like duckweed, Mosquito Fern lives within a peatmoss-covered barrier in the pool outside of the Visitor Center

Mosquito Fern held on the tip of hiking pole

Mosquito Fern’s tiny, floating leaves are coated with
hairs that repel water. Eastern Mosquito Fern is native to the eastern U.S.; a
different species, Large Mosquito Fern, is an Asian invasive. Leaves of all
Mosquito Ferns harbor a symbiotic, nitrogen-fixing cyanobacterium, Anabaena
azollae, which has been  deliberately introduced to rice paddies as
fertilizer for centuries.

Close-up of Dusty Miller leaf surface

Dusty Miller, an Asian plant popular with gardeners because of its white fuzzy surfaces, also repels water.

A sleepy Fiery Skipper greeted us on arrival at the Ceramic Museum garden

 

 

Hyrdrophobic beading on the leaves of Iris (left) and Little Blue Stem (below)

Aaron’s Rod (AKA Carolina Bushpea or Carolina
lupine), left. Its leaves and stipules were beautifully hydrophobic with many
crisply beaded water drops on the surfaces.

Photo by Bill Sheehan

 

 

Zachary, a member of the horticulture
staff who
attended Bill’s “gall talk” a few weeks ago, found this gall on a stem of a Groundsel Tree, a large, fast-spreading
shrub in the Aster family. This is a soft, communal gall occupied by the larvae of Gall Midges.

Photo by Bill Sheehan

 

 

This close-up photo shows the holes
where the adult Gall Midges exited the gall. Note the white things encircling the exit holes.

Photo by Bill Sheehan

When Bill got the gall home, he was able to look
at it under a microscope. He realized
that the white things are, in fact, the remains of the midge pupae left behind as the adults worked their way out of the gall and flew away.
This photo, right, shows the pupal skin (exuvia) at an exit hole: the head is on the upper side of the
photo, and you can see the outlines of the antennae and legs emerging from the hole.

Bill entered these data into iNaturalist. You
can see his entry here.

The Rose Bed was a great place to see plants with both hydrophobic beading and guttation. Guttation is a plant’s way of ridding itself of
excess water. If atmospheric humidity and soil moisture are high, water builds
up in the plant and is forced out through special cells (called hydathodes)
that line the margins and some surfaces of leaves. The water evaporates later.
Guttation (from Latin gutta, drop) is not to be confused
with dew,
which condenses randomly from the atmosphere onto the leaf surface and does not
originate from within the plant. Guttation generally happens during the night
time. For more info, click here.

Rose leaves with guttation drops along the margin

Rose leaves with hydrophobic water beads

A leafhopper named Versute Sharpshooter was hanging out on a watery rose leaf

Guttation droplets on the margin of an Elephant Ear leaf

Tucked between two leaves of Taro plants, a tiny Carolina Anole, about an inch long, gave Don’s intruding camera a baleful glance.

Anoles are a type of lizard native to the southeastern
United States. They range in color from bright green to dark brown and any
shade between. They can change their color, the only lizard in the Americas to
do so. This has earned them the name of the American chameleon. They are not
true chameleons, though. Juveniles and females have a white stripe down their dorsal ridge. They prey on small insects such as spiders, crickets, and
flies. Like many lizards, Anoles can break off the tip of their tail to
distract a predator while they are running away. It will grow back eventually,
but it is usually not as long or the same shade as the rest of the lizard.

The singing of Annual Cicadas met us as we approached the bottom of the Flower Garden with its surrounding woods. 

 

Smooth Sumac shrubs are flourishing on the north side of the Flower Garden stage, apparently unimpaired by the presence of galls on many of their leaves. 

 

 

We opened several galls and found them mostly
hollow, except for white, waxy fluff. On closer look, we saw many tiny, yellow
aphids moving around on the interior walls of the galls.

