We had a
three book give-away that was won by Martha, Sue and Don. I'm sure they will be
happy to share their books with any of you after they have read them.
The reading
today was provided by Dale and is from the entry for August 1st in Donald
Culross Peattie's book, An Almanac for
Moderns:
JEAN-BAPTISTE-PIERRE-ANTOINE DE MONET was born upon this day in
1744 in a gaunt old farmhouse in Picardy, eleventh son of the Chevalier de La
Marck. The young Lamarck, while stationed as a soldier at Monaco, first began
to question the why and wherefore of life's infinite complexity. Rousseau had
interested him in botanizing in a gentlemanly and sentimental way, but Lamarck
was made of sterner stuff than Rousseau. He was fortunate, too, in his
associates. Buffon procured for him the place of botanist to the King, and the
mighty de Jussieu, who can be compared to Linnaeus with a compliment intended
to Linnaeus, made a thorough systematist out of Lamarck. Late in life a change
in appointments placed him in the chair of a lecturer on zoology, and in order
to fulfill it, he made a zoologist out of himself! To Lamarck we owe the distinction
between vertebrate and invertebrate animals, which no one before had had the
wit to see, snakes, lizards, and alligators having been classed as insects!
When the Revolution came, several great
scientists lost their heads in it. The little band at the Jardin des Plantes
—Lamarck, Cuvier, Daubenton, Desfontaines, Latreille, Geoffrey de St.
Hilaire—clung on, without salary, without appropriations ("the Republic
has no need of scientists," were the famous words of the Directory),
wondering when the blow would fall. Lamarck's last days were spent in
blindness, only his daughter fending for and attending him, taking by dictation
the last lines of this imaginative genius of science. He died in direst
poverty; at his funeral Cuvier ridiculed his theory of evolution. No one
followed his body as it was carried to potter's field.
We traversed the
White-Red-White-Green trails today and saw only a few blooming plants, but lots of
mushrooms.
We stopped first at the
power line to observe where herbicide has been applied to remove the numerous
Wingstems (Verbascum sp.) and other broad-leaved
plants, making way for the development of the Piedmont prairie. Looking down
the hill you could see that many of the large trees between the White trail and
the road had also been removed.
Before entering the woods we
examined the flowers of Dallisgrass (Paspalum
sp.). Many people don't think of grasses as having flowers, but they do. Their
flowers are inconspicuous and lack petals, but they do have the usual
complement of male and female (staminate and pistilate) parts, just like other
flowering plants. The female part , visible with a hand lens, looks like a tiny,
black bottle brush. The spiky projections provide a large surface area on which
air-born pollen can land. Only a few of the flowers had exposed anthers, brown
in color, also visible only through the hand lens.
Corn is also a grass and
some of us were surprised to learn that the silk on the ear of corn is the part
of the pistil called the style. Pollen lands on the very tip of the silk (the
stigma) and each strand of silk is connected to an ovary where one ovule awaits
its pollen. The pollen grain germinates on the stigma, sending a pollen tube through
the silk down to the ovule where the sperm cell in the pollen tube joins the
ovule. Voila! A seed is produced! But where does the pollen come from? At the
top of each corn plant is a tassell which produces the pollen. Sue told us that
she grew up in Indiana and one of her jobs as a child was to cover the tassels
to prevent the corn from self-pollinating. (I might not have gotten that right.
Sue, please correct me in the comments.)
Entering the woods our first
discovery was several Cranefly Orchids (Tipularia discolor) in full bloom and beautifully illuminated by a beam of
sunlight. Everyone got a good look at the nectar spur on each flower. This spur
can be very long, in some cases it is longer that the diameter of the flower
itself. It produces and holds the nectar that is the attractant/reward for pollinators.
The chief pollinator is a small moth. To
get to the nectar at the bottom of the spur it must push its face into the
flower, coming in contact with the pollen sacs in the flower proper. These
little bags of pollen are glued to the moth's eye and then transferred to the
stigma of the next flower it visits. Nature can be weird!
Mushrooms were in abundance
due to the continuing rain this year. We are still seeing Chanterelles,
Turkeytails and Coral mushrooms. New, to us today, were the fascinating
Earthstars, a type of puffball. They resemble an acorn surrounded by what looks
like a lighter colored jester's collar shaped like a star. The central
"acorn" is really a thin-walled spore chamber. When a drop of water
hits it a puff of spores is expelled from the central opening. Some of us had
fun poking this delicate structure and being rewarded by a tiny spurt of dust.
There were also several other
kinds of unidentifiable (by us) mushrooms, as usual.
Gary brought some specimens
of Cinnabar Chanterelles to show us. They are really tiny, much smaller than
the comparatively huge Chanterelles that we see in the woods here. They are so
small that Gary mentioned that they are not worth gathering, even if they are
edible. In a previous report I misidentified the larger, orange colored
Chanterelles we saw all over the woods as Cinnabar Chanterelles. Mea culpa!
Hugh pointed out a tree with
many patches of Common Script lichen (Graphis
scripta). It's always fun to examine these with a hand lens and try to
decipher the message.
A yellowish bolete
mushroom was identified by Hugh as Ornate-stalked Bolete (Boletus ornatipes).
We stumbled across an
American Beech with one branch covered with a huge number of Beech Blight Aphids
(Grylloprociphilus imbricator). We have seen this insect previously and it's
always fun to watch them do the "boogie woogie" on their branch. You can
find more information and short video at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beech_blight_aphid
Another good find was an
unusual plant that we first thought was Indian Pipe (Monotropa uniflora), but on reflection, now think was Pinesap (Hypopitys monotropa). The plant was pale
white like Indian Pipe, but had two flowers on a single stem. Indian Pipe is
supposed to have only a single flower per stem. Whatever name is applied the
plant is interesting -- it's a parasite feeding off a mycorrhizal fungus that
is in a mutualistic relationship with the roots of another plant. The parasitic
mode of life is reflected in the lack of chlorophyll in its tissues.
Hugh located a single
individual of Flowering Spurge (Euphorbia
corollata) -- it has a tiny white flower.
On the way back we stopped
to look at the developing inflorescence of Winged Sumac (Rhus copallina), and the still-blooming Wild Petunia (Ruellia
caroliniensis).
Finally it was back to
Donderos' and relaxing conversation. Another great walk with wonderful
companions.
Dale
