Leader for today’s Ramble: Dale
 

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.
https://www.facebook.com/media/set?vanity=don.hunter.56&set=a.4987661561250369
 

Number of Ramblers today: 31
 

Today’s emphasis: Seeking what we find in the formal gardens.
 

Reading: Avis read a poem: Grass by Joyce Sidman. [link]
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/54675/grass-56d2354b8c8e0
 

Today’s Route:  From the pergola to the sidewalk between the Ceramics bldg. and the Visitor’s center then the first right down the steps to the formal garden then past the Pawpaws and down the steps following the walkway to the right and past several beds and across the stepping stone to the steps back up to the formal garden and back to the parking lot.
 

OBSERVATIONS:

Sidewalk between Ceramic museum and Visitor Center:

Swamp Milkweed beginning to bloom.

Swamp Milkweed is developing flower buds in the bed to the right of the sidewalk. This plant is a food source for the larval stage of the Monarch butterfly, so it will be worth checking in future rambles. 

Monarchs are not the only insects that feed exclusively on milkweed species. There is a moth and several species of beetles that are specialized as milkweed feeders. Two true bugs, several aphids. The beetles and bugs are warningly colored in black and red. 

Herb Garden:

American Toad

An American Toad was captured in one of the mulched beds next to the steps leading into the Herb Garden. Toads, like all amphibians, have a moist skin through which they lose water by evaporation. They compensate for this water loss by rapid absorption of water through their belly skin; i.e., they find a wet spot and sit in it. Usually, they are most active at night when the relative humidity is higher. During the day they seek out moist areas like leaf litter or dense vegetation. Daily spraying of water at the Garden creates an ideal habitat for them.

Pill Bug

Roly-poly, Wood louse, Pill Bug are just a few of the common names for a terrestrial crustacean that rolls up into a sphere when disturbed.
What is a crustacean? Most people are familiar with edible crustaceans like lobsters, crabs and crayfish (crawdads). But these are just a few of the crustaceans. Most are marine (living in the ocean) or aquatic (living in fresh water), but a few have made it to the terrestrial environment. Those that live on dry land need to have access to water because they get their oxygen through gills and gills are effective only if they are moist. (Land crabs need to return periodically to the sea to moisten their gills.) Pill Bugs reduce  moisture loss like toads: by hiding under rocks or pieces of wood and only venturing forth when the relative humidity is high. That’s why we saw a Pill Bug this morning on the brick surface of the Herb Garden. The Gardens are usually sprinkled early In the morning, raising the humidity of the bricks and allowing the Pill Bugs to venture forth in daylight for a short period of time.

Monarch butterfly; upper wing surface

Monarch butterfly; lower wing surface

A Monarch butterfly was nectaring on some of the open flowers in the Herb Garden. Judging by its bright colors this was probably a first or second generation descendent of the Monarchs that overwintered in Mexico. How do we know this? The colors of a butterfly’s wings are produced by millions of microscopic scales attached to the transparent wing surface, like shingles on a roof. When a butterfly flies a few scales are knocked off with each flap of the wings. The older the butterfly, the more scales it has lost and the less intense its color pattern is. Because the Monarch we saw this morning was still beautiful it was probably recently emerged from its chrysalis.
Is it a boy or girl Monarch butterfly? Male Monarch butterflies have a swelling on one of the dark veins on the upper side of the hind wings. This enlargement contains scales that carry a perfume the male will use to court a female. This so-called “scent patch” is not found in females. The difference is clearly seen in a photo from the Journey North website.
https://journeynorth.org/tm/monarch/id_male_female.html
 

Lizards

Carolina Anole basking on bench

Eastern Fence Lizard

The bricks in the Herb Garden not only retain water when sprinkled, they also soak up sunlight during the day and radiate it away during the night. When the days are hot and the nights short the brick structures are favorite places for cold-blooded animals like grasshoppers and lizards to gather and warm up. For the lizards there is the added benefit of having their insect food supply on the bricks nearby. Today we found a Carolina Anole and an Eastern Fence lizard basking on the bricks and wooden benches. The fence lizard scooted away before most of the ramblers had a chance to see it, so I included a photo that Don took back in 2019.
 

Heritage Garden
 

Pawpaw fruit (only 2 seeds)

Pawpaw flower; (usually dark maroon in color)

The Pawpaw trees had a lot of flowers earlier this spring, but didn’t produce much fruit. This can probably be attributed to a lack of pollinators. We were able to find one small fruit, but, as they are the same color as the leaves, we may have missed some. Don located a late flower, but its green colored petals are not typical.

Longleaf Pine

Longleaf Pine once covered most of the southeastern USA. It was maintained by periodic, low intensity fires set by lightning. It’s thick bark and rapid growth to put its upper reaches above the flames make is fire-resistant. It has been replaced by faster growing species and suppresion of fire that allows non-fire resistant species to outcompete it.

Flower Garden:

Eastern Cottontail rabbit

An Eastern Cottontail rabbit sampled the greens while ignoring us. 

Bumble bee nectar robbing Foxglove?

Foxglove is planted in several locations in the Flower Garden and an assortment of bees are visiting all of them.  The photo above looks like a Bumble bee cutting an opening at the base of a Foxglove flower to get access to nectar, bypassing the route through the open blossom.

Honeybee gathering pollen from Evergreen Rose. Note the pollen carried in the pollen baskets.

Bumble bee gathering pollen from Evergreen Rose. Masses of orange pollen are in both pollen baskets.

Species Observed:

Swamp Milkweed     Asclepias incarnata
American Toad     Anaxyrus americanus
Pill woodlouse     Family Armadillidiidae
Poppy     Papaver sp.
Western Honey Bee     Apis mellifera
Monarch Butterfly     Danaus plexippus
Yaupon Holly     Ilex vomitoria
Carolina Anole     Anolis carolinensis
Pawpaw     Asimina triloba
Evergreen Rose (tentative)     Rosa sempervirens
Eastern Carpenter Bee     Xylocopa virginica
Common Eastern Bumble Bee     Bombus impatiens
Long-legged Fly      Chrysotus sp.
Tumbling Flower Beetle     Mordell sp.
Japanese Spirea     Spirea japonica
Longleaf Pine     Pinus palustris
Eastern Cottontail Rabbit     Sylvilagus floridanus
Purple Foxglove     Digitalis purpurea
California Poppy     Eschscholzia californica

Leader for today’s Ramble: Linda
 

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.
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.5873645862651930&type=3
 

Number of Ramblers today: 26
 

Today’s emphasis:  Cool season grasses, Carolina Milkvine and anything else we saw in the ROW.
 

Announcements:
Don announced the 2022 Pollinator Fair at the Madison County Library, on May 21st, from 10:00 a.m. until 4:00 p.m.  The event is hosted by the Ladies Homestead Gathering of Madison County.  Don will be presenting on his documentation of the common roadside pollinators in south Madison County.  In addition, there will be presentations by other speakers.  Carole Knight, Madison County Extension Coordinator and Ag Agent will talk about the importance of pollinators in Georgia and author Cathy Payne will talk about how to turn your yard into a pollinator sanctuary, in particular, addressing removing invasive plants and replacing them with beneficial native flora. Directions:  Take Hwy. 29 north to Danielsville.  At the redlight north of the old courthouse roundabout, take Hwy 98 west for 1.3 miles.  The library will be on your left.

Reading: Linda read “Spring” by Gerard Manley Hopkins
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/51002/spring-56d22e75d65bd

Show and Tell:  Gary brought a handful of Eastern Cottonwood (Populus deltoides) fruits from the North Oconee River Greenway. Cottonwoods are bottomland trees that flourish in both the North Oconee and Middle Oconee river floodplains; they are distinguished by their dark, deeply furrowed bark and triangular leaves with flattened petioles. 

Cottonwood seed pods The dark structures are the seed pods The white fluff is the “parachute”

The pale green pointed object is a single Cottonwood seed, surrounded by its cottony hairs.

The source of the common name is obvious when the trees go to seed. Each oval seedpod (the dark shapes in the photo) contains thousands of tiny seeds, each equipped with a tuft of long, cottony hairs. A single cottonwood tree can produce over 25 million seeds. This species is dioecious: only female trees produce seedpods. The seeds require bare mineral soil for germination, provided naturally by the scoured soils and sediment accumulations that follow winter and early spring floods.  Here’s a short and interesting article about this amazingly prolific tree: https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/metro/urban-jungle/pages/100518.html
 

Today’s Route:   We left the Children’s Garden pergola and headed down through the Lower Shade Garden, exiting through the gate on to the White Trail Spur and over to the Georgia Power right-of-way.  We worked our way up the ROW to the Carolina Milkvine, near the top of the hill.  We then returned to the upper parking lot, much the way we came

OBSERVATIONS:
Lower Shade Garden:

Oak Apple Galls

The paved path through the Lower Shade Garden was littered with Oak Apple Galls. These are the created when a Gall Wasp (Family Cynipidae) lays an egg inside a newly expanded leaf of a red oak. The leaf responds to the invasion by creating an enlarged mass of tissue, inside which the egg matures into a larva, suspended in the center of the gall by the radiating fibers seen in the opened gall, on the left. This helps protect the wasp larvae from parasitoids as well as providing food. Oak Apple Galls are green when newly formed; when the gall dries out and turns brown, the mature wasp escapes from holes that have formed in the exterior of the gall. 

Tulip Tree flower

The Shade Garden paths are also littered with Tulip Tree flowers, dropped by squirrels that bite off the young, tender twigs and lap up the sap that flows from the twig. Squirrels aren’t the only forest animals that enjoy Tulip Trees. Most of the flowers we picked up had ants scurrying around inside the flowers, looking for the nectar produced by tiny glands in the orange patches on the petals. The nectar produced by these flowers is an important energy source for other insects, as well as birds, in early spring; according to one source, each flower produces about one-third of a teaspoon of nectar.  

Pipestem

Pipestem is blooming now. This tall evergreen shrub is in the Heath Family and closely resembles the shorter wetland plant Doghobble. Common in central peninsular Florida, it occurred historically in southeastern Georgia but hasn’t been seen there in many decades.

Harvestman (AKA Daddylonglegs)

A small harvestman (aka Granddaddy Longlegs) was seen on its leaves.

Sweetshrub ‘Athens’

The yellow-flowered cultivar of Sweetshrub, named ‘Athens’ by Michael Dirr, UGA horticulturist and former Garden director, is in flower. The pale greenish-yellow color is due to a mutation that leads to a lack of anthocyanin, the plant pigment responsible for reds and purples in plants. Though pale, the flowers are extra fragrant, something like a very ripe strawberry.

White Trail Spur:

Smooth Spiderwort will be flowering for months

Cool-season grasses are flowering and going to seed now. These are grass species that grow rapidly in the early spring, then flower and fruit while temperatures are still moderate; they cease growing during the summer and begin again when temperatures cool down in the fall. Many species overwinter as low leaf rosettes, continuing to photosynthesize and preparing for the spring growth spurt. Given Georgia’s brutal summers, it’s no surprise that most of our grass species are warm-season grasses that flourish in late summer and early fall; but even so there are plenty of interesting grasses to admire in May and June.

Eastern Needlegrass seeds + awns

My personal favorite is Eastern Needle Grass, a perennial grass with a finely tuned seed dispersal system. In Don’s photo, you can see each dark seed partially enclosed by flower parts. Each seed comes equipped with a long spirally twisted bristle it into the ground. A patch of tiny upwardly pointing hairs at the seed’s tip helps to hold the seed in place; barbs lining the sides of the seed serve the same purpose.

Needlegrass hairs at tip of seed

Needlegrass barbs (magnified) photo courtesy of Bill Sheehan

The bristles, barbs, and hairs also ensure that a variety of animals carry the seeds long distances. As Don wrote in his Facebook album, “The more you walk with these in your socks, the deeper they bore into them, until they reach your skin, at which point, you are driven mad until you stop and pull your shoes and socks off to systematically remove every one of the bristles. I would imagine the sensation is something akin to standing on a fire ant hill, letting them attack you, unabated.”

Needlegrass: The Joy of Socks

Little Barley photo by Matt Lavin from Bozeman, Montana, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=25124158

Little Barley is a native grass species; it is an annual that thrives in sunny, dry, gravelly soils. Like all grasses, it is wind-pollinated. Little Barley was domesticated by Native Americans before the arrival of maize; its seeds have been found in archaeological sites along with other domesticated plants such as squash. The grains are high in protein. Little Barley is easier to recognize than many grasses: it is short (less than 1.5 feet tall) with erect seed heads tightly packed with bristle-tipped spikelets (grass talk for flower clusters).

Two-flowered Melic Grass

Two-flowered Melic Grass is another common native cool-season grass that is relatively easy to identify. The spikelets have only two florets and are widely spaced and drooping along a delicate, erect stem. It usually occurs in forests and woodlands in dappled sunlight.

Deer Tongue Witch Grass has the open, sparsely flowered seedhead typical of species in the genus Dichanthelium. The wavy branches are usually tipped with a single spikelet  which, though small, bears two florets.

Deer Tongue Witch Grass

In this photo, the maroon style branches can be seen peeking out of the tips of the spikelets and will soon be sweeping pollen out of the air.

Deer Tongue Witch Grass stem + leaf

The stems are usually softly hairy as are the leaf sheaths. Perhaps someone familiar with deer can tell us if the pointed, hairy leaf blades resemble a deer’s tongue. 

Several non-native and invasive grass species are also in flower in the right-of-way.

Brome Grass

So-called Rescue Grass, one of many introduced Brome Grasses, is a common, highly invasive plant that is native to South America. Introduced as a forage crop, it’s found throughout much of North America in disturbed openings, roadsides, pastures, etc. The spikelets, held at the tips of slender branches, are strongly flattened. Don’s closeup photo captures the stamens dangling from the florets, waiting for a breeze to scatter pollen.

Meadow Fescue

Meadow Fescue (or Meadow Ryegrass), a native of Eurasia, is abundant in fields, pastures, rights-of-way, and other disturbed areas. It was introduced as a forage grass and is also widely planted for erosion control. In this photo, both stamens and brushy-tipped styles are visible. The styles, which comb pollen from the air, typically mature after the stamens to prevent self-pollination.

Annual Ryegrass

Annual Ryegrass Photo by Harry Ross https://www.flickr.com/photos/macleaygrassman/6773226750/in/photostream/

Annual Ryegrass, another grass introduced as forage, is easy to identify even at 60 miles per hour. The flattened spikelets are held more or less in one plane and alternate up the tall erect stem. In Don’s photo, a small mite is exploring a newly expanding spikelet.

A Vetch seed pod (called a legume)

A non-native vetch with long, open seedpods remaining. As a member of the bean family, Fabaceae, this fruit type — dry, several-seeded, and opening along both seams — is properly called a legume 

ROW:

Small’s Ragwort

Small’s Ragwort, with tufts of woolly hairs in the leaf axils.  These are described in irresistible terms as “persistent floccose tomentum” in Weakley’s Flora of the Southeastern United States. 

Nodding Thistle

Nodding Thistle (also called Musk Thistle) is one of the most destructive plants in the U.S.  The developing head shown here (and the fully flowered heads soon to come) are attractive, but don’t be fooled: these plants can ruin a pasture and degrade a native prairie in a few brief years. When the head matures, it begins to droop, hence the common name. The whole plant is spiny, from the bristly flower head to the winged stems and lobed leaves down to the leaf rosette. If you can’t dig it up, at least break off the stem and flower head. Since they are biennials that bloom then die in their second year, you may have disarmed that particular plant by beheading it. However, the plants are capable of resprouting from dormant buds held in the stem below ground level. To really kill the plant, cut the stem 2-4 inches below the ground surface with a shovel. The plants are also susceptible to a variety of herbicides, a much easier and more assured way to kill them.  Our native Tall Thistle has broadly oval leaves that are densely white-hairy on the lower surface. Nodding Thistle leaves are narrower and green on both surfaces.

Sheep’s Sorrel seeds

Sheep’s Sorrel plant

Sheep’s Sorrel, a European native, is found in disturbed areas throughout most of North America. In early spring, the red flowers are a common sight along roadsides and pastures in Georgia. Now, the female plants have gone to seed, giving the plants a pale appearance. The three-sided seeds have three showy wings, typical of many plants in the Buckwheat Family. 

Green & Gold

Green-and-Gold, still in flower, is scattered along the low bank of the road through the Nash Prairie.

Southern Beardtongue

Southern Beardtongue is also thriving in the Nash Prairie. The flowers, buds and stems are covered with glandular hairs and the flowers are white and pink, with “tongues” covered with golden yellow hairs. 

Foamy mass concealing a Spittlebug nymph.

The Spittlebug nymph revealed.

Foamy spittlebug masses are commonly found on a variety of grasses and other plants in the ROW.  Dale selected one, from an unidentified aster or daisy, and removed the foam to reveal a leafhopper nymph inside.  The foam is a froth created as the larva agitates the excreted plant sap upon elimination.  

Bracken Fern

Bracken Fern is one of the few Georgia ferns that thrives in full sun.

Wild Onion

The native Wild Onion, with both bulblets and pretty pink flowers. Unlike the weedy onion that pops up in lawns, which also has aerial bulblets, Wild Onion leaves are grass-like and flat not round. Wild Onion can reproduce asexually by both the aerial bulblets and an underground bulb.

Summer Bluet is getting an early start in the right-of-way.

Carolina Milkvine flowers and leaf

Carolina Milkvine flowers closeup

Carolina Milkvine thrives in the right-of-way in an area that is underlain by amphibolite, a type of bedrock that is high in calcium and magnesium. It is a close relative of the milkweeds and produces milky latex that discourages herbivores. There are reports that monarch butterflies use milkvine leaves as a larval host as they do with milkweeds

Blackberry fruits developing

Sue pointed out how pretty the young blackberries are.

Sparkleberry tree in flower

Sparkleberry bark

Ants climbing Sparkleberry tree trunk

Sparkleberry branches covered with silk of Fall Webworm caterpillars.

Fall Webworm caterpillars inside their silken tent.

A large heavily flowering Sparkleberry tree overlooks the patch of Carolina Milkvine. Sparkleberry bark is shaggy, peeling and flaking away to reveal rusty-red inner bark.  A parade of red ants were seen making their way up and down along a defined path between bark plates — headed to the flowers for a bit of nectar?  Fall Webworms have spun a web on the tip of one of the limbs, with many tiny, slender new caterpillars. Fall webworms are often mistaken for Eastern Tent Caterpillars that build tents in the crotch of a Cherry tree. They never extend their tent to include the leaves they eat. Fall Webworms have three generations in our area; Eastern Tent caterpillars only one generation per year.

Nettle-leaf Sage

A small population of Nettle-leaf Sage has been hanging on for many years near the edge of the woods. A calciphile, it testifies to the presence of amphibolite beneath the right-of-way soils. Its square stems, opposite leaves, and two-lipped flowers testify to its membership in the mint family. The cobalt blue flowers are diminutive but gorgeous. 

Phylloxeran gall on hickory leaf.

Bill collected several examples of a hickory leaf gall on Mockernut Hickory.  The galls are caused by the Hickory Phylloxeran (Phylloxera caryaecaulis), a small aphid-like insect.  The phylloxeran survived the winter as an egg deposited on the bark of the tree or near an old gall from a previous year.  About the time when leaf buds are breaking, these eggs hatch into tiny nymphs destined to become breeders called fundatrices.  Each fundatrix hunkers down on the rapidly expanding leaf blade or its petiole and inserts its needle-like mouthparts into the leaf tissue.  This feeding brings about remarkable transformations as the leaf develops.  Chemicals secreted by the phylloxeran cause the hickory’s cells to differentiate and create a strange globular gall. Within the hollow gall, the fundatrix develops into a fully mature female that lays hundreds to more than a thousand eggs parthenogenetically, that is, without the assistance of a male.

Opened Phylloxeran gall with eggs and 1st instar nymphs inside.

Opened Phylloxeran galls with winged adult and possible parasites in gall.

After hatching, legions of tiny nymphs feed within the gall and eventually develop into winged forms. By late May, galls split open and the winged phylloxerans exit and move to the undersurface of leaves where they lay hundreds of eggs. These eggs hatch and produce nymphs destined to become males and females that will ultimately mate and lay eggs to endure the next winter. Talk about a complicated lifestyle, phylloxerans certainly have one.
Visit this link for more detais: https://bugoftheweek.com/blog/2013/1/27/gall-darn-it-gall-insects-on-hickory-oak-and-elm-iphylloxera-caryaecaulis-andricus-palustris-colopha-ulmicolai
 

Let Aldo Leopold have the last word on this week’s ramble: “No matter how intently one studies the hundred little dramas of the woods and meadows, one can never learn all the salient facts about any one of them.”

OBSERVED SPECIES:

Oak Apple Gall Wasp   Amphibolips quercusinanis (synonym A. inanis)
Bigleaf Magnolia     Magnolia macrophylla
Oak-leaved Hydrangea     Hydrangea quercifolia
Pipestem, Florida Fetterbush     Agarista populifolia
Harvestman     Order Opiliones
Black Cohosh     Actea racemosa
‘Athens’ Sweetshrub     Calycanthus floridus ‘Athens’ cultivar
Tulip Tree     Liriodendron tulipifera
Smooth Spiderwort     Tradescantia ohiensis
Red-shouldered Hawk     Buteo lineatus
Black-seeded Needle Grass     Piptochaetium avenaceum
Little Barley     Hordeum pusillum
Deer Tongue Grass     Dichanthelium clandestinum
Two-flowered Melic Grass     Melica mutica
River Oats     Chasmanthium latifolium
Rescue Grass     Bromus catharticus var. catharticus
Meadow Fescue     Festuca pratensis, synonym: Lolium pratense
Annual Rye     Festuca perennis
Unidentified non-native vetch     Vicia sp.
Small’s Ragwort     Packera anonyma
Nodding Thistle     Carduus nutans
Sheep’s Sorrel     Rumex acetosella
Green-and-Gold     Chrysogonum virginianum
Southern Beardtongue     Penstemon australis
Spittlebug     Order Hemiptera
Mountain Mint     Pcynanthemum sp.
Bracken Fern     Pteridium aquilinum
Wild onion     Allium canadense
Summer Bluet     Houstonia purpurea
Blackberry     Rubus sp.
Carolina Milkvine     Matelea carolinensis
Sparkleberry     Vaccinium arboreum
Red ant     Family Formicidae
Fall Webworm Moth caterpillars     Hyphantria cunea
Nettle-leaf Sage     Salvia urticifolia
Mockernut Hickory     Carya tomentosa
Hickory Phylloxeran     Phylloxera caryaecaulis

Leader for today’s Ramble: Dale

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.
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.5852056758144174&type=3

Number of Ramblers today: 31

Reading:  Dale brought an excerpt from “Crow Planet:  Essential Wisdom from the Urban Wilderness” by Lyanda Lynn Haupt. (Read by Terry).
 

