Today's report
was written by Dale Hoyt. Most of the photos that appear in this blog are taken
by Don Hunter; you can see all the photos Don took of today's Ramble here.
Today's reading
was the entry for October 31 in An
Almanac for Moderns by Donald Culross Peattie:
"And what have you been doing all summer,"
asked the ant, "that you have nothing to eat now? Dancing and singing,
master cricket? Well, then, you may go hungry."
So, in many versions, from Aesop through
La Fontaine to Walt Disney, runs the old fable, though sometimes its culprit is
master grasshopper, and sometimes the cicada. Let us call it the cricket, and
pause not so long over the natural history involved in the story (though that
is as badly muddled as might be) as upon the moral it has the pretension to
advance.
In the first place crickets do not all die with the coming of winter;
many pass the inclement season snug in my basement woodpile. In the second
place, . . . Maeterlinck
insists that there is no animal in the world so generous as the ant, who feeds
not only her sisters but several hundreds of other insect species, guests in
her house.
But allow the poets their license. It is the moral that I do not like,
the self-satisfied little lecture with which the ant of the fable accompanies
its stinginess. Were a cricket even as the fable represents it, it is plain
that he and the cicada and the grasshopper are artists and entertainers, and
the ant of the moral seems to be a banker refusing a loan upon grounds, not of
insufficient security, but of the superior morality of being rich, the infamy
of poverty.
Today's route:
Down the cement walkway through the shade garden to the White trail, across the
power line and into the woods. We followed the White trail to the second
junction with the Red trail, then backtracked to the first junction with the
Red trail and took the Red trail to its lower junction with the White trail,
near the shelter. From there we took the Green trail back to the White trail
and returned to the parking lot.
At the Arbor: Ginkgo
leaves change from green to yellow in a unique way. The leaves have parallel
veins that run from the base of the blade to the outer edge of the fan-shaped
leaf. The color change starts closest to the petiole (the leaf stem) and
gradually works its way out to the edge of the leaf. Many of the leaves on the
Ginkgos today are half and half: half green at the periphery and half yellow at
the base. This pattern is quite different from the other trees in North
America. Their color change starts at the outer edge and works its way to the
interior of the blade in an irregular manner. Perhaps this is due to the
difference in venation; Ginkgos have parallel veins and most of our native
trees have netted veins. You can verify this for yourself if you study the
color of the same leaf every day for a week. Take pictures and share them with
us! I've included some photos of leaves from my neighborhood that are in various stages of changing color. Note that the green is lost from the outer edges, unlike the Ginkgo. The white oak might be different. It looks like the red pigment (anthocyanin) might be overlaid on the green leaf before the green pigment (chlorophyll) is withdrawn.
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| Mulberry leaf color change |
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| Red Maple leaf color change |
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| Bush Honeysuckle leaf color change |
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| White Oak leaf color change |
While looking for leaves that were changing color I noticed an interesting thing about Red Maple leaves. Several had insect damage accompanied by intense red coloration, but were still green in the undamaged areas. Apparently the damage initiated the synthesis of red pigment (anthocyanin) in nearby leaf tissue even before the leaf had started to undergo its fall color change. Do you have any speculation about what is going on here?
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| Red Maple leaf with red pigmented areas of insect damage |
Shade garden
walkway: American Witch Hazel flower buds seem slow to develop this year;
the native trees have scarcely any buds and those that are present are still
very small. The Ramble Reports for mid-November of the last two years mention
the presence of flowers on these very same shrubs. They will have to pick up their
game if they are going to bloom before Thanksgiving. In contrast, the Japanese Witch
Hazels on the other side of the walkway have numerous and much larger buds.
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| Japanese Witch Hazel flower buds |
If you were on last week's ramble you will remember the
reading Catherine brought about the origin of the Witch Hazel's name. It has
nothing to do with witches but is derived from an Anglo-Saxon word meaning
"to bend". Read that post to learn more.
White trail:
Last week we were excited to find a new tree just beyond the road on the left
side of the trail. We identified it as a Blackjack Oak, largely on the strength
of the leaf shape on some of the lower branches. Today, we cast some doubt on
that decision. The leaves on the ground looked more like Southern Red Oak and
less like Blackjack Oak. The leaves still on the tree, especially near the top,
were pretty clearly Southern Red Oak, so we decided to live with some
ambiguity. Southern Red Oak is to be expected here, but Blackjack is not.
There are still a few fall wildflowers hanging on; we
found Golden aster, Late blue aster and Mist flower still in bloom (if a single
plant with flowers counts). We also took not of the abundant fruit on the
Hophornbeam we have been watching this year. The Yaupon holly
with green
berries we saw last week surprised us today; most is its berries are now a
cheerful red! Further along, at the lower edge of the Elaine Nash Prairie we
saw Goldenrod and White heath asters as well as the ever present Dog fennel.
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| Yaupon holly berries |
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| Ash sapling |
On entering the woods we noticed a small sapling Ash. It
is often hard to find trees with leaves low enough to examine carefully, so
finding this example of an Ash allowed us to see its opposite, pinnately
compound leaves. You can also tell if a tree has opposite leaves even after the
leaves have dropped. All you need to do is look at the location of the leaf
scars on the bare twigs.
