Today it seemed appropriate to remember the Irish
poet Seamus Heaney who died a couple of weeks ago, so Dale Hoyt read one of his
poems. (Note: The flax-dam in the poem is a pond in which the stems of Flax stems are placed in the
water to rot, releasing the fibers that were used to make linen. Many Irish towns had such flax dams.)

Death of
a Naturalist

All year the
flax-dam festered in the heart

Of the townland;
green and heavy headed

Flax had rotted
there, weighted down by huge sods.

Daily it sweltered
in the punishing sun.

Bubbles gargled
delicately, bluebottles

Wove a strong gauze
of sound around the smell.

There were
dragon-flies, spotted butterflies,

But best of all was
the warm thick slobber

Of frogspawn that
grew like clotted water

In the shade of the
banks. Here, every spring

I would fill
jampotfuls of the jellied

Specks to range on
window-sills at home,

On shelves at
school, and wait and watch until

The fattening dots
burst into nimble-

Swimming tadpoles.
Miss Walls would tell us how

The daddy frog was
called a bullfrog

And how he croaked
and how the mammy frog

Laid hundreds of
little eggs and this was

Frogspawn. You
could tell the weather by frogs too

For they were
yellow in the sun and brown

In rain.

Then one hot day
when fields were rank

With cowdung in the
grass the angry frogs

Invaded the
flax-dam; I ducked through hedges

To a coarse
croaking that I had not heard

Before. The air was
thick with a bass chorus.

Right down the dam
gross-bellied frogs were cocked

On sods; their
loose necks pulsed like sails. Some hopped:

The slap and plop
were obscene threats. Some sat

Poised like mud
grenades, their blunt heads farting.

I sickened, turned,
and ran. The great slime kings

Were gathered there
for vengeance and I knew

That if I dipped my
hand the spawn would clutch it.

We planned to focus on butterflies again today,
but it was cool when we began, not a good sign for butterfly activity.
Butterflies prefer hot, sunny weather, so we left the parking lot with low
expectations. But with so many sharp-eyed participants it wasn’t long before we
found lots  of interesting creatures.

Continue reading →

We started with a reading from Janisse
Ray describing the Altamaha River as a library, which Hugh read. 

This
river (The Altamaha) is a library, full of biota.  In these stacks, everything is written in
different languages.  There is a dialect
for motions at the surface of water, ripples and waves and mini- volcanoes and
sometimes only a shimmering of wind. 
Each species has its own vernacular, rasps and howls and bellows and
flutelike songs.  Fish have a lingo of puff
and plop, and wild speech falls off the tongues of amphibians and
reptiles.  There is also a language
beyond sound.

In
this library, one shelf is for mussels and one is for bream that live in
submerged bank roots.  There is a cabinet
for the life of canopies and a dictionary of grass.  This library contains a reference for
butterflies, a catalogue of birds. It offers a concordance of arthropods, a
circulation of seeds.

The
river runs and runs.  It runs until it
makes a circle, half in the sky, and finds itself again.  It runs not simply to haul rainfall out of
Georgia.

Not
only to water the land.

Not
only to nourish these forests.

Not
only because it is a storehouse of life.        

The
river runs because it is the keeper of mystery. 
It is the bearer of what cannot be humanly borne.  It is the course of transformation.  It is a sacred urn that,  once opened, changes everything.

(From Janisse Ray, Drifting into Darien (Athens: UGA Press, 2011), pp x-xi.)

Bob Walker showed photos of the Gulf
Fritillary that emerged from the chrysalis that Dale brought last week and
which Bob took home to protect and see what emerged.

Our ramble today was through the
International Garden to the Purple Trail and then back by way of the Orange Trail.  Went around the Beaver Pond on the Orange
Trail and took it all the way to the Upper Parking lot.

Continue reading →

Dale brought a Gulf Fritillary butterfly chrysalis
to show; Martha and Bob agreed to take home and give it tender care. Martha will give us updates
on what emerges (butterfly or parasitic wasp).

Hugh read the story of Milton Hopkins and
an indigo snake. Milton graduated from UGA with an MA in zoology, and intended
to become a naturalist on the Barrier Islands, but ended up, in his own words, a
dirt farmer.  He was an incredible
birder, and known throughout the state. 

Although
it was winter, the snake had emerged from a gopher hole to sun.  Milton collected the snake, thinking to offer
it as a live specimen to a professor he knew at Mercer University, the head of
the biology department.  At home he made
a pine box and attached the lid with nails nailed only half-way down, thinking
he’d give the snake water the next morning.

“Lo
and behold,” his story goes, “the next morning I awoke to find an
empty snake box.  The huge reptile had
forced the pine planks clean off the box and escaped into our home.  Wife Mary had a few-months-old baby girl at
the time and wailed, ‘That huge snake will swallow my baby.’ I knew this was
impossible but couldn’t convince her.”

“‘We
all turned the home upside down for several days in search of the snake, without
success.  I was certain it had not
escaped the house.”

“One
morning early, while we were eating breakfast my peripheral vision caught a
swift darting motion from behind a large upright freezer.  Here was our snake.  She was coiled in and out of the heat-dispensing
coils on the back of the freezer, which backed up to a closed window.  The freezer had recently been loaded with
over six hundred pounds of beef we had just killed on the farm, and I hated to
think of unloading and reloading all that meat, so decided the best method of
recapture of the snake was to take out the window casing from the outside and
remove the lower window.  This took some
time and effort, and I had three pairs of eyes watching from inside the house
to be sure the snake didn’t move to another hiding place.”

“‘She
had herself wrapped around and in and out of the coils of the freezer, probably
seeking warmth, and it took some time to get her to turn loose and come
out.  This was accomplished, the snake
again put in her shipping box and this time the lid was securely nailed down.”

“‘After
affixing the address on the box I added ‘Live Snake’ in big letters.  Railway Express agencies prided themselves on
shipping anything, but I thought it prudent to leave the snake box in the
pickup, enter the freight agent’s office, and tell him what I wanted to
ship.   He says loudly, ‘a Live snake?'”

“Yes,
Sir,”

“The
agent said, ‘Boy, don’t bring that thing any closer in here.   Push my scales outside on the loading
platform, weigh the box, and I’ll give you a label to attach to it.'”

[From Milton Hopkins book, In One Place:  The Natural History of a Dirt Farmer, we
learn that the snake lived for many years at Mercer University.  The end came when it bit a student.]

Hugh’s reading is from Janisse Ray, Ecology of a Cracker Childhood
(Minneapolis, MN: Milkweed Editions, 1999),pp. 189-190.

We then proceeded down through the Dunson
Native Flora Garden to go out the White trail to the Blue Trail up the service
road and back on the Green Trail.

Continue reading →

We started
today with an announcement: Emily and Dale will lead a walk at 9:00 AM next
Tuesday, Sept. 3, 2013, at Sandy Creek Nature Center. Everyone is welcome to
attend. This is the first of a monthly series of walks at the Nature Center.
Emily plans to have them on the first Tuesday of each month.

We had
three readings today; Hugh read an excerpt from Sean Beeching’s book, I Like You But What Can You Do Can
You Be A Bird, pp. 45-46.

Inland is a low forest of oaks and gums, holly
and willow, the floor is mud, muddy roots and soggy leaves, it is composed of
low mounds and water-filled hollows, and it is dark, even in winter, under the
live oak leaves.  The history of the
Ohoopee’s past wanderings is here, these are the old channels and banks, oxbows
and meanders, I suppose, but it is too confused and too dim to be read by
me.  The two great trees here are live
oak on the banks and cypress in the swamps. 
Both are covered with the other great player in the coastal
landscape:   Spanish moss.  Does this bromeliad cast (a) spell of
lethargy over the South?  Fully developed
on a big oak, ancient, shaggy, overextended. it billows in the breeze,
supported not by its own efforts but by the oak, dormant as often as not.  Should some fall, so what?  There’s plenty more.  Perhaps it exudes a substance, Tillandsiadol,
an invisible elixir that seeps into the minds of Southerners, that makes them
say, “Aw, it’s alright,” whether it is or not, and makes them think
that living is work enough.  If this
potion could be bottled I would carry it on my back and breathe it straight
through a tube.

