35 Ramblers met today.
The photos used in todays report were all taken by Don Hunter. Here’s the link to his Facebook album.
Today’s reading was a poem: To Maggie When Grandpa is Gone, written and read by Bob Ambrose himself. Because of pandemic travel restrictions Bob has been prevented from visiting his year-and-a-half old granddaughter who lives n England. Now that restrictions have been relaxed he’s able to see her again.
Next, Tim Homan offered some “Rambler Trivia”:
What do you call a juvenile porcupine? A porcupet.
What do you call a baby sand hill crane? A cult.
Today’s focus: Refreshing our tree identification skills. We started at the upper parking lot then moved to the Orange Trail.
Tuliptree is also known as Yellow Poplar which is misleading – the Tuliptree is not closely related to the Poplars. It is in the same botanical order as the Magnolias. The name comes from the colorful flower that appears in early spring. The flower has large, white petals that are orange or yellow at the base and has green markings further up.
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Flower of the Tuliptree.
The petals are white on the outside.
The yellow stamens occupy the center. |
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The flower produces copious amounts of nectar and the bees flock to it. This heavy flow of nectar produces the earliest varietal honey of the season.
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| Tuliptree leaves. Note the squared-off shape and the four lobes. |
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The Tuliptree leaf is unique. It has four points and looks like a tulip blossom in profile.
Sourwood is just starting to bloom. Instead of the large single flowers of Tuliptree it produces many very small white flowers in clusters at the ends of its branches. The honey made from Sourwood nectar commands a premium price.
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Sourwood leaves.
The long leaf at the lower left shows the strap-shape. |
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| The midvein on the undersie bears needlelike hairs. |
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Its leaves are strap like and taper at each end and the midvein on the underside of the leaf bears small, needle like hairs.
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| Sourwood trees grow in almost any direction except straight up.
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The growth form of the tree is unusual. Instead of growing straight upward it twists and turns as if the trunk was seeking out the lightest portion of the sky. All trees grow toward the sky, but only the Sourwood deviates from the straight upward growth.
Sweetgum was named for the thick, sweet resin that flows from wounded branches or trunk. It was a free substitute for gum.
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| A Sweetgum leaf.
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The leaves resemble those of maples, but it has five pointed lobes arranges in a star pattern. The leaves are also alternate, unlike Maples where a pair of leaves emerge on opposite sides of a branch. A unique feature is the “gumballs” produced in the fall. The spiky protrusions make walking barefoot under a Sweetgum a painful experience. The gumballs contain seeds that a favorite food of many seed eating birds.
Winged Elm has almond shaped leaves with serrated edges. Unlike a lot of other Elm species the base of the leaf where it attaches to the midvein is not asymmetrical.
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Winged Elm leaves are attached alternately to their branches.
Also notice the saw-tooth (serrate) leaf edges. |
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| Corky ridges are found on some, but not every, branch of a tree.
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It gets the “Winged” name for corky ridges of tissues that form on the sides of twigs and small branches. But here in the Garden many of the Winged Elms lack these “wings.”
Hop Hornbeam is a small, understory tree that seems to be hard to identify. The leaves have a pointed tip and doubly serrate edges. (A serrate edge means that the edge is a series of saw teeth. Doubly serrate means that each large sawtooth has a smaller saw point on it.)
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Hop horbeam leaf (L); Winged Elm leaf (R)
The Elm has more coarsely serrate edges.
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The bark of older Hop Hornbeams is “shredded” – it looks like a cat scratched it. The bark is in narrow strips that look slightly loose.
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| Was Myrtle |
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Wax Myrtle is a shrub native to the coastal plain, so this one is probably deliberately planted. It is famous for the waxy berries that develop in autumn. They are the mature fruit of the plant and each berry is very small, but the wax makes them the favorite food for many birds at that time of year. People harvest the aromatic berries and boil them in water. The wax melts and floats to the surface where it is scooped off. The wonderful smelling wax is added to bees wax to make scented candles.
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| Yaupon Holly with ripening fruits.
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Yaupon Holly is another coastal plain plant. This is the only native plant in North America that contains caffeine. And yes, you can make a drink that has the stimulating properties of coffee by roasting the leaves making a tea from them. Native Americans use it in their ceremonies.
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| Black Cherry fruits are ripening.
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Black Cherry flowers earlier in the spring and is producing cherries right now. But these are not the large, sweet cherries you’re accustomed to. They are small and very tart, Many insects feed on Black Cherry and it has defence to reduce damage from insects. The leaves and fruit have a compound that produces cyanide, but only if their tissues are damaged. Low levels of damage stimulate the plant to produce more of the cyanide compound, increasing its distastefulness.
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| Black Cherry Finger Galls are caused by mites that feed inside the gall structure they induce in the cherry leaves.
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Black Cherry Finger Galls are produced by mites feeding on the cherry leaves. The mites produce a compound that acts like a plant hormone, causing the leaf tissue to produce an abnormal growth. The mites feed within this tissue and are protected from attack by potential predators.
Red Maple gets its name because there is usually something red about it throughout the growing season. The flower emerge very early and are red. When the leaves emerge they have red petioles (the name for the stalk that connects the leaf to the branch). And in the fall the leaves themselves often turn red.
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| Red Maple leaves emerge opposite each other.
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The leaves of all the different kinds of maples are opposite. This means that the leaves grow in pairs, opposite one another on their branch. (All the leaves of the other trees mentioned above have alternate leaf arrangement.
Christmas Fern is green year round. One of our guests today explained to his friends that this fern was reproducing and wondered if it was male or female. He was surprised when I said “neither,” but that’s the truth.
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| Spore producing structures of Christmas Fern.
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Christmas ferns produce spores in special reproductive structures on the underside of the leaf. But when a spore germinates it does not produce another leafy green fern. Instead it produces a small reproductive structure the size of a fingernail. This tiny, flat structure produces male and female structures that produce egg and sperm cells. If there enough moisture present, from dew or rain, the sperm cells can swim to the egg cell and fertilize it. The fertilized egg will then grow into a copy of what we would recognize as a Christmas Fern.
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| Coral Tube Slime Mold |
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Don spotted a Coral Tube Slime Mold growing on a piece of rotting tree trunk. Slime molds used to be considered fungi, primarily because they reproduce from spores, but we now know that they are radically different from fungi. Fungi would be digesting the tree. Slime molds are feeding on the bacteria that are rotting the tree. They have a stage in which they are single cells, like amoebas with a flagellum. When the amoebas meet each other they fuse to make a larger, amoeboid organism. that fuses with others of the same kind. When they run out of food they produce reproductive structures that make spores. The white, tubular structures are the spore producing structures of the Coral Slime Mold.
Honewort was the last plant spotted before we turned back. It is uncommon and has tiny white flowers.
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| Honewort, a plant in the carrot family. |
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Although the flowers are few they are arranged into an umbel, characteristic of the carrot family.
SUMMARY OF OBSERVED SPECIES:
Tulip Tree Liriodendron tulipifera
Sourwood Oxydendrum arboreum
Sweetgum Liquidambar styraciflua
Winged Elm Ulmus alata
Wax Myrtle Morella cerifera
Hophornbeam Ostrya virginiana
Yaupon Holly Ilex vomitoria
Black Cherry Prunus serotina
Red Maple Acer rubrum
Dogwood Cornus florida
Christmas Fern Polystichum acrostichoides
Coral Slime Mold Ceratiomyxa fruticulosa
Honewort Cryptotaenia canadensis