Announcements:

What: 2022 Pollinator Fair 

When: Saturday, May 21st, from 10:00 a.m. until 4:00 p.m.

Where: Madison County Library,  

Directions: From Athens, take
Hwy. 29 north to Danielsville.  At the red light north of the old
courthouse roundabout, take Hwy 98 west for 1.3 miles.  The library will
be on your left.

Details: The event is hosted by the Ladies Homestead Gathering of Madison County.  Don will be presenting on his documentation of the common roadside pollinators in south Madison County.  In addition, there will be presentations by other speakers.  Carole Knight, Madison County Extension Coordinator and Ag Agent will talk about the importance of pollinators in Georgia and author Cathy Payne will talk about how to turn your yard into a pollinator sanctuary, in particular, addressing removing invasive plants and replacing them with beneficial native flora.

Today’s Route:   From the Children’s Garden pergola we went through the American South Section, crossing the Flower Bridge, then through the China and Asia Section, the Native American and Southeastern Tribes Section and over to the Mediterranean and Middle East Section. Then we went across the lawn to the Pitcher Plant Bog.  We retraced our path to the Freedom Plaza before we returned to the parking lot.

OBSERVATIONS:

Piedmont Azalea 

Piedmont Azalea

Single flower of Piedmont Azalea The stamens and style project far forward, The style is longer than the stamens and ends with the stigma. The stamens are tipped with the brown anthers that contain pollen.

Azaleas are justly
celebrated for their masses of colorful flowers. Humans are not the only species
attracted to the blossoms; casual observers have noticed a variety of small
bees visiting the flowers and assumed that they were responsible for
pollination. But assumption is not proof, only opinion. Looking at the structure
of the flower one thing stands out: the stamens and pistil style project a
considerable distance in front of the petals. The nectar is at the base of the
flower’s throat, so an insect, like a bee, who was seeking nectar would not
come in contact with either the pollen producing anthers or the stigma of the
pistil which is at the end of the style. (In order to produce seeds pollen
needs to be deposited on the stigma.) Small bees that are collecting pollen to
feed to their offspring climbed up the stamen to the anther. In doing this the
stamen was bent away from the stigma of the flower. This suggested that such
bees would not be effective pollinators.Working at Mountain
Lake Biological Station in Virginia, a team of researchers devised a way to
test these ideas on a related species of Azalea. More details of the study can
be found here.

The
surprise of their study was that the most effective pollinator was the Eastern
Tiger Swallowtail butterfly and it carried the pollen on its wings, not its
body! Swallowtail butterflies flap their wings while nectaring on flowers. The
azalea anthers and stigma are arranged at the correct distance to contact the butterflies
wings as they sip nectar. Not only do the wings pick up pollen, they also
deposit pollen on the stigma. The surprise here is that the pollen is carried
on the wings of the butterfly, not the body.

Franklinia alatamaha

Extinct in the wild, this unique species is conserved in arboreta and botanical gardens around the world.  In 1765, John Bartram and his son, William, journeyed to the Altamaha River in Georgia, where they first spotted the tree on the banks of the Altamaha River.  Several years later, William returned to the location to collect seed to collect seed.  Later, in 1791, he wrote, “We never saw it any other place, nor have I ever seen it growing wild, in all my travels, from Pennsylvania to Point Coupe, on the banks of the Mississippi.” He brought the seeds back to Philadelphia. His collection of the species was timely; within 50 years, the tree was extinct in the wild. All living Franklin trees-which Bartram named for family friend Benjamin Franklin-are descended from the seeds Bartram collected. 

(Factual information from the Arnold Arboretum website)

You may have noticed that the specific epithet is not the way we spell “altamaha.” This not a typo; the original description spelled it that way. The rules of nomenclature state that the original spelling, even if incorrect, must stand.)

Palmately Compound leaves

Bottlebrush Buckeye has palmately compound leaves. Each leaf is composed of five leaflets that arise from the end of the leaf stalk (the petiole).

A compound leaf is a leaf with two or more leaflets. So how do you tell when a “leaf” is a leaf or a leaflet? Look at where it is attached. Is there a bud there or is the bud absent? If present, you’re looking at a leaf, otherwise ii is a leaflet.
If you are looking at a leaflet you are looking at a leaf that is made up of  many leaflets — it’s a compound leaf. There are two types of compound leaves: palmate and pinnate. A palmately compound leaf has all of its leaflets attached at the same point. The trees and shrubs of the Buckeye genus, Aesculus, have palmately compound leaves.

Arum family (Araceae)

Aroid plants have seen better days.

In the China section of the Garden we found a group of unusual plants that look like they belong to the Arum family. (That’s the family of the Jack-in-the-Pulpit. ) 

The spathe was dark and mottled with maroon blotches, giving the impression of decaying flesh. On the previous day Emily and I saw clouds of fungus gnats and a green bottle fly swarming about these plants. 

A fungus gnat is a fly about the size of a mosquito. It’s larvae feed on mushrooms or decaying organic matter, as does the green bottle fly larvae. Many aroids are known to produce the scents of decaying animal flesh or vegetation to attract pollinators.

Pitcher Plant Bog:

Purple and White-topped Pitcher Plants

We saw several species of pitcher plants in the little artificial bog, including Yellow Pitcher Plant, Purple Pitcher Plant and White-topped Pitcher Plant.

Pitcher plants can grow in very nutrient poor soils because they trap and digest insects (and sometimes small vertebrates). The pitcher part of the plant is a modified leaf. Imagine a long leaf that is curled about its long axis so that the lateral edges meet and fuse. This makes a cylinder. If the lower opening is sealed and the other end carved out to form a flap then you’ve made a pitcher. Fill it with water and you’re ready to trap bugs. The inner surface of the lip is slick and waxy and the upper portion of the pitcher has downward pointing bristles. These features prevent insects that fall into the pitcher from crawling out. Eventually they die from exhaustion and are gradually digested in the pitcher “soup.” Each pitcher develops its own ecosystem microbes that feed on drowned insects and mosquitoes that feed on the microbes. Elements like Nitrogen and Phosphorus are freed into the soup and absorbed by the pitcher walls.

Pitcher plant flower structure

The flowers of pitcher plants are also bizarre. I’ll review flower structures so you can appreciate just how different they are. In a typical plant the central structure of the flower is the pistil. It is made of three parts: ovary, style and stigma. The ovary is where the seed will develop. The style is a tube the connects the ovary to the stigma. The stigma is the surface that receives the pollen. Pollen lands on the stigma, the pollen grain germinates and a pollen tube begins to grow through the style. Eventually the pollen tube, which carries the sperm nucleus, reaches the ovule in the ovary. That’s the female part of a flower.

Surrounding the pistil are the stamens, the male reproductive structures of the flower. Stamens have two parts, the filament and the anther. The filament holds the anther aloft and the anthers make and hold the pollen grains until they are needed.

Petals pushed aside to show the five pointed style of a pitcher plant.

The fuve-pointed style is pushed aside to show the mass of stamens and anthers. Pollen released from the anthers will fall into the style “basket” below the anthers.

Pitcher plant flowers are held upside down. There are five pistils fused together to form a five chambered ovary. The fused styles have stretched out to form an umbrella shape and that “umbrella” reaches beyond the stamens that surround the fused ovaries. Turn the flower upside down and you can see how pollen can fall out of the anthers into the stylar umbrella. Where are the stigmas? There were five fused pistils, making the five ribs of the umbrella. The stigmas are at the end of each rib.

When a bee forces its way into a pitcher plant flower it walks across a floor of pollen grains that are picked up by its hairy body. When it enters or leaves it crawls over the stigmatic surfaces at the ends of the “ribs.”

Plant galls are abnormal growths on plant parts. They may be caused by bacteria, viruses, fungi, and a variety of insects. Today, we saw two types of galls induced by insects.

Witch Hazel Cone galls on Chinese Witch Hazel leaf.

Witch Hazel Cone Gall Aphid
The puzzle: The Garden has at least four kinds of Witch Hazel: Common Witch Hazel (native to Georgia), Ozark Witch Hazel (native to Missouri), Japanese Witch Hazel and Chinese Witch Hazel. The first four of these can be found growing near each other in the Shade Garden and we have never seen the Cone Gall on the Japanese plants and only a few galls on the Ozark plants. It looks like the aphids are species-specific, either because they only recognize the native species or they actively discriminate against the non-native plants. But the mystery is that we found numerous galls on the Chinese Witch Hazel. Something strange is going on here.
The complex life history of the Cone Gall Aphid begins in autumn with the aphid eggs laid near the leaf buds of the Witch Hazel. As the leaves emerge from their buds the eggs hatch and the aphids, all females, lay an egg on the young leaves. This causes the leaf to grow a hollow conical structure that surrounds the freshly hatched aphid. Inside this protective gall the aphid matures and begins to produce daughters asexually. The aphids feed by sucking fluids from the walls of the gall. Soon there 50 or more aphids in each gall and they develop wings. The winged aphids emerge from the gall and fly to an alternate host plant, a Birch tree. (In our area this would be a River Birch.) There they produce asexual wingless offspring the feed on the lower surface of the Birch leaves. Several more generations of wingless aphids are produced until autumn when sexual, winged adult aphids are produced. These mate and the females disperse, seeking their Witch Hazel host and laying eggs near the leaf buds, completing the life cycle.
Another mystery: Among the green cone-shaped galls we usually find a few red galls. I’ve unsuccessfully tried to find more information about the gall color. Your guess is as good as mine. I suspect it is a polymorphism: some aphids produce a substance that stimulates anthocyanin production by the Witch Hazel. Other aphids don’t produce this substance. Some people have brown hair, some red. It’s natural variation (code words to cover ignorance).

Maple Eye Spot gall

Maple Eye Spot gall (upper surface of Red Maple leaf)

Maple Eye Spot gall (under surface of leaf showing exit holes)

This pretty gall was induced by a flying insect called a “midge.” Midges resemble mosquitos but do not bite. I’m indebted to fellow rambler Bill Sheehan for the identification: 

“According to this source, midge larvae emerge from the galls on the bottom of the red maple leaf in 8 to 10 days, drop to the soil and pupate. There is only one generation a year. Since all of the galls we saw had exit holes, the larvae are apparently all in the soil  now pupating and waiting until next year to emerge and start the cycle again. Given the moist appearance of the galls, this probably happened pretty recently.”

https://content.ces.ncsu.edu/maple-eyespot-gall-midge-acericecis-ocellaris-osten-sacken-diptera-cecidomyiidae
 

Tree Growth Patterns

Each year a tree adds to its size as new shoots emerge from their buds. For many trees these terminal buds contain the entire years worth of growth. For these trees their shoots elongate and leaves expand but no additional leaves are produced. The entire summer’s growth occurs within the first few weeks. Since the number of leaves is set in the bud that formed in the previous year this pattern of growth is called determinate or preformed.