Dale read a
piece about scientific names from Alpine
Plants of the Northwest Wyoming to Alaska, p. 12:

If we
can no longer argue for scientific names on the basis of stability, we can
still make an argument for clarity. After all, even after scientific names
change, there is still only one official scientific name-the new one. (Numerous
common names usually remain.) You can also learn scientific names to impress
people, around the barbeque or at other social gatherings. Inexplicably to
some, Carla Bruni married former French president Nicolas Sarkozy. She
explained that, after a courtship stroll in the Elysee Palace gardens, it
struck her that “He knows all the Latin names, all these details about
tulips and roses. I said to myself, ‘My God, I must marry this man.'”

Terry read
a wonderful poem by Janisse Ray:

Butterfly

Where does its fire go

when a monarch dies?

Does it vanish

in smoke,

or turn suddenly to rain?

Does it lay dead

against a mountainside

transforming placidly

to dirt,

which will harbor in its richness

millions of small burning ships

sailing a deep-green forest,

never to be seen?

Or does the fire seep

into the ground,

running in rivulets

toward the blazing core

of the earth,

one day to return:

a volcano spewing wings?

The subject
of today’s ramble was butterflies. Dale began with a few comments about books and
equipment useful for learning about Georgia butterflies. 

Continue reading →

Around
ten folks met at the arbor this morning for the weekly Ramble, led this week by
Andie Bisceglia, Director of Children’s Programs at the Gardens.  We left
the arbor and headed down to the White Trail, then to the Blue Trail, took the
access road to the right at the Blue Trail gate, then right on to the Green
Trail back to the power line clearing and home to the parking lot.  The
weather was overcast, with a cool temps and a nice steady breeze during most of
the walk.  The rain that was supposed to move in by 10:00 am stayed to the
south.  It was as comfortable a walk as you could want for the middle of
August.

We
began with the reading, provided by Andie, from Rachel Carson’s “A Sense
of Wonder”, © 1956, pp 42-45. .

            A
child’s world is fresh and new and beautiful, full of wonder and excitement. It
is our misfortune that for most of us that clear-eyed vision, that true
instinct for what is beautiful an awe-inspiring, is dimmed and even lost before
we reach adulthood. If I had influence with the good fairy who is supposed to
preside over the christening of all children I should ask that her gift to each
child in the world be a sense of wonder so indestructible that it would last
throughout life, as an unfailing antidote against the boredom and
disenchantments of later years, the sterile preoccupation with things that are
artificial, the alienation from the sources of our strength.

               
If a child is to keep alive his inborn sense of wonder without any such gift
from the fairies, he needs the companionship of at least one adult who can share
it, rediscovering with him the joy, excitement and mystery of the world we live
in. Parents often have a sense of inadequacy when confronted on the one hand
with the eager, sensitive and of a child and on the other with a world of
complex physical nature, inhabited by a life so various and unfamiliar that is
seems hopeless to reduce it to order and knowledge. In a mood of self-defeat,
they exclaim, “How can I possibly teach my child about nature—why, I don’t even
know one bird from another!”

               
I sincerely believe that for the child, and for the parent seeking to guide
him, it is not half so important to know as to feel. If facts are the seeds
that later produce knowledge and wisdom, then the emotions and impressions of
the senses are the fertile soil in which the seeds must grow.

After
the reading, we made our way down the hill and to the White Trail.  At the
power line clearing, we played a game.  We divided into groups of two and,
taking turns, one partner was blindfolded and led to a tree by the other
partner, where the blindfolded partner explored the tree with their hands,
sensing bark, moss, lichens, size, etc, and was asked what type of tree it was.
The blindfolded partner was then walked back to the trail and, after the
blindfold was removed, tried to identify the tree they were led to, based on
their observations.  It was an interesting experience.

We
then headed out on the White Trail and quickly saw St. Andrew’s Cross
(Hypericum hypericoides) at the edge of the power line.  Nearby, and
also at the edge of the power line clearing, Gary pointed out a white Clematis
growing in the lower boughs of a large tree.  It appears to be a
Yam-Leafed Virgin’s Bower (Clematis terniflora).  From  there,
 we took the White Trail to the BlueTrail, where we immediately saw a
Chantrelle (Cantharellus cibarius) mushroom (Surprise!). As we rambled
along the Blue Trail we came across a small American Beech tree with a limb
nearly completely covered with the Beech Blight Aphid (Grylloprociphilus
imbricator) (This is the second time this summer we have observed these
aphids on an American Beech tree).  Also observed on the ground below the
infested limb were deposits of sooty mold caused by the fungus Scorias
spongiosa built up below the colonies of aphids and growing on the copious
amounts of honeydew the insects exuded.

A
little further down the trail, Andie pointed out terraces, most likely remnants
of cotton farming or other agricultural practices.  Also noted was a “wolf”
oak, a large oak tree with many limbs growing relatively close to the ground,
something only seen on trees that grew out in the open. The “wolf”
descriptor is also given to some pines that also have many lower limbs and is
probably a shortened form of “lone wolf” since the trees that display
this characteristic are generally solitary specimens, i.e., lone wolves. 
Andie referenced Tom Wessel’s “Reading the Forested
Landscape”.

As
we moved further down the trail, we saw large numbers of Elephant’s Foot
(Elephantopus tomentosus), also known as Devil’s Grandmother, a pretty
little purple Aster.  Nearby Angie noticed a Crane Fly Orchid
(Tipularia discolor) near the base of a large oak tree. It has been a good
year for Crane Fly Orchids at the Bot Gardens.   As we worked our way
back out into one of the clearings, we observed the White or Virginia
Crownbeard (Verbesina virginica).blooming.  This is one of the two
species of Wingstems that are found along the trails.  Nearby was a stand
of what looks like Blunt Leaf Senna or Coffee Weed (Senna obtusifolia),
a common, introduced weed and usually found in abundance in tilled gardens in
the southeast.  At this point the Ramble turned right up the access road
at the Blue Trail gate, where we quickly found some bright yellow green
boletes, maybe Ornate Stalked Bolete (Boletus ornatipes).  A little
further down the road we saw a small cluster of Cinnabar-Red Chantrelles
(Cantharelles cinnabarinus), another of the edible chantrelles.  Right
before the turn on to the Green Trail the tiny but beautiful Flowering Spurge (Euphorbia
corollata) was noticed and pointed out.  It was seen at several other
locations further  along the trail.  After turning on to the Green
Trail the very striking Elegant Stinkhorn mushroom (Mutinus elegans) was
seen emerging from the leaf litter.  It is bright orange, with a white
skirt and tapers to a hollow point.  And it does stink.  The last
find of the day was a lone Rattlesnake Fern (Botrypus virginianus) then
most folks headed up to Dondero’s for the after-Ramble refreshments and
conversation.  Thanks Andie for very ably stepping in and leading a great
walk.

Here
is the link to Don’s Facebook page with his great photos of some of the things
observed today: Don’s
Facebook photos.

Summary
of observed species:

St. Andrew’s Cross (Hypericum hypericoides)

Yam-Leafed Virgin’s
Bower (Clematis terniflora)

Chantrelle (Cantharellus cibarius)

Beech Blight Aphid (Grylloprociphilus imbricator)

Elephant’s Foot AKA
Devil’s Grandmother (Elephantopus tomentosus)

Crane Fly Orchid (Tipularia discolor)

White or Virginia
Crownbeard (Verbesina virginica)

Blunt Leaf Senna AKA
Coffee Weed (Senna obtusifolia)

Ornate Stalked Bolete
(Boletus ornatipes)

Cinnabar-Red
Chantrelle (Cantharelles cinnabarinus)

Flowering Spurge (Euphorbia corollata)

Elegant Stinkhorn
mushroom (Mutinus elegans)

Rattlesnake Fern (Botrypus virginianus)

Don
Hunter

Today we
first heard a reading by Carol from Forgotten Grasslands of the South,
p. 5 by Reed Noss on the importance of knowing our
environment.

