Today's Ramble was lead by Linda Chafin.
Here's the link
to Don's Facebook album for today's Ramble. (All the photos in this post are
compliments of Don unless otherwise credited.)
Today's post was written by Dale Hoyt.
No. attending: 20
Today's reading:
Bob Ambrose treated us to another of his poems:
On The Necessity of Coronata
There
is a final dignity to it all,
a
calling in the cogs and cycles,
the
bones and blood of Gaia.
Consider
the coronata, just
a
common perching bird, honed
to
grace the New World winter.
Perhaps
you caught an idle glimpse
looking
out from the kitchen sink
as the
spring wave worked north.
You
may call them butter butts.
They
are not diminished
but go
about their business
skimming
insects from the surface
of
rivers, gleaning from leaves,
stealing
from spiderwebs,
warbling
the northern woods in summer.
They
flit through conifer stands
flashing
butter yellow rump,
then
flood the continent in fall
from
the great blue-green spruce
down
ancestral flyways.
In the
dearth of winter they settle
into
Southern scrub, Eastern woods,
and
mountain hollows to digest the wax
from
myrtle berries. Someone must —
it’s a
niche, and who’s to say a minor
role,
this living piece of the whole?
(Note: If you're mystified by the title of Bob's poem maybe this will
help: the scientific name of the Yellow-rumped Warbler is Setophaga coronata; it is also colloquially called
"butter butt.")
Announcements:
Thurs., Sept. 1, 12:30PM;
Sher & Barbara Ali invite Ramblers for a Pizza Luncheon at their TREEHOUSE
at 170 Evergreen Terrace off of Cherokee Road in Winterville, GA. Children
& Grandchildren are welcome. If you will attend let them know at
706-202-5324 or 706-247-1769.
Weds., Sept. 7, 9AM; @ Sandy Creek Nature Center. Guided Walk with Carmen Champagne looking
for spiders, insects & other small creatures. Carmen has a great eye for
spotting these little animals. Not only can she identify them, she knows lots
about their natural history.
Weds., Sept. 14, 7-8:30PM; An Evening of
Poetry and Nature @ Russell Special Collections Library. Free
parking at Hull St. Deck next to the Library. An evening of local authors
celebrating poetry and nature hosted by UGA Friends of the Georgia Museum of
Natural History. Reading their poems will be: Philip Lee Williams, Clela Reed,
Robert Ambrose, Jr. and retired Ecology professor John Pickering. For more information
and directions click here.
Today's route:
Down the White trail to the power line and then to the river.
Mystery fruit: Only
a short way into today's ramble we found what at first looked like an Oak apple
gall, but it was solid (the gall is hollow). Cutting it open revealed something
that looked like a seed, but of what plant no one had a clue. Continuing
downhill, we found what looked to be a cache of a half dozen or so of these
fruits, possibly stashed by a squirrel. After the ramble and some
googling Linda came to the conclusion that it was the fruit of one of the many Camellias
in the Shade garden.
 | |
| Chanterelle mushrooms |
 | |
| False Chanterelle mushrooms growing on wood. |
Thanks to the recent rains Mushrooms have finally made an appearance in the Garden. On the
White trail, going downhill toward the power line we found a few Chanterelles and a group of mushrooms growing
on a decomposing log that we're calling False
Chanterelles, but they don't match a lot of the descriptions seen on the
internet. True Chanterelles grow from the soil, so the ones we found on the log
are not true Chanterelles. True Chanterelles are roughly trumpet shaped and
have gills that continue a short distance down the stalk from the cap. These
are not true gills; they are simple folds, but, like true gills, they are the
spore producing surfaces of the mushrooms.
 | |
| Fragile Dapperling mushroom before losing its head. |
We also found a number of Fragile Dapperling mushrooms. These tall, delicate looking
mushrooms resemble Japanese parasols. One of the Ramblers found the common name
very appropriate when she gently touched the cap and it immediately fell off.
The nature of a mushroom:
The hidden body of a mushroom is called the mycelium and is invisible to us. It consists of a vast network of
microscopic threads, called hyphae
(singular, hypha) that weave and
tangle through the substrate (e.g., soil, dead leaves or logs) they grow in.
The hyphae secrete enzymes that break down organic material much like our
digestive tract breaks down our food into simpler molecules. These smaller
molecules are then absorbed by the hyphae and used to make more of the fungal mycelium.
Similarly, our small intestine absorbs the products of digestion.
Mushrooms call
into question common ideas about sexual reproduction: Mushrooms are the
fungal equivalent of flowers in the sense that the function of flowers is to
produce seeds. Like flowers, a mushroom's function is sexual reproduction. They
produce microscopic spores, the functional equivalent of seeds, that can be
carried great distances by air currents. But with mushrooms the sexual part of
reproduction occurred long before the mushroom appeared. It happened when
genetically different hyphae met underground and fused with one another. This
fusion produces hyphae that contain two distinct nuclei. As the hyphae continