Today, we guessed correctly that the 30
percent chance of rain wouldn't occur before we finished our walk. To avoid mud because of the heavy rain last
night we went through the International Garden, the Physic Garden, Heritage
Garden, and Flower Garden to the short cut trail to the Orange Trail. Then we went up the Orange trail to its end
at the upper parking lot. We also took a
short side trip along the white trail before going to Donderos’ for
refreshment.
Hugh provided a reading from Janisse Ray’s
The Ecology of a Cracker Childhood. I think most were a little non-plussed. It wasn't what they expected:
"A
junkyard is a wilderness. Both are
devotees of decay. The nature of both is
random order, the odd occurrence and juxtaposition of miscellany, backed by a
semblance of method. Walk through a
junkyard and you will see some of the
schemes a wilderness takes--Fords to one section, Dodges in another, or older
models farthest from the house--so a brief logic of ecology can be found.
"In
the same way, an ecosystem makes sense:
the canebrakes, the cypress domes.
Pine trees regenerate in an indeterminate fashion, randomly here and
there where seeds have fallen, but also with some predictability. Sunlight and moisture must be sufficient for
germination, as where a fallen tree has made a hole in the canopy, after a
rain. This, too, is order.
"Without
fail in a junkyard you encounter the unexpected -- a doll's head, bodiless; a
bike with no handlebars; a cache of wheat pennies; thirty feet of copper pipe;
a boxy '58 Edsel. Likewise, in the
middle of Tate's Hell Swamp you might look unexpectedly into the brown eyes of
a barred owl ten feet away or come upon a purple stretch of carnivorous
bladderworts in bloom, their BB-sized bladders full of aquatic microorganisms.
"In
junkyard as in wilderness there is danger:
shards of glass, leaning jacks, weak chains; or rattlesnakes,
avalanches, polar bears. In one as in
the other you expect the creativity of the random, how the twisted metal
protrudes like limbs, the cars dumped at acute, right and obtuse angles, how
the driveways are creeks and rivers.'"
Our theme for today was ferns, since most
forest plants have finished flowering and the meadows have not quite started
yet. Bracken ferns in the International
Garden were our first stop.
First we
reviewed the different parts of a fern:
The frond is made up of a blade (the “leafy” part) and a stipe (the stem that holds up the
blade.) The blade has a rachis (the
main vein) and is usually subdivided into smaller pinnae
(singular: pinna) that are each attached to the rachis by a vein.Sometimes the pinnae are themselves subdivided, partially or completely, into pinnules that are attached to the midvein of each pinna.
Bracken fern (Pteridium aquilinum) is deciduous (meaning the fronds do not
persist through winter) and occurs in almost every county in Georgia.
In the Endangered Plant Garden we found New
York Fern (Thelypteris noveboracensis)
has a blade whose pinnae are shorter at both ends than they are in the
middle. The Botanical Society taught me
that people in Manhattan are so busy that they burn their candle at both ends –
an easy way to remember New York Fern.
New York Fern is deciduous.
In the Indian Garden there were two ferns
of interest: The first is probably the most common
fern in the Garden -- Christmas Fern (Polystichum
acrostichoides). It has sori (spore producing structures) on the undersurface
of the pinnae at the ends of some fronds (these are called fertile fronds).
Each of the pinnae are shaped like a Christmas stocking with the toe toward the
rachis. Christmas Fern is also quite common in the mountains and piedmont of
Georgia but less so in the coastal plain.
We see it all year as it is evergreen (not deciduous).
The second was Royal Fern. Fertile pinnae are absent at this time of year. The fronds look more like a locust tree than
a fern. Usually found in wet, acid soils
(I have found them in the depressed wetland near Track Rock Gap). Occurs throughout most of Georgia.
The two wildflower and the native grass
beds in Flower Garden elicited some comments. Currently blooming are several
Coneflowers (Echinacea sp., Rudbeckia sp.and Ratibida sp.) and mints (Monarda
sp.). One of the fun plants blooming was
Horse Mint (Monarda punctata). It did have the usual mint square stem. I do not believe it was quite in full bloom
because I do not remember seeing the yellow petals interspersed between the pink
ones.
On the Orange Trail our next find was the
Broad Beech Fern (Thelypteris
hexagonoptera). It is described as bipinnatifid,which means that the pinnae
are almost “cut” through to the rachis and each pinna is pinnately almost cut
through to the midvein. This produces a rachis with “wings” between the pinnae,
a diagnostic feature for this species.
It is common in the mountains and piedmont of Georgia but only found in a
few counties in South Georgia.
The next fern was the Southern Lady Fern
(Athyrium asplenoides). Someone said that it looked very delicate,
and that is a characteristic of this fern.
This fern tends to cluster, each frond arching, and deciduous. The rachis can be yellowish green to
reddish. The blade is broadest near the
base. It is bipinnate to tripinnate,
finely cut and looks delicate. It is
found throughout Georgia, except in the sandy pineland in Southeast Georgia.
A break from the ferns was finding a
number of white avens (Geum canadense). We have seen the rosette that comes in very early
spring, but not the flower, which just bloomed this week.
We also noticed the warty bark of a young
tree, Sugarberry (Celtis laevigata),
a type of Hackberry.
We found several Rattlesnake Ferns (Botrychium virginianum) along the Orange
Trail. The blade is ternate and
triangular in shape. It is bipinnate to
tripinnate. The fertile stalk arises from the where the blade branches,
actually the base of the blade. You will
remember that a fern that looks similar comes up in the fall and the fertile
stalk is attached below the base of the Blade, and is called a Grape Fern.
We looked a long time for the common
Ebony Spleenwort (Asplenium platyneuron),
which was the last fern we found on the Orange Trail. It is common throughout
all of Georgia, with the exception of the Southeastern Coastal Plain. One
characteristic is the shiny dark brown rachis (almost looks black). Like the Christmas Fern some of the fronds
are partially fertile with sori on the back side of the pinnae. Each pinna has an ear like projection next to
the rachis. It is deciduous.
There was some time left so we scooted
out the White Trail across the road to check out the blooming Wafer Ash or Hop
tree (Ptelea trifoliate, which is not
an ash). There was quite a group of
them. We could not name the family at
the time. Looking it up, I found it to
be in the Rutaceae, or Citrus family, which includes the Prickly Ash, Hercules
Club, and Hardy Orange.
We then retired to Donderos’ for
conversation and refreshment.
Hugh