Beyond its importance for conservation, natural
history provides a way for people to feel at home.  Nothing alarms me more than someone who has
no clue about what watershed she lives in and cannot name even five or ten
species of plants and animals in her neighborhood.  Such lack of awareness signals a pathological
disconnection from nature.  We need to
know our nonhuman neighbors and come to see them as friends.  Learning about the geologic history, flora,
and fauna of the place we live in helps us feel that we belong here, regardless
of our socioeconomic status, race, ethnicity, or whether or not we were born
and raised in this place.  Natural
history is democratic–anyone can practice it–and it opens up limitless
opportunities for joyful experiences. 
These experiences then circle back to conservation.  We become more eager to save plants, animals,
and places when they are familiar rather than strangers.

Continue reading →

This morning
Hugh read from Barbara Kingsolver, “Small Wonder” (2002),
anthologized in Bill McKibben, American Earth: 
Environmental Writing Since Thoreau, ” page 947.

People need
wild places. Whether or not we think we do, we do.   We need to be able
to taste grace and know once again that we desire it.  We need to experience a landscape that is
timeless, whose agenda moves at the pace of speciation and glaciers.  To be surrounded by a singing, mating,
howling commotion of other species, all of which love their lives as much as we
do ours, and none of which could possibly care less about our economic status
or our running day calendar.

Wildness puts us in our place.  It reminds us that our plans are small and
somewhat absurd.  It reminds us why, in
those cases in which  our plans might
influence many future generations, we ought to choose carefully.  Looking out on a clean plank of planet earth,
we can get shaken right down to the bone by the bronze-eyed possibility of
lives that are not our own.

Given heavy rains that
have muddied up the nature trails, and the recent herbiciding and cutting down
of woody plants in the Power Line Right of Way, we decided to ramble in the
Garden hitting the native plant sections.

Continue reading →

We had a
three book give-away that was won by Martha, Sue and Don. I’m sure they will be
happy to share their books with any of you after they have read them.

The reading
today was provided by Dale and is from the entry for August 1st in Donald
Culross Peattie’s book, An Almanac for
Moderns:

JEAN-BAPTISTE-PIERRE^–ANTOINE DE MONET was born upon this day in
1744 in a gaunt old farmhouse in Picardy, eleventh son of the Chevalier de La
Marck. The young Lamarck, while stationed as a soldier at Monaco, first began
to question the why and wherefore of life’s infinite complexity. Rousseau had
interested him in botanizing in a gentlemanly and sentimental way, but Lamarck
was made of sterner stuff than Rousseau. He was fortunate, too, in his
associates. Buffon procured for him the place of botanist to the King, and the
mighty de Jussieu, who can be com­pared to Linnaeus with a compliment intended
to Lin­naeus, made a thorough systematist out of Lamarck. Late in life a change
in appointments placed him in the chair of a lecturer on zoology, and in order
to fulfill it, he made a zoologist out of himself! To Lamarck we owe the dis­tinction
between vertebrate and invertebrate animals, which no one before had had the
wit to see, snakes, lizards, and alligators having been classed as insects!

When the Revolution came, several great
scientists lost their heads in it. The little band at the Jardin des Plantes
—Lamarck, Cuvier, Daubenton, Desfontaines, Latreille, Geoffrey de St.
Hilaire—clung on, without salary, without appropriations (“the Republic
has no need of scientists,” were the famous words of the Directory),
wondering when the blow would fall. Lamarck’s last days were spent in
blindness, only his daughter fending for and attending him, taking by dictation
the last lines of this imaginative genius of science. He died in direst
poverty; at his funeral Cuvier ridiculed his theory of evolution. No one
followed his body as it was carried to potter’s field.

We traversed the
White-Red-White-Green trails today and saw only a few blooming plants, but lots of
mushrooms.