But not all trees compress their annual growth within this short period of time. Their buds contain only a single leaf that emerges with bud-break. Growth of the shoot does not cease. Instead, new leaves appear for the rest of the growing season. Such a growth pattern is called indeterminate or sustained.

How can you tell which pattern a tree follows? If the new growth has a terminal bud it is preformed growth; no terminal bud, sustained growth.

But, as always, biological definitions have fuzzy edges. Some common plants have a mixture of preformed and sustained growth. The begin with a short preformed shoot that continues to add leaves throughout the growing season.
 

White Oak new shoot with terminal bud. (photo by Emily Carr)

Pawpaw new shoot showing indeterminate growth. Note absence of terminal bud presence of new developing leaves. (photo by Dale Hoyt)

Trees with determinate (preformed) growth

American beech, Ash, Black cherry, Hickories, Oaks

Trees with indeterminate (sustained) growth

Birch sp.,  Cottonwood, Elm, ,Flowering dogwood, Hackberry, Holly, Pawpaw, Redbud. Sycamore, Tulip poplar

Trees with both growth forms

Red maple, Sugar maple, Sweetgum

[source]

OBSERVED SPECIES:
 

Oak-leaf Hydrangea     Hydrangea quercifolia
Harvestman     Class Arachnida: Order Opiliones
Beardtongue     Penstemon sp.
Fringed Bluestar     Amsonia cilliata
Native azalea     Rhodendron sp.
Franklin Tree     Franklinia alatamaha
Bottlebrush Buckeye     Aesculus parviflora
Tea Trees     Camellia sinensis
Orchard Orbweaver       Leucauge venusta
Chinese Witch Hazel     Hamamelis mollis
Arum ??     Family Araceae
Paperbark Maple     Acer griseum
Whitebark Magnolia    Magnolia hypoleuca
Fragrant Snowbells     Styrax obassia
Indian Pink     Spigelia marilandica
Rose Hooktip Moth     Oreta rosea
Yellow Pitcher Plant     Sarracenia flava
Purple Pitcher Plant     Sarracenia purpureum
White-topped Pitcher Plant     Sarracenia leucophylla
Inch worm/Geometer moth caterpillar     Order Lepidoptera: Geometridae
Red Maple     Acer rubrum
Ocellate Gall Midge     Acericecis ocellaris

 

Leader for today’s Ramble: Linda

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: Seeking what we find in the Children’s Garden, Dunson Garden, and Power line right of way.

Note: The regular Ramble Report for this week is replaced by Don Hunter’s Facebook Album. It has been supplemented with comments by Linda.

 SPECIES OBSERVED

Foxglove, (Digitalis purpurea) ‘Camelot Cream’
Smooth Spiderwort, (Tradescantia ohiensis)
Honey Garlic, (Allium siculum)
Catawba Rhododendron (Rhododendron catawbiense)
Fringed Bluestar (Amsonia ciliata)
Yellow Wild Indigo (Baptisia sphaerocarpa)
Chinese Violet Cress (Orychophragmus violaceus)
Crossvine (Bignonia capreolata)
Royal Fern (Osmunda regalis)
Nash’s Blue-eyed Grass (Sisyrinchium nashii)
Red Columbine (Aquilegia canadensis)
Piedmont Azalea (Rhododendron canescens, aka Southern Pinxter Azalea)
Japanese Snowball Viburnum (Viburnum plicatum var. plicatum)
Mountain Laurel (Kalmia latifolia)
Autumn Ferns (Dryopteris erythrosora)
Pale Yellow Trillium (Trillium discolor)
Sourwood tree (Oxydendrum arboreum)
Strawberry Bush AKA Hearts-a-bustin’ (Euonymus americanus).
Poison Ivy (Toxicodendron radicans)
Florida Anise (Illicium floridanum)
Rattlesnake Fern (Botrypus virginianum)
Early Bluegrass, Poa cuspidata.
Indian Pink (Spigelia marilandica)
Golden Ragwort (Packera aurea)
Northern Horsebalm (Collinsonia canadensis)
Perfoliate Bellwort (Uvularia perfoliata)
Common Wild Ginger (Asarum canadense)
Leatherwood (Dirca palustrus)
Early Meadow Rue plant (Thalictrum dioicum)
American (Yellow) Trout Lily (Erythronium americanum)
Dimpled Trout Lily (Erythronium umbilicatum)
Violet Wood Sorrel (Oxalis violacea)
Mountain Catchfly (Silene ovata)
Jack-in-the-Pulpits (Arisaema triphyllum)
Ashe’s Magnolia (Magnolia ashei)
Green-and-Gold (Chrysogonum virginianum).
Atamasco Liliy (Zephyranthes atamasco)
American Wisteria (Wisteria frutescens)
Tulip Tree (Liriodendron tulipifera)
Asian Jumpseed (Persicaria filiformis)
Lyre-leaf Sage (Salvia lyrata)
Eastern Needle Grass (Piptochaetium avenaceum)
Japanese Roof Iris (Iris tectorum)
Red Buckeye (Aesculus pavia)
Bottlebush Buckeye (Aesculus parviflora)
Asian Fringe Tree (Chionanthus retusus)
Small’s Ragwort (Packera anonyma)
Yaupon Holly (Ilex vomitoria)

Leader for today’s Ramble: Linda, Gary
 

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.

NOTE: THIS IS A SPECIAL EDITION OF DON’S FACEBOOK ALBUM. IT IS SUPPLEMENTED BY LINDA AND GARY AND TAKES THE PLACE OF THE REGULAR RAMBLE REPORT FOR THIS WEEK.

Number of Ramblers today: 34
 

River Cane with exposed stamens

Today’s emphasis: Flowering River Cane, Moonseed, Mountain Laurel on the White Trail.
 

Reading: None today
 

Show and Tell: Assistant Horticulturist Emily brought River Cane flowers and harvested seed.

Today’s Route: From the Mimsie Lanier Center to the White Trail, then upstream to the Mtn. Laurel and return to the Mimsie Center.

SPECIES OBSERVED

Rivercane (Arundinaria gigantea)
 Blue Field Madder (Sherardia arvensis (syn. Galium sheradia))
 Cleavers/Bedstraw (Galium aparine)
 shrubby species of honeysuckle (Lonicera sp.)
 Butterweed (Packera glabella)
 Mountain Laurel (Kalmia latifolia)
 Rattlesnake Weed (Hieracium venosum)
 Horse Sugar (Symplocos tinctoria)
 Coral Bells (Heuchera americana)
 Solomon’s Plumes (Maianthemum racemosum)
 Tulip tree (Liriodendron tulipifera)
 Moonseed (Menispermum canadense)
 Blue Grass (Poa sp.)
 Cinnamon Vine (Dioscorea polystachya)
 Wingstem (Verbesina alternifolia)
 Yellow Passionflower (Passiflora lutea)
 Lyre-leaf Sage (Salvia lyrata)
 Antlion trap (Neuroptera: Myrmeleontidae)
 Wood Nettle (Laportea canadensis)
 Goose Grass, Fowl Manna Grass (Glyceria striata)
 sedge (Carex sp.)
 Mushroom 1
 Jewelweed (Impatiens capensis)
 Multiflora Rose (Rosa multiflora)
 Hispid Buttercup (Ranunculus hispidus)?
 Sensitive Fern (Onoclea sensibilis)
 Moth (Herpetogramma sp.?)
 Myosotis macrocarpa.

Leader for today’s Ramble, Linda
 

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.

Today’s emphasis:  Today, we Rambled at Sandy Creek Park, seeking what we found on the White Trail, heading west and north from the boat launch area on the Lakeside Trail.

Ramblers today: 22

Announcements:

”       Gary told us that some of the River Cane at the Botanical Garden has bloomed, something that only occurs after many years of growth, as much as 50 – 100 years. River Cane is monocarpic, a term that describes plants that flower and set seeds only once in their lives, and then die. Since River Cane is clonal, forming patches of many genetically identical stems that are essentially one plant, an entire clone of several to many stems flowers at one time then dies. In this case only a small clone within this particular River Cane stand bloomed, so most of the stems in that part of the Garden will remain alive. The patch probably comprises several clones. It is not known what triggers a particular clone to flower and set seed, though fire or other disturbance is one likely possibility.

”       Emily announced Georgia Museum of Natural History events:  May 20-22 there will be a trip to Broxton Rocks; and, on May 7, the annual meeting for the Friends of the GMNH will be held at the museum annex across Jimmy Daniels Road from the Sam’s Store.

”       Roger announced that the Athens/Clarke Green Lights Awards Festival will be held at the Terrapin Brewery on April 22, beginning at 4 pm. The Oconee River Land Trust and Friends of Sandy Creek Nature Center will both have booths set up.  At 6 pm, the awards ceremony will be held. Pat Nielsen will get an award for her volunteer work at the Botanical Garden.

Reading:  Robert recited a recent nature poem, the epilogue to his in-progress manuscript, “A Dream of Reading Bartram.” [link]

Show-and-Tell:

Cramp Balls (AKA Carbon Balls)

o       Richard brought a piece of decaying wood, bearing a patch of “cramp balls,” a fungus in the genus Annulohypoxylon that breaks down organic matter in order to extract nutrients.  The balls are semi-shiny, black spheres, with tiny perforations on top of each sphere from which spores are released.

Today’s Route:   We left the boat launch area, taking the white-blazed Lakeside Trail west and north, staying close to the lake for the entire route.  We walked for almost two hours and returned back to the vehicles.

LIST OF OBSERVATIONS:

Pussytoes flowers

Pussytoes leaves

o       A small patch of Pussytoes is flowering near the trail head. There were four or five flower stems, each topped with several fuzzy flower heads, the eponymous “toes.” Pussytoes are on the short list of spring-flowering composites (members of the Aster family) in our area. Each “toe” is a separate head consisting of many tiny whitish flowers held tightly by a whorl of green bracts. The flowers on a given plant are either female or male. Even when they are not in flower, Pussytoes are easy to identify by the dense layer of white, felted hairs on the lower surface of the spoon-shaped basal leaves.

Two Great Blue Herons and a single Osprey were seen flying over the lake.

PHOTO AND TEXT: Several Asian azalea cultivars are in glorious bloom at the beginning of the trail, in shades of white, coral, and pink. These evergreen azaleas are imports from the Himalayan Mountains of south-central Asia, and have been in the horticultural trade for centuries.

A burl, looking somewhat like a Koala climbing a tree, appears to engulf the trunk of this young Sweet Gum. Burls are formed when an insect or pathogen of some kind (fungus, virus, or bacteria) invades a tree. The tree responds by growing a woody, tumor-like tissue that isolates the invader. Burls continue to grow along with their tree host, but faster as this example demonstrates. They often have unusually patterned grain, making them highly desirable to wood turners and furniture makers, but removing a large gall is usually fatal to the tree.

Southern Grapefern sterile fronds; fertile fronds will appear in late summer or early fall and release a host of spores

Solomon’s Seal is common along the trailsides, most with buds that dangle below the stem on slender stalks that arise from the leaf axils. Don was lucky enough to photograph a Red-spotted Ant Mimic Spider crawling on this plant.