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| Old oak apple gall |
At this time of year we often find hollow, brown
spherical objects about the size of a golf ball lying on the ground. These are
called oak apples even though they are not apples. They are produced when a
tiny wasp lays an egg on an oak leaf in the spring. The leaf tissue responds to
the presence of the egg, or wasp larva that hatches from it, by producing this
spherical swelling. The wasp larva feeds on the leaf tissue inside, protected
from predators and or parasites. It becomes an adult wasp later in the year and
in the fall the leaf it developed in falls off the tree and begins to crumble like
all the other leaves. The gall tissue is a little tougher and remains behind
for us to pick up and wonder what it is. Another historical factoid: these galls were the source of ink in the American colonies. The Declaration of Independence was written using ink derived from oak galls.
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| Cranefly orchid leaves |
A common sight now and for the next few months will be
the leaves of the Cranefly orchid decorating the florest floor. As we've noted
before, each underground corm of the orchid sends up a single leaf that bends
over and lies flat on the surface of the leaf litter. This leaf will slowly
carry out photosynthesis during the winter months and, if it was successful in
supplying enough food to the corm, will be replaced by a flowering stalk next
summer. Not every plant makes enough food to flower every year, so it's an iffy
life style, but the Cranefly orchid is found in every county in Georgia, so it
must be doing something right.
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| White oak (L) & Red oak (R) acorns |
This does not seem to be what is called a mast year – a
year in which nuts are super abundant. Nonetheless there are still oaks
producing acorns and we picked up a few to see if we could determine what type
they are. If you find a barrel shaped acorn it is probably from an oak in the
red oak group. (Barrel shaped acorns are about as broad as they are tall.) The
white oak acorns in our area produce more elongated acorns, distinctly longer
(taller) than they are wide. We've covered other differences between the two
groups of oak acorns before. White oak acorns germinate in the year they fall,
red oak acorns will not germinate until the following spring. Squirrels know
these facts and in the fall they will eat white oak acorns and bury the red
oaks. If they bury a white oak acorn they will bite off the pointed end where
the oak embryo is, preventing the acorn from germinating.
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| Southern grape fern with fertile frond |
In one short segment of the trail we found several
Southern grape ferns, some of which had fertile fronds. In past weeks the
sporangia (spore-producing structures) of these fronds have been green, but
today they are turning light brown, maturing. These plants that produce spores
are called sporophytes, which simply means spore-plant, a plant that produces
spores.
And speaking of sporophytes – we found plenty of them on
the mosses growing on the soil at the edge of the trail. The moss sporophyte is
a tiny, needle-like structure that grows from the end of the small, green,
leafy moss plant. It is topped by a capsule that contains spores. So if the
sporophyte grows from the end of the moss, what is the moss called? It is a
gametophyte, meaning a plant that produces gametes (sex cells – eggs and
sperms). The moss organs that produce eggs and sperm are found at the very tip
of the plant. After the egg cell is fertilized by the sperm it develops into a
sporophyte, anchored in and nutritionally supported by the gametophyte. This is
the same life cycle seen in ferns, only the fern sporophyte is the large, green
leafy plant. The fern gametophyte is a small, inconspicuous plant from which
the sporophyte grows. Ferns sporophytes can grow to much greater sizes and
heights because they posses vascular tissue. The vascular tissue is specialized
to transport water and mineral nutrients from the earth to the upper reaches of
the plant. Mosses lack such specialized transportation tissues and can never
reach the size or height of ferns. They are limited to passing nutrients from
cell to cell instead of a vascular plumbing system through which fluids can
flow. Such a tissue, specialized for fluid transportation, allows ferns and
other vascular plants, like pine trees and oaks, to reach tremendous heights.
We followed the White trail to the second junction with
the Red trail and there we found what we were seeking: a Swamp chestnut oak. The
closely related Chestnut Oak is found further north in the mountains. The leaf
resembles that of the chestnut, hence the name. The Swamp chestnut oak leaf is
similar in shape, but even broader and the bark is light and very shingley,
like a white oak. The photo below shows both leaves and bark.
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| Swamp chestnut oak |
Mushrooms: As
I did two weeks ago I encourage you visit
Don's facebook album to see his wonderful photographs of the mushrooms we
observed on the White trail and our return on the Red and Green trails. The
full list of mushrooms is in the "Species Observed" section at the
bottom of this post.
SUMMARY OF OBSERVED SPECIES:
Gingko tree
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Gingko biloba
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American witch hazel
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Hamamelis virginiana
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Japanese witch hazel
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Hamamelis japonica
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Southern red oak
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Quercus falcata
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Golden aster AKA camporweed
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Heterotheca latifolia
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Late blue aster
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Symphiotricum patens
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Hophornbeam
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Ostrya virginiana
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Yaupon holly
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Ilex vomitoria
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Mist flower
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Conoclinium oelestinum
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Goldenrod
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Solidago sp.
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White heath aster
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Symphiotricum pilosum
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Ash tree
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Fraxinus sp.
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Cranefly orchid
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Tipularia discolor
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False turkey tail mushroom
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Stereum ostrea
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Red oak
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Quercus rubra
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White oak
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Quercus alba
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Southern grape fern
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Botrychium biternatum
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Moss with sporophytes
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No ID
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Swamp chestnut oak
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Quercus michauxii
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Mushrooms
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Amanita
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Amanita sp.
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Waxy cap
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Hygrocybe sp.
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Crowded parchment fungus
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Trametes complicatum
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Hedgehog mushroom
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Hydnum repandum
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Clavariadelphus
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Clavariadelphus sp.
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Armillaria
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Armillaria sp.
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Mock oyster/Orange oyster
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Phllyotopsis nidulans
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Mustard yellow polypore
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Phellinus gilvus
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Violet toothed polypore
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Trichaptum biforme
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Oyster mushroom
Brown Matsutake
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Pleurotus ostreatus
Tricholoma caligatum
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