Continue reading →

Today was cool and no rain although our
ramble on the Purple and Orange Trails was muddy.  Before starting off, Dale read some passages
about Sourwood from A Natural History of
Trees of Eastern and Central North America by Donald Culross Peattie; the
full text follows for your enjoyment:

The
glittering leaves of the Sourwood, wondrously fresh-looking and spirited, have
completed their growth long before the flowers appear, yet so handsome are the
great bouquets of bloom at the ends of the branches that they are not put out
of countenance by the splendid foliage but, looking like hundreds of little
lilies-of-the-valley, they sway and dance in the warm, friendly wind of late
June and early July. In case you have not looked up and seen them, you may soon
be made aware of them by the roar of the bees gone nectar-mad at their lips.

When
autumn comes, the foliage turns a gorgeous scarlet or orange or crimson, double
welcome because the Sourwood in general grows outside the range of the Sugar
Maple and the Aspen, and takes their place in the South. Then, especially in
the southern Appalachians where Sourwood grows 50 and 60 feet tall, is the
season to set out afoot, or on horseback, or in your car, to buy sourwood honey
from your country neighbors. Some of them put out little signs along the roadside,
but all you have to do is watch for a row of “bee gums” not far from the
farmer’s house. For if the southern farmer has hives at all, he has Sourwood
honey for sale. Fortunately the blooming period of the Sourwood is just after
the fading of the Mountain laurel and Rhododendron whose honeys are poisonous.
Their honey the bee-keeper throws away, but he is very careful to store his
sourwood honey, for it is the finest, in the opinion of many epicures, in the
southeastern states and is not surpassed even by the most tangy sage honey of
California.

Sourwood
honey is medium-light in color, of heavy body, and slow to granulate. An
average flow of as high as 75 pounds per colony from Sourwood has been
recorded. Usually the local demand takes the entire crop at prices above the
open market, so that Sourwood is a honey like some of the choicest wines of the
vineyards of Europe – that is, it practically does not appear upon the market
at all and can be had only by those epicures who will journey far to partake of
it. One buys Sourwood honey as one buys any such rare product from its
producers – not in a commercial spirit, paying for it and carrying away the
wares – but with all the due ceremony observed between a collector and a
creative artist. You ride up to the cabin door; a woman appears at the barking
of the hounds, with children peeping out from behind her skirts, and mountain
courtesy requires that you begin, not by stating your business but by telling
where you come from. Then you assure her that she has a “right pretty place”;
you praise her portulacas, her turkeys, and so, across the landscape, you
arrive at her bee gums. Then you ask if she likes Sourwood honey as much as you
do. You tell her that you would go far to obtain a little if only you could
find somebody who would give up a few pounds of it. When the honey is produced,
as it certainly will be, you accept it before asking the price. This will be
shyly stated. You may safely pay it for your haggling was all done, by
indirection, in your previous parley. And you are paying no more than a fico
for nectar and ambrosia.

The
very hard wood scarcely enters into the lumber business but is cut locally by
farmers for the handles of tools. Once on a time in the days of home medicine,
the leaves were brewed as a tonic, and they still, with their pleasant acid
taste, quench the thirst of the hot, perspiring mountain climber.

Then Carol read from Nature’s Chaos by Eliot Porter and James Gleick, p. 47:

Sometimes
people try to create miniature ecosystems, mimicking on a smaller scale what
the earth has created on a grand one.  One
experiment in the American Southwest has brought thousands of species together
in a domed world.  Simultaneously, the
national park system is learning a hard lesson. 
To support a single large mammal, a cougar or grizzly bear, nature
requires hundreds of square miles of an intricate mesh of smaller species.  To support a whole, thriving population of
such animals, the better part of a continent may be necessary.  Even the great national parks, it now seems,
cannot sustain them.  The populations are
dwindling and vanishing.  A stripped-down
ecology may be no more plausible than a poet with a brain of a mere million
bits.  Our imaginations may have been
beggared by the monumental built-up hierarchies required to create the
apparently simple manifestation of one herd of buffalo, one stand of dogwood.

As we went by the International Bridge in
the International Garden some found a water snake.  Others of us missed it.  We all saw the beautiful Lotus blossoms.

Continue reading →