 

 

 

In
a blog report from August 2021, Dale illuminated the lives of these tiny
aphids: 

    “At the bottom
of the Flower Garden some of us discovered numerous pouch-like  swellings on the
Sumac leaves and midvein. These are the work of an aphid, called the Sumac Gall
Aphid. In the spring, as the sumac is producing leaves, it is visited by an
aphid that lays a single egg, usually on the mid-vein. The plant reacts by
enveloping the egg with a growth of tissue that begins as a small, spherical
swelling. The egg hatches and the aphid nymph begins feeding by sucking plant
juices. When the nymph becomes sexually mature it starts to produce more aphids
parthenogenetically; i.e., without benefit of a male. Those aphids, in turn,
produce more aphids and the number within a single gall grows exponentially.
Ultimately the aphids leave the gall and migrate to mosses that may be growing
nearby. There they over-winter and in the spring male and female aphids are
produced, mate, and the females fly off to find more sumac, completing the life
cycle. We opened several
of the thin-walled galls and found them filled with white fuzz. It didn’t dawn
on me what this was until much later: the cast off exoskeletons of hundreds in
not thousands of aphids. Each aphid molts five times before reaching
reproductive age. Given the exponential rate of increase of the aphids and
then multiply by five and you get a gall filled with white fluff.
Visit
this website for
a lot of excellent photographs of the galls and the aphids.”

 

Elsewhere in the Flower Garden, Butterfly Weed with Oleander Aphids and an unidentified larva

Hammock Spider-lilies blooming near the stage in the Flower Garden

Less appealing was a Hammerhead Planarian, also known as a Shovel-headed Garden Worm, found on one of the large Elephant-Ear leaves.

Hammerhead Planarian, also known as a Shovel-headed Garden Worm is an invasive exotic species that attacks earthworms

 

Dale wrote about this slimy creature in June 2019:

“A planarian is a free-living flatworm (Phylum Platyhelminthes).
Most people have never encountered one, except in biology courses. Those
planarians are aquatic, dark in color and have two eyespots in their head end.
They have the ability to regenerate complete worms when cut in half, either
transversely or longitudinally. When cut lengthwise the right and left halves
regenerate the missing side. If cut the other way, the head end grows a new
tail and the tail end grows a new head.

Flatworms lack a body cavity and a circulatory system. The
free-living species have a mouth in the center of the body (not the head!) that
leads to a  complexly branched digestive tract. Its many branches and
projections allow the products of digestion to diffuse directly into the
surrounding tissue, a function provided by the circulatory system of other
kinds of animals. This is probably why flatworms are flat – all their cells are
a short distance from as source of oxygen and food.

Other kinds of flatworms are parasitic; you may have heard of
liver flukes, tape worms, or schistosomes, all of which are parasitic flatworms.
These flatworms live in the digestive tract or circulatory system of their host
animal, places where they are immersed in fluids containing food that can be
directly absorbed. 

The Hammerhead planaria is a free-living, terrestrial predator of
earthworms. There are many species that are found all over the world. The
commonest species in the USA was probably accidentally introduced via the soil
in pots containing plants. They are commonly seen in and around greenhouses. On
a ramble a few years ago we found one attacking an earthworm on the sidewalk in
the Shade Garden.

The Hammerhead produces a very sticky adhesive secretion. If you
pick it up, it will stick to your fingers and be very difficult to remove. This
enables the Hammerhead to hold tight to its prey, an earthworm.

One more thing – the Hammerhead is the only terrestrial
invertebrate known to posses tetrodotoxin, a nasty neural poison. By attacking
the nervous system tetrodotoxin causes paralysis. That makes it useful in
subduing earthworms. The only other terrestrial organisms known to produce
tetrodotoxin are some salamanders and tropical frogs (the poison dart frogs.)”

Fork-tailed Bush Katydid

Back in the Heritage Garden, Heather found a beautiful Fork-tailed Bush Katydid on a Blanket Flower. This tiny katydid
will eventually grow up into one of the large green katydids that we all have
seen. Katydids are similar to grasshoppers, but they are easily distinguished
by their legs. A katydid’s legs go upwards, and a grasshoppers hind legs point
backwards when folded. Katydid nymphs are easy to recognize as well, with the
characteristic black-and-white striped antenna. Grasshoppers do not
support these humongously long antenna, only katydids!