Solomon’s Plume is often confused with Solomon’s Seal when in vegetative condition, but two features are useful. Solomon’s Seal has a waxy, white coating on its leaves and stems, giving it a blue-green color. Solomon’s Plume stems are bright green and slightly zigzagged. Once the terminal cluster of flowers appears on Solomon’s Plume, they are easily distinguished.

Downy Rattlesnake Plantain is one of several Piedmont forest species whose leaves overwinter. The leafless canopy allows them to photosynthesize throughout the winter, compensating for the greatly reduced light during the summer months.

Pippsissewa is another overwintering wildflower found in Piedmont forests. “Wildflower” is stretching it-these diminutive plants are actually “subshrubs” with woody stems.

Last year’s dried stems and fruit (note the slits from which seeds were released) persist on some Pipsissewa plants. Other plants are already in bud.

A beautifully camouflaged American Toad was seen in the leaf litter beside the trail. The loud, high-pitched nasal trill of the similar Fowler’s Toad followed us along the first part of the trail. To relive the experience, click here

This Green Frog was hanging out in the area where the Fowler’s Toads were calling. Green Frogs are smaller than Bull Frogs and have a dorso-lateral fold that runs along the side of the back from the eye to the pelvic region. Bull Frogs lack this skin fold. (photo by Robert Ambrose, Jr.)

Common Yellow Wood-sorrel, with its clover-like leaves and hairs that are soft and lie flat along the stems. The leaves fold up at night and on cloudy days. It is a close look-alike to Southern Yellow Wood Sorrel (Oxalis dillenii), which is covered with hairs that spread stiffly from the stems.

Japanese Stilt Grass is abundant along the first part of the trail, especially near the first creek crossing. Small green seedlings have recently emerged from a persistent seed bank. Mats of dry, brown stems of this rampant invasive grass also persist through the winter, earning it another common name, Nepalese Browntop. The dead stems accumulate into dense, sodden mats that, over time, completely suppress germination and growth of native ground cover species.

A native aquatic species, Arrow-arum, surrounded by Water-milfoil, one of several species of aquatic invasives in the genus Myriophyllum. These invasive species have degraded many lakes and waterways throughout the south, by way of boat propellers that carry fragments from one water body to another. Some ramblers asked if Arrow-arum is related to the edible Taro (Colocasia esculenta), native to South Asia and cultivated widely around the world; they are in the same family, Araceae, along with Jack-in-the-pulpit and the famous shopping mall plant called Peace Lily (not a true lily).

Netted Chain Fern grows with Arrow-arum in the tiny stream we first crossed. Its leaves closely resemble those of Sensitive Fern, which we commonly see at the Botanical Garden. It takes a 10X hand lens to see the difference until fertile fronds emerge in the summer. The lower surface of Netted Chain’s sterile fronds has a line of small veins that parallel both sides of the main veins and appear to form a series of chain links.

Dwarf Cinquefoil, another bright yellow spot along the trail, grows all along the trail. Its leaflets are toothed only in the upper half; Common Cinquefoil (Potentilla simplex) leaflets are toothed nearly to the base.

Blackberry brambles with large, white flowers. Their five petals and abundance of stamens are two clues to their membership in the Rose family.

Large Sweet Gum trees are a common member of Georgia’s hardwood forests, both in uplands and lowlands. The spiny female fruit is well known to irate homeowners and barefoot children but the female flower clusters, held high in the upper branches, are rarely seen. However, the male flowers are familiar to anyone who visits the woods this time of year. Our trail today was littered with fallen clusters of staminate (male) flowers. Although colorful, Sweet Gum flower clusters are not pollinated by insects. Instead, vast quantities of pollen are released to the winds. Luckily, Sweet Gum pollen does not seem to trigger allergies in humans.

At first acquaintance, it’s hard to hate the sprawling shrub Multiflora Rose: the flowers are so pretty and they smell so sweet. But these traits disguise one of the worst invasive shrubs in eastern North America. Brought from Asia for erosion control, Multiflora Rose is now legally prohibited or listed as noxious in a number of states. To distinguish it from native roses, or even benign non-natives, look at the very base of the leaf stalk. A structure known as a stipule lines the base of the stalk and is divided, comb-like, into segments.

Witch Grass, with its small oval flower spikelets held at the tips of delicate branches, is beginning to flower.

Basal rosette of Wild Lettuce.  These plants will soon send up a stout, waxy, purple-spotted stem bearing dozens of yellow flower heads in the summer and fall. All parts of the plant ooze a milky latex when broken.

Soft Rush Closeup of flowers

Several examples of Soft Rush provided an opportunity to recite the graminoid poem: “Sedges have edges, Rushes are round, and Grasses are hollow all the way to the ground.” (Graminoid is a term applied to the three unrelated families of grass or grass-like plants.) Rushes do indeed have round stems (like grasses but unlike sedges) and they are filled with pith (like sedges but unlike grasses). This particular species, Soft Rush, also has another distinguishing feature that can be very confusing if you’re using one of the older technical manuals to key it out. The key will describe this species as having a “terminal” inflorescence (flower cluster), which means the flowers are located at the very tip of the stem. However, the “terminal” flower for Soft Rush is located several inches from the top of the plant. So, what gives? The tricky thing is that what looks like a length of stem above the flowers is, believe it or not, actually a bract (a modified leaf) – a bract that looks just like the stem. Should this plant be re-named Deceptive Rush, or should the keys be modified? I am happy to report that the most current key has done the right thing. Here is the relevant portion of the Rush family key, written by Bruce Sorrie and Bill Knapp, and published in Weakley’s “Flora of the Southeastern United States” (2020):

-Inflorescence appearing lateral; inflorescence bract erect, appearing to be a continuation of the stem
versus
-Inflorescence appearing terminal; inflorescence bract not appearing to be a continuation of the stem.

The first line of that key will take you to Soft Rush.

Oak Apple gall detached from oak leaf

Gall above, opened to show interior.

 An Oak Apple Gall had fallen from a leaf of its host, probably a White Oak, and was lying on the ground.  The interior tissue is developed around a gall wasp larva and the suspension system keeps it away from prying predators. Here is a great description of this fascinating example of the complexity of forest ecosystems:

Little Brown Jugs

Heartleaf, also known as Little Brown Jugs and Wild Ginger, pictured here with five fresh, jug-shaped flowers. New arrowhead-shaped, mottled leaves have appeared and will last for about a year. The flowers are formed by the fusion of three fleshy sepals; there are no petals. Well inside the “jug,” twelve stamens and a six-lobed ovary comprise the sexual parts of the flower. The flowers are pollinated by crawling insects or possibly self-pollination. The ovary develops into a fruit entirely within the jug, and its seeds are dispersed by ants. Wild Ginger plants may live to 20 or more years.

Smooth Spiderwort. The common name refers to the cobwebby look of the hairy stamens.

Hearts-a-burstin’ or Strawberry-bush, has odd-looking, reddish-green flowers that usually lie on top of the leaves (a tan cluster of Beech flowers has slipped into this photo at top center). Dominating the flower is a central, round, nectar-producing disk with five stamens fused to its rim. In this photo, you can see the pistil beginning to develop in the middle of the disk. As interesting as the flowers are, we were all mostly amazed that this plant, and several other examples we saw along the way, has not been  grazed to death by deer. Another common (and local) name for this species is Deer Ice Cream (thanks, Dr. Cook!).

Catesby’s Trillium flowers were a highlight of today’s ramble.

Sweet Shrub tepals and petals are a rich, deep burgundy and give off a fleeting sweet fragrance before they are pollinated. The flowers are visited by beetles who are lured inside by tiny food bodies attached to the tips of the inner tepals. As they bump around inside the flower, eating the tasty treats then trying to escape from the inwardly curved petals, they deposit pollen picked up from previously visited flowers.

Painted Buckeye, a Piedmont specialty, in full flower.

Mockernut Hickory leaves emerging from a large terminal bud. Their characteristic hairiness is on full display in Don’s photo.

Coral Honeysuckle vines are abundant along the trail. Their bluish-green leaves and burgundy stems easily distinguish this species from Japanese Honeysuckle. When in flower, they resemble no other native wildflower. Needless to say, they are pollinated by hummingbirds.

A Partridge Berry fruit derives from the fusion of two separate ovaries from two otherwise separate flowers. The remnants of the bases of both flowers can be seen on this fruit.

Ebony Spleenwort fern with its characteristic black stem.

Perfoliate Bellwort at peak flower.

Possumhaw Holly in bud. Both leaves and flowers are produced on short shoots that grow only a few millimeters a year.

Don captured a Harvestman on one of the holly’s leaves

Autumn Olive, one of the most common invasive plants in Clarke County is in flower.

On our return walk to the boat launch, Don spotted what at first appeared to be a white slime mold, growing on a bare patch of ground among some thin leaf litter. It is actually a fungus, pale lavender in color with a few dark purple, pillow-like, velvety structures, all part of the same fungus.  It has no common name so it goes by its fancy scientific name, Chromelosporiopsis coerulescens.  As it matures, it will change color to ochre.

Crane-fly Orchid leaves are withering; they will disappear altogether by the time the plants flower in June. Last year’s fruits are visible in this photo.

Violet Wood-sorrel

SUMMARY OF OBSERVATIONS:

Pussytoes     Antennaria plantaginifolia
Great Blue Heron     Ardea herodias
Asian deciduous azaleas     Rhododendron sp.
Sweet Gum     Liquidambar styraciflua
Southern Grape-fern     Botrychium biternatum
Solomon’s Seal     Polygonatum biflorum
Solomon’s Plume     Maianthemum racemosum (synonym: Smilacina racemosa)
Red-spotted Ant Mimic Spider     Castianeira descripta
Downy Rattlesnake Plantain     Goodyera pubescens
Pipsissewa     Chimaphila maculata
American Toad     Anaxyrus americanus
Fowler’s Toad     Anaxyrus fowleri

Common Yellow Wood-sorrel     Oxalis stricta
Southern Yellow Wood-sorrel     Oxalis dillenii
Japanese Stilt Grass/Nepalese Browntop     Microstegium vimineum
Water-milfoil     Myriophyllum sp.
Netted Chain Fern     Woodwardia areolata
Arrow-arum     Peltandra virginica
Dwarf Cinquefoil     Potentilla canadensis
Violet Wood-sorrel     Oxalis violacea
Blackberry     Rubus sp.
Sedge      Carex sp.
Multiflora Rose     Rosa multiflora
Witch Grass     Dichanthelium sp.
Wild Lettuce     Lactuca canadensis
Lyre-leaf Sage     Salvia lyrata
Soft Rush     Juncus effusus
Eastern Red Cedar     Juniperus virginiana
Hearts-a-burstin’/Strawberry Bush     Euonymus americanus
Oak Apple Gall created by a gall wasp    Biorhiza pallida
Heartleaf, Wild Ginger     Hexastylis arifolia
Smooth Spiderwort     Tradescantia ohiensis
Resurrection Fern     Pleopeltis polypodiodes
Painted Buckeye     Aesculus sylvatica
Catesby’s Trillium     Trillium catesbaei
Sweet Shrub     Calycanthus florida
Mockernut Hickory     Carya tomentosa
Coral Honeysuckle     Lonicera sempervirens
Whorled Loosestrife     Lysimachia quadrifolia
Lion’s Foot     Prenanthes sp. (synonym Nabalus sp.)
Partridgeberry     Mitchella repens
Ebony Spleenwort     Asplenium platyneuron
Possumhaw Holly     Ilex decidua
Autumn Olive     Elaeagnus umbellata
Green Frog     Lithobates clamitans
Lavender/purple fungus (no common name)      Chromelosporiopsis coerulescens

Leader for today’s Ramble: Dale

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: What’s happening on the Orange Trail

Reading:

Bob Ambrose

Bob Ambrose recited his most recent poem, A Humble Petition.

Show and Tell: 

Dale brought a Sweetgum inflorescence. Sweetgums are monoecious — their flowers are either male, bearing stamens that produce pollen, or female, bearing flowers that will produce seeds. Both sexes are found on the same plant. (If the sexes occured on separate plants, they would be called dioecious. The two kinds of inflorescences look very different. The male inflorescence is a tall, lumpy cluster of pollen producing flowers that the tree drops soon after they exhaust their pollen supply. The female inflorescence develops into a spikey globe about the size of a golf ball. They drop off the tree in autumn, just to annoy you when you step on them barefooted.

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Sweetgum inflorescences uppermost is a group of male flowers The spherical structure in the middle, just in front of my finger, is the female inflorescense

Announcements: 

Next week’s (April 14. 2022) Nature Ramble will be held at Sandy Creek Park (the Park, not Sandy Creek Nature Center). Click here for directions.

Sue introduced her sister, Emily, from Boston.

Today’s Route:  From our meeting place we walked between the Ceramic Arts bldg. and the Visitor Center, then followed the sidewalk to the Meditation area and turned left on to the Orange Trail Spur, which we followed to the Orange Trail where we turned left (upstream)

OBSERVATIONS:
 

Flower Garden Path to Orange Trail Spur:
 

Little Brown Jugs; one flower revealed at the top of the photo by removing the leaf litter

Little Brown Jugs are named for their flowers that are hidden in the leaf litter. Why would a plant hide its flowers from view? Pollination biologists discover potential pollinators by patiently peering at the visitors to a flower. This won’t work for Little Brown Jugs. Their buried flowers make it impossible to see what visits the flowers. If the leaf litter is cleared away the pollinator may be discouraged from visiting an exposed flower. An indirect approach is to bag the flowers with a fine mesh cloth and leave other flowers unbagged. If the seed production of bagged and unbagged flowers is the same then the plant is likely to be self-fertilizing. This does seem to be the case, as reported by this brief paper: Don’t Judge a Book by its Cover: The Curious Case of Wild Ginger Pollination

: 

Orange Trail Spur and Orange Trail (moving upstream):

American Beech with “Warty” bark.

American Beech tree warty bumps on the bark, We’ve visited this tree for 12 years with no evidence that the warts have damaged its health. It has been suggested that the warts are Beech Bark Disease (BBD), a serious problem in the Northeast states where thousands of Beech trees have been killed. BBD is caused by a fungus that invades bark damaged by scale insects. For pictures of BBD and more information consult this brochure from the University of Massachusetts.

https://ag.umass.edu/landscape/fact-sheets/beech-bark-disease

Jack-in-the-Pulpit

Jack-in-the-Pulpit (JP) When young the single leaf with three leaflets can be confused with a Trillium. Here’s how to tell the difference: imagine a circle with a stem growing up from the center. At the top of the stalk there are three leaflets, two of which are aligned with the diameter of the imaginary circle. The third leaflet is perpendicular to the diameter. That’s a JP.

In a Trillium the three leaflets emerge from the center of the circle in a Y-pattern, but all three angles are equal to 120 degrees; no two of the leaflets lie on a diameter.

Previously we called all the JP in the Botanical Garden, Arisimea triphyllum, but recent opinions have caused a re-think.

Jack-in-the-pulpit is widely distributed in eastern North America and has been treated as a single species with several subspecies, forms or varieties. 

Jack-in-the-Pulpit with 5 leaflets (photo from 2014 ramble)

The 2017 version of Weakley’s Flora of Georgia recognizes an additional species in our area: A. quinetum, formerly treated as a subspecies of A. triphyllum. It has 3 to 5 leaflets. But why should it be considered a distinct species, rather than a variety, subspecies or form. Is it solely a matter of judgement?
Species concepts. A widely accepted definition of a species hinges on the concept of reproductive isolation. Reproductive isolation means that, in nature, individuals of different species do not mate with one another, or, if they do, the resulting organisms have lower fitness. In the case of the two JP species there are more differences than just the number of leaflets; they have different numbers of chromosomes. A. triphyllum is tetraploid and A. quinetum is diploid. A cross between these two is a triploid plant. It has three sets of chromosomes, one set from quinetum and two sets from triphyllum. The triploid can reproduce vegetatively by budding of the rhizome, but it is sexually sterile. Therefore quinetum and triphyllum are reproductively isolated and best viewed as distinct species.

Why triploids are sterile. You probably remember that during the formation of eggs and sperm the chromosome number is halved. For example, humans are diploid; they have two sets of 23 chromosomes. Their eggs and sperms carry 23 chromosomes, one from each of the 23 pairs of chromosomes. To produce eggs or sperm the chromosomes pair up and the sex cells get one member from each pair. 

A triploid has three sets of chromosomes. When the chromosomes prepare for the cell divisions that produce sperm and eggs they attempt to pair up. But with three sets of chromosomes there is always one pair and a loner. The two paired chromosomes separate from one another and the singleton goes randomly into one or the other of the sex cells. This is happening to each chromosome in each set.

The result is a mixture of singles and doubles of each chromosome. Consequently some of the genes are present in one dose, others in two or three doses. This causes defects in gene expression that cause the developing seed or pollen to abort.

Wild Geranium

A female Wild Geranium lacks stamens.

A hermaphroditic Wild Geranium has both male (stamens) and female parts (pistil)

Wild
Geranium is currently blooming and we
found many plants along both the Orange Trail Spur and Orange Trail. In this area the plants are of two types: those
that have both stamens and pistils (called perfect flowers, bisexual flowers, or  hermaphroditic flowers), and those that
lack stamens (pistilate flowers).
(Remember: the stamens produce pollen, the pistil holds the egg that
develops into the embryonic plant inside the seed.) This condition, where a species has two types
of flowers, perfect or female, is
called “gynodioecious” (pronounced: Gy-no-dye-E-shus). (Note that this
term applies
to the population or species, not the individual plant or flower.)

Gynodioecy may be a stepping
stone on the way to evolving into a species in which there are only two kinds
of plants, those with male flowers and those with female flowers. That
condition is called dioecious (pronounced: dye-E-shus). Examples of dioecious species we have seen in the Garden are Spicebush and the various holly species.

Plants have two ways of passing
their genes on to the next generation: via seeds or pollen. If a plant loses
the ability to produce pollen you would think that it would lose the
evolutionary race to those that produce both seeds and pollen. But making pollen takes energy
and a plant that doesn’t have to make pollen can divert more energy to produce more
or larger seeds. That could give it an advantage over the plants with
perfect flowers.

If the female only plants produce more seeds that inherit that trait then they will increase in frequency in the population. But this means that there will be fewer plants producing pollen. Eventually, as pollen becomes less available, the pistilate plants advantage in seed production will decrease because there are too few pollen producers. Then the plants that are producing pollen have the
evolutionary upper hand and they will start to increase. It would seem to be
pretty difficult to evolve into a dioecious species from a gynodioecious one. Not producing pollen may be advantageous when it is rare, but as it becomes more numerous it loses that advantage. (This is an example of frequency-dependent selection.)

Christmas Fern

Christmas Fern fertile frond showing the pinules that bear the spore producing structures near the end of the frond.

Often we are guilty of ignoring the commonplace. I plead guilty of this when it comes to Christmas Ferns. It seems to grow almost everywhere, yet I can’t really answer the symplest questions about it’s biology. Here are a few examples.

When the new fronds emerge in the spring not all of them develop into fertile fronds. How many will form on a single plant? Does the number depend on how much light the plant is exposed to? Or the age of the plant? Did the overwintering fronds supply any energy to the new fronds? What would happen if someone were to cut off part of the winter fronds? Would that affect the number of new fronds or their fertility or both or neither? 

Mystery Observation

Strange object gripping the top of a Mayapple leaf.

Object removed and broken in half. Recesses in the open surface suggest it held seeds.

The white object in the photos above looked initially like a gall growing from the center of a Mayapple leaf. But it wasn’t really attached to the leaf. It looked like might have been an empty seed capsule that had accidentally fallen to the surface before the Mayapples emerged. Then one leaf poked up into the hollow center of the capsule and found its leaf confined by the capsular walls. We couldn’t figure out what plant the capsule came from.

Another Mystery Object

What is this thing?

Heather found a curious object firmly attached to a beech twig. One end was rounded, the other, had what looked like a lid. You could bend the flap or lid open with a finger nail and, when released, it snapped shut. Heather and Don guessed that it might be cocoon of some moth, but it didn’t look like that to me. Most cocoons have the texture of fine silken threads, but this thing didn’t, at least to my poor vision.

Click beetle

Click Beetle Head is to left, followed by 1st thoracic segment, then the wing covers that extend over the last 2 thoracic segments and the abdomen.

A click beetle is named for the unusual way it has of righting itself. When placed on its back it is helpless. How to get back on its feer?! While on its back it bends its head-thorax upward toward its belly. The head-thorax suddenly snaps down, hitting what it’s lying on with enough force to propel its body upward, spinning in the air, and emitting a sharp “click.” This action is repeated until it lands on its feet.The sadistic entomologist, or small boy, can deliberately turn a click beetle several times to discover how many times it takes to fatigue the poor beetle.

Post-Ramble Observations:

After leaving the Orange Trail and cutting over to the upper parking lot, I noticed a lot of activity on the large Chinese Holly hybrid (according to Gary).  The abundant yellow flowers were attracting a wide assortment of pollinators, including:  Western Honey Bee, Common Flower Fly, Eastern Carpenter Bee, tachinid fly, halictid bee, Transverse-banded Flower Fly and Potter Wasp

SUMMARY OF OBSERVATIONS:

Pre-Ramble
Chattahoochee Trillium     Trilium decipiens
Doublefile Viburnum     Viburnum plicatum tomentosum ‘Mariesii’
Mount Airy Fothergilla     Fothergilla major ‘Mount Airy’
Flowering Dogwood     Cornus florida

American Beech     Fagus grandifolia
Confederate Azalea     Rhododendron ‘Semmes’
Green-and-Gold     Chrysogonum virginianum
Wild Ginger     Hexastylis arifolia
Jack-in-the-Pulpit     Arisaema triphyllum
Solomon’s Seal     Polygonatum biflorum
Three-parted Yellow Violet     Viola tripartita
Wild Geranium     Geranium maculatum
Christmas Fern     Polystichum acrostichoides
Elliott’s Blueberry     Vaccinium elliottii
Mayapple     Podophyllum peltatum
Carolina Anole     Anolis carolinensis
Orchard Orbweaver     Leucauge venusta
Rattlesnake Fern     Botrychium virginianum
Wood Ear Mushroom     Auricularia auricula
Bloodroot     Sanguinaria canadensis
Coral Honeysuckle     Lonicera sempervirens
Click beetle     Gambrinus sp.
Jack-in-the-Pulpit rust fungus     Uromyces caladii
Buckthorn Bully     Sideroxylon lycioides
Perfoliate Bellwort     Uvularia perfoliata
Mayapple Rust fungus     Allodus podophylli
Hooked Buttercup     Ranunculus uncinatus
Wood Rush     Luzula glomerata
Elm (with galls)     Ulmus sp.
Slime Mold    ?? Fuligo septica ??
Broad Beech Fern     Phegopteris hexagonoptera
Rue Anemone     Thalictrum thalictroides
Common Blue Violet      Viola sororia
Common Chickweed     Stellaria media
Kidney-leaf Buttercup     Ranunculus abortivus
Bedstraw     Galium aparine
Southern Chervil     Chaerophyllum tainturieri
Eastern Tent Caterpillar     Malacosoma americanum

Post-Ramble
Western Honey Bee     Apis mellifera
Common Flower Fly     Syrphus ribesii
Eastern Carpenter Bee     Xylocopa virginica
Tachinid fly     Family Tachinidae
Halictid bee     Halictus sp.
Transverse-banded Flower Fly    Eristalis transversa
Potter Wasp     Euodynerus bidens

Photos by Heather Larkin

Red-bellied Snake small, eats slugs and snails

Red-bellied Snake      Storeria occiputomaculata

White-banded Fishing Spider

 White-banded Fishing Spider        Dolomedes albineus

Chestnut Carpenter Ant

Chestnut Carpenter Ant      Camponotus castaneus

A Virtual Nature Ramble

Today’s Ramble was cancelled due to inclement weather.

But our photographer, Don Hunter, visited the Dunson Garden earlier in the week and captured many wonderful images of pollinators at work.

Here’s the link to his “Virtual Nature Ramble.”

Leader for
today’s Ramble: Dale

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: 34

Today’s
emphasis:
Dunson garden

Reading:  Anne Brightwell read a poem, ”why I feed the birds”,
by Richard Vargas. You can find the text of this poem at this link.

Show and
Tell:

Kathy holding a Tiger Lily.

Kathy Stege
brought a Tiger Lilly bulb and bulblet to give away. She then told us about its
history. Native to Korea, where it is diploid, the variety grown here is
triploid and is therefore sterile. That makes the plant less invasive and it
reproduces mainly by  bulbs and bulblets.

Richard
Saunders shared a Walt Cook story.

Today’s
Route:   We left the Children’s Garden, via the Shade
Garden path by the comfort station, exiting onto the mulched path leading down
to the Dunson Native Flora Garden (Dunson Garden).  We wandered through the paths in the Dunson
Garden and walked toward the river, exploring the woody edges on both sides of
the power line right of way. We returned to the Children’s Garden via the White
Trail Spur.

OBSERVATIONS:

Dunson
Garden:

Allegheny Spurge Male flowers bear white stamens at the top of the flower stalk, female flowers develop below.the males.

Allegheny
Spurge can be an important source of pollen for bumble bees and early emerging solitary bees. They need pollen for its protein content, nectar being mostly sugar. 

Dwarf Crested Iris

Walter’s Violet

Walter’s
Violets.have flowers that are smaller than those of the common blue violet. Their leaves are smaller, too, and have a duller surface. It spreads by runners that can detach from the parent plant.

Christmas fern fiddlehead unrolling.

Christmas
Ferns remain green throughout the winter but develop new leaves early in spring.

Sweet Betsy Trillium

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Sharp-lobed Hepatica

Sharp-lobed
Hepatica leaves come to a point, insead of the rounded lobes of the other hepatica species. This species prefers calcareous soils. In Georgia it is much more abundant in the northwestern part of the state where limestone deposits provide the calcium. 

 .

Celandine Wood Poppy

.

Georgia Dwarf Trillium As the petals age they develop a pink color before dropping off.

Mayapples grow as a clonal group. Most individuals have a single leaf, but those that have enough energy produce two leaves with a single flower bud between them. All the parts of the plant, except the fruit, are toxic.

Virginia Bluebells Unopened flower buds are pink, then turn blue as they open The pigment is contained in the cell vesicles and is pink under basic condidtions but changes to blue when the vesicle turns acidic, like litmus paper.	.

Common Blue Violet There are two extremes in color, blue and white. Intermediate forms can be found.

Dimpled Trout Lily. There are two species of Erythronium in the Dunson Garden. They can be distinguished by examination of the fruit. One kind has a dimple at the end, the other doesn’t.

Atamasco Lily In spite of its common name it is not a Lily, it belongs to the Amaryllis family.

.

Virginia Spring Beauties Note the slender, grass-like leaves.

Carolina Spring Beauty Note the broader leaf blade than in the Virginia Spring Beauty.

Rafinesque’s  Viburnum

ROW & NEARBY WOODS:

Carolina Jessamine Vine with yellow flowers high in tree

Yellow Fumewort

Eastern Redbud

Butterweed Related to Golden Ragwort, but is an annual.

Black Cherry in bud.

Black Cherry bark

The tree is just beginning to
flower, with many racemes of flower buds. The bark has many horizontal slits in the bark. These are called lenticles and they allow oxygen to diffuse into the cells beneath the outer layer of bark.

Beaked Corn Salad Note the terminal clusters of four flowers.

Several ramblers wondered why the common name was “corn salad,” since it didn’t appear to have anything to do with corn. The answer is found in English around the 15th — 16th century. At that time the word “corn” referred to any grain crop grown for human consumption. In England corn was what we now call wheat. In Scotland, it was oats. When English colonists encountered they called the Native American grain crop “Indian Corn.” It later became known simply as “Corn.” The plant we call Corn Salad was a European weed that grew in wheat fields and provided an early green salad for the colonists.

Ground Ivy

Ground Ivy is a naturalized Mint family plant of European origin. It was used to prolong the shelf life of beer before being replaced by Hops.
 

Purple Deadnettle

Purple Deadnettle is another naturalized European weed. The “deadnettle” refers to its resemblance to stinging nettles, but it lacks the stinging hairs (tricomes) on its leaves.

White
Trail Spur:

Bark of Silverbell tree.’ Note the light-color stripes.

Silverbell flowers

Decumbent or Trailing Trillium has a flowering stalk that lies against the ground.

OBSERVED
SPECIES:

Woodland Phlox     Phlox divaricata
Forsythia     Forsythia sp.
Carolina Anole     Anolis caroliniensis
Bloodroot     Sanguinaria canadensis
Sweet Betsy Trillium     Trillium cuneatum
Chattahoochee Trillium     Trillium decipiens
Allegheny Spurge     Pachysandra procumbens
Dwarf Crested Iris     Iris cristata
Virginia Spring Beauty     Claytonia virginica
Black Cohosh     Acataea racemose
Walter’s Violet     Viola walteria
Christmas Fern     Polystichum acrostichoides
Sharp-lobed Hepatica     Hepatica acutiloba
Celandine Wood Poppy     Stylophorum diphyllum
Georgia Trillium     Trillium georgianum
Leatherwood     Dirca palustris
Mayapple     Podophyllum peltatum
Seersucker Sedge     Carex plantaginea
Virginia Bluebells     Mertensia virginica
Common Blue Violet     Viola sororia
Dimpled Trout Lily     Erythronium umbilicatum
Golden Ragwort     Packera aurea
Atamasco Lily     Zephyranthes atamasca
Carolina Spring Beauty     Claytonia caroliniana
Rue Anemone     Thalictrum thalictroides
Rafinesque’s Viburnum     Viburnum rafinesquianum
Carolina Jessamine     Gelsemium sempervirens
Yellow Fumewort     Corydalis flavula
Eastern Redbud     Cercis canadensis
Butterweed     Packera glabella
Tufted Titmouse     Baeolophus bicolor
Black Cherry     Prunus serotina
Beaked Corn Salad     Valerianella radiata
Ground Ivy     Glechoma hederacea
Purple Deadnettle     Lamium purpureum
Southern Chervil     Chaerophyllum tainturieri
Silverbell     Halesia tetraptera
Decumbent Trillium     Trillium decumbens
Cranefly Orchid     Tipularia discolor
Coral Honeysuckle     Lonicera sempervirens
Solomon’s Plume     Maianthemum racemosum
Buckthorn Bully     Sideroxylon lyciodes

 

Leader for today’s Ramble: Linda
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.
https://www.facebook.com/media/set?vanity=don.hunter.56&set=a.4987661561250369
Number of Ramblers today: 37
Today’s emphasis: Plants flowering in the International Garden, Herb and Physic Gardens, Heritage Garden and Flower Garden
Readings: Bob Ambrose recited his poem, On the First Wave of Spring
Here is the link to his poem: https://bobambrosejr-poetry.blogspot.com/2018/03/on-first-wave-of-spring.html

Next, to commemorate St. Patrick’s Day, David read two poems from Janisse Ray’s House of Branches:

Eleventh

I know where
the ribbon snake
lives——-
under the maple
by the barn.
One day when I
was there
a dead leaf
crackled like fire
and I saw her,
slip of green
I followed
around the waist
of the tree,
through already
dying grass.
When she turned.
To face me, eyes
burning, she
studied me.
I – wanting
To feel her softness,
her certainty, the stove
of her tiny heart —
touched one finger.
only one,
upon her perfect tail.
At that moment
the tree opened
and she wound
inside, her
passageway
dark and narrow.
Long before
I turned away,
no doubt
she lay
on her mat of earth
at the bottom
of the maple
among the roots
strip
of brilliant
kindling.
The eleventh
Commandment is
love the earth
love the tree
love the snake.

Psychoanalysis

What does it mean, Sigmund Freud,
that the snake was not in my dream
but in the hallway, a brown velvet rope
stretched across the runner.  It glimmered
like an Indonesian textile, new-
woven, lying across the path we travel
dozens of times a day between kitchen
and bedroom, front and back.
I called my husband, who
came from the porch and stood
opposite, length of perfect cord
between us.  Strange as it was,
we were stranger.  We watched,
only that, never moving
for broom or bag, no impediment.
We watched it glide across the floor,
behind a row of machines, hot water
heater, washer and dryer, through
a drift of spilled laundry powder, into
the accumulation of our lives, old
rag bag, dog shampoo, shoe polish,
spot remover, brushes and brooms,
window cleaner, jugs of vinegar,
ammonia and bleach.
Our lives are no place for you, beautiful,
this house no crevice in an old tree.
For your own sake, get out.

Show and Tell:

Chinese Violet Cress

Linda presented a sprig from one of the many Chinese Violet Cress currently seen in beds around the Garden.  A nearby sign called it “Color Up Purple,” one of the many cultivars of Wild Cabbage (Brassica oleracea). Wild Cabbage was selected and cultivated over many centuries to produce an amazing diversity of vegetables; e.g., cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, kale, Brussels sprouts, collard greens, and kohlrabi. But the sign is for a plant that hasn’t yet appeared this year. The plant we actually examined is Chinese Violet Cress (Orychophragmus violaceus). It is in the same family as Wild Cabbage and has the same distinctive smell and taste and the same four-petaled flowers that earned this family the name “crucifer,” or cross-bearing. According to the Missouri Botanical Garden, Chinese Violet Cress “is native to roadsides, forests, fields, thickets, valleys, hillsides, sunny slopes and garden areas in central China. It is cultivated in China as a vegetable, with stalks typically harvested in the second year after flowering. Flowers and leaves are also edible and make tasty additions to salads.” Its invasive potential is unknown. Whether it is a larval host plant for our native butterfly, Falcate Orange-tip, is also unknown. Native crucifers provide early spring opportunities for this butterfly to lay its eggs.

Today’s Route:  We left the Children’s Garden, heading down the paved path, passing by the American South section, across the Flower Bridge and through the China and Asia Section.  From there we passed the Threatened and Endangered Plant bed, through the Native American Southeastern Tribes Section and into the Physic Garden.  We then took the connecting walk, past the Pawpaw Patch into the Heritage Garden, after which we walked through much of the Flower Garden, coming back through the Rose Terraces and Heritage Garden, again, and back out to the parking lot.

OBSERVATIONS:

Don and Heather conducted some pre-Ramble explorations and found several species of interest:

White-lip Globe Snail ?

A snail, possibly a White-lip Globe Snail. That species was identified by Charles Wharton as one of seven species of land snail he found in his survey of the plants and animals of the State Botanical Garden.  

Flowering Dogwoods beginning to expand their showy, white bracts
 

An American Toad, nearly camouflaged in the mulch in one of the beds near the pergola.

The snail and the toad represent the beauty and the problem with iNaturalist. Many of the photos submitted were taken from the wrong angle for identification. Not the fault of the photographer, It’s the nature of the subject. Snails, for example, are hard for experts to ID and the key features are hard, or impossible to see in photos of the living animal. 

The toad could be one of two species in our area: Fowler’s Toad or American Toad. The easiest feature that discriminates between these species is the color of the belly — Fowler’s has a white belly, American has a darker underside with scattered spots. American also has enlarged warts on its calf and Fowler’s has calf warts the same size as the rest of the leg. There is a ridge of skin behind the eye that contacts the large gland behind the eye on the shoulder in Fowler’s. In the American the large gland is separated from the ridge or it may touch a rearward extension of the ridge. These features are very difficult is see, even in excellent photographs. Don tells me that INat identified the toad as a Southern Toad, but that species does not occur in our area; it’s a coastal plain species.

Georgia Rock Cress

Georgia Rock Cress is planted along the paved path into the American South Section of the International Garden. This is one of the rarest species in Georgia, with only a handful of populations surviving in the northwest corner of the state near Rome and in the Fall Line, near Columbus. The plants seem to love rocky cliffs and bluffs, or perhaps they inhabit these stressful environments because there’s little competition there. They are clearly flourishing in the rich beds at the Garden. As the name “Cress” indicates, this species is a member of the family Brassicaceae: its flowers are cross-shaped and its sap has the sulfurous smell and taste characteristic of this family. The compounds responsible for these distinctive tastes and smells evolved in this family as a way to discourage browsing animals; some people also find the taste bitter and the cooking odors revolting, while others welcome a plateful of collards or turnip greens on New Year’s Day.

Chattahoochee Trillium

A patch of four or five Chattahoochee Trillium is flourishing along the path into the International Garden; ramblers wondered how these plants got here. Not being a Piedmont native, this species is found at the Garden in the Dunson Native Flora Garden and environs. It’s likely that a deer ate one of the fruits of the Dunson plants and later deposited the seeds here with its dung. It’s also possible – though probably unlikely due to the distance involved – that the seeds were brought here by ants. Ants are the primary dispersal agent for Trillium seeds in the wild but typically don’t carry seeds more than two meters. Each Trillium seed comes equipped with a fleshy attachment called an elaiosome that is rich in fat and other nutrients. The ants grab the elaiosome in their jaws and drag the seed into their nest. They feed the elaiosome to their larvae and carry the still intact seed to their waste dump, where the seeds find a nice rich bed (of ant poop and dead ant bodies) for germination. Unfortunately, the exotic invasive Red Fire Ant (Solenopsis invicta) competes with native ants for wildflower seeds and is not skilled at dispersing seeds, often destroying most of the seeds it gathers.

Photo by Douglas W. Jones of Trillium recurvatum seeds with pale-colored elaiosomes, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elaiosome

Yaupon Holly hybrid with yellow fruit, possibly ‘Anna’s Choice’.

Virginia Bluebells, an early spring ephemeral, with its pink buds and blue, fully opened flowers.

Bees can’t see in the red end of the spectrum but are attracted to the blue color of mature Bluebell flowers which they can see and which advertises the presence of nectar. The pink color may discourage nectar-robbing by bees, who are known to pierce the base of flower tubes to extract nectar before the flowers mature and produce viable pollen. However, the long floral tube and lack of a good “landing platform” limit the type of bees that visit these flowers. Only long-tongued bees can reach the nectaries hidden in the base of the tube and they must do so quickly since most bees are not good at hovering for more than a few seconds.

Pansy cultivars are planted along the Flower Bridge. All pansies originated as hybrids of several European species of violets (genus Viola), including Viola tricolor which has been flagged as an invasive in some parts of the U.S.

‘Leonard Messel’ Magnolia, a cultivar derived from crossing two Asian magnolias, Magnolia kobus and Magnolia stellata, and referred to as Magnolia X loebneri. Note that cultivar names are always enclosed in single quotation marks and are never in italics like scientific names.

Showy stamens of Alabama Snow Wreath flowers

As we approached the Alabama Snow Wreath hedge in the Threatened and Endangered Species Garden, Heather pointed out the calls of both the Red-tailed Hawk and the Red-shouldered Hawk in the woods to the right of the path. Alabama Snow Wreath flowers abundantly, but rarely produces viable seed.; it seems to reproduce only by the spread of rhizomes (underground stems). The flowers lack petals: their showiness is due to the long white stamens with their yellow anther tips. Alabama Snow Wreath is rare in Georgia, occurring naturally only in northwestern counties. It is rare throughout its range of Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, Arkansas, and Missouri, but is widely available in the nursery trade.

Georgia Dwarf Trillium is an extremely narrow endemic, found only in one county in northwest Georgia. Several small populations are being safeguarded at the Botanical Garden, here in the T&E Garden and also in the Dunson Garden.

A Golden Ragwort flower head emerging from its protective covering of purple bracts. The purple pigment, anthocyanin, seen in the bracts and stem, acts as a kind of sunscreen to tender new growth.

Basal leaves of White Avens are mottled with silvery green and deeply divided into many segments. They bear little resemblance to the solid green, three-lobed stem leaves which will follow in early summer.

Amber Jelly Fungus, a wood-rotting fungus, appears in the winter on dead twigs and branches. It is a “resurrection fungus,” with the capacity to dry to nearly nothing then rehydrate after a rain or even a heavy dew. They can also rebound after being frozen solid. The “fruiting,” or spore-producing, bodies cover the glistening upper surface but are nearly invisible.

Rue-anemone (or Windflower) and Green-and-Gold are among the earliest wildflowers to bloom in Piedmont forests	.

Rue-anemone flowers lack petals and depend on their bright white sepals
to attract pollinators, which include various bees and flies. These
plants typically flower early then disappear by late spring.
Green-and-Gold flower heads are visited by a variety of insects and
continue to produce flowers well into the summer

May-apple plants are emerging on “Native American Hill,” near the base of the large boulder. Most plants are topped with a single leaf but a few plants have forked stems, with each of the two forks bearing a leaf. Between the leaves, a small bud is forming that will produce a flower in April and a fruit in May.

Russell discovered a fallen branch covered on one side with a variety of lichens, including Perforated Ruffle Lichen and Old Man’s Beard, and on the other side with the beautiful golden-tan Wrinkled Crust fungus

Don’s close-up photo of the Wrinkled Crust reveals the intricate patterns on its surface

Pawpaw trees are in bud, their hairy sepals protecting the six developing petals within.

The red-brick wall that connects the Physic Garden and the Heritage Garden is covered with Creeping Fig. Kathy pointed out that this species has a high potential to become invasive; she has seen it covering acres of land in a park in Florida.

Eastern Redbud, bright pink against the bright blue sky, is a classic north Georgia scene in March. Longleaf Pines in the fast-growing “rocket stage” are in the foreground.

One of the two honey bee hives in the Flower Garden recently swarmed, necessitating the insertion of a third hive to accommodate the new colony.

The leaves of Hyacinth and some other spring-flowering bulbs are hydrophobic, i.e. water-repelling, causing dew and rain to form shimmering beads on the waxy surface. Some of our native plants also have hydrophobic leaves, notably in the Piedmont, Jewelweed, which we will see in late summer. For an interesting explanation of hydrophobicity in plants, turn to Science Friday: https://www.sciencefriday.com/educational-resources/hydrophobicity-will-the-drop-stop-or-roll/

A large stand of a native Viburnum cultivar growing near the wildlife viewing platform on the north side of the Flower Garden is in full flower. Each flat-topped flower cluster consists of many small, white, five-petaled flowers with golden stamens.

A Tuft-legged Orbweaver working her web in the hedges in the Heritage Garden.

Making our way back to the parking lot after the ramble, some of us came upon several large red dumpsters. The south-facing side of one of the dumpsters was covered with a maze of slug grazing trails, where slugs have been dining on the algae (and possibly a few lichens) for months.  The patterns were quite beautiful, actually.

Don and Heather noticed several Carolina Anoles sunning and hunting prey in front of the Porcelain & Decorative Arts Museum. One stationed on the iron grate at a drain was dark brown to almost black, approximating the surrounding colors. Another stalking a wasp in a Spurge was the more typical green color.

OBSERVED SPECIES:

Chinese Violet Cress    Orychophragmus violaceus
White-lip Globe Snail??   Mesodon thyroidus

Dogwood     Cornus florida
American Toad     Anaxyris americanus
Oriental Paper Bush     Edgeworthia chrysantha
Georgia Rock Cress     Arabis georgiana
Chattahoochee Trillium     Trillium decipiens
Yaupon Holly     Ilex vomitoria ‘Anna’s Choice’
Sticky Catchfly/Wild Pink     Silene caroliniana
Virginia Bluebells     Mertensia virginica
Pansies     Viola x wittrockiana
Oconee Azalea     Rhododendron flammeum
Tea Camellia     Camellia sinensis
‘Leonard Messel’ Magnolia     Magnolia x loebneri
Creeping Mazus      Mazus reptans
Red-tailed Hawk     Buteo jamaicensis
Red-shouldered Hawk     Buteo lineatus
Alabama Snow Wreath     Neviusia alabamensis
Georgia Dwarf Trillium     Trillium georgianum
Rue Anemone     Thalictrum thalictroides (synonym: Anemonella thalictroides)
Golden Ragwort     Packera aurea
White Avens     Geum canadense
White Florida Anise     Illicium floridanum ‘Alba’
Walter’s Violet     Viola walteri
Amber Jelly Fungus     Exidia recisa
Wrinkled Crust Fungus     Phlebia radiata
Perforated Ruffle Lichen     Parmotrema perforatum
Old Man’s Beard     Usnea strigosa
Green-and-Gold     Chrysogonum virginianum
Mayapple     Podophyllum peltatum
Bloodroot     Sanguinaria canadensis
Pawpaw     Asimina triloba
Creeping Fig     Ficus pumila
Eastern Redbud     Cercis canadensis
Western Honey Bee     Apis mellifera
Rabbit-eye Blueberry     Vaccinium ashei
Hyacinth        Hyacinthus orientalis
Viburnum     Viburnum sp.
Tuft-legged Orbweaver     Mangora placida
Carolina Anole     Anolis carolinensis