Obscure Bird Grasshopper resting in a Pineapple Salvia

Heather found a clutch of Spined Soldier Bug
eggs on a leaf, no more than ten feet from where she spotted another clutch on
a Ramble four or five weeks ago. Spined Soldier Bugs are a type of stinkbug, and while most humans see stink bugs as of
little benefit, they actually prey on a lot of agricultural pest insects
including caterpillars and beetles.

Spined Soldier Bug eggs

Job’s Tears are planted in one of the beds near the gazebo.

Job’s Tears’ dangling flower cluster with swollen stem “pseudocarp” The yellow structures are stamens; the brown structures are styles/stigmas

Job’s Tears is an odd-looking grass with wide, clasping leaves and bulbous swellings at the base of the seed head. It is native to Southeast
Asia and cultivated there at high elevations where other grain crops do not
grow well. The stem at the base
of the flower cluster is swollen into a hard, round ball called a pseuodocarp
(“fake fruit”). Some varieties of Job’s Tears have hard pseudocarps that are used
to make beads; other varieties have soft pseudocarps that are harvested and sold as Chinese pearl barley.

No August ramble report is complete without a photo of Eastern Tiger Swallowtail
butterflies. As is often the case at the Garden, this individual was nectaring
on Mexican Sunflower. Eastern Tiger Swallowtails are the state butterfly of Georgia.

 

SUMMARY
OF OBSERVED SPECIES

Fan-shaped
Jelly Fungus     Dacryopinax
spathularia
Euphorbia      Euphorbia sp.
Common
Eastern Bumble Bee     Bombus
impatiens
Red
Salvia     Salvia sp.
Hardy
Water Canna     Thalia geniculata
Mosquito
Fern     Azollo caroliniana
Dusty
Miller     Eschscholzia californica
Iris     Iris sp.
Little
Bluestem grass     Schizachyrium
scoparium
Fiery
Skipper     Hylephila phyleus
Aaron’s
Rod     Thermopsis villosa
Groundsel
Tree     Baccharis halimifolia
Gall-forming
Midge   Neolasioptera lathami
Castor
Bean plant     Ricinus communis
Rose     Rosa sp.
Tea Cup
Elephant Ear   Colocasia esculenta
Bush
Clover Lespedeza thunbergii ‘Pink
Fountain’
Annual (Dog-day)
Cicada    Tibicen canicularis
Smooth
Sumac     Rhus glabra
Smooth
Sumac gall aphid     Melaphis rhois
Hammock
Spider Lily     Hymenocallis
occidentalis
Giant
Taro    Alocasia macrorrhizos ‘Shock
Treatment’
Hammerhead
Planarian, Shovel-headed Garden Worm     Bipalium
kewense
Carolina
Anole     Anolis carolinensis
Butterfly
Weed     Asclepias tuberosa
Oleander
Aphid     Aphis nerii
Molasses
Grass     Melinis minutiflora
Obscure
Bird Grasshopper     Schistocerca
obscura
Pineapple
Salvia   Salvia elegans
Fork-tailed
Bush Katydid     Scudderia furcata
Blanket
Flower     Gallardia aestivalis
Spined
Soldier Bug (eggs)     Podisus
maculiventris
Job’s
Tears Coix lacryma-jobi
Eastern
Tiger Swallowtail     Papilio glaucus

 

Ramble Report July 28 2022

Leader for
today’s Ramble: Linda

Author of today’s
Ramble report: Linda

Fungus and insect identifications: Don
Hunter and Bill Sheehan

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.

Number of
Ramblers today: 27

Today’s
emphasis: Searching for Pine Sap but finding lots of Tipularia, fungi, and floodplain wildflowers instead…mostly fungi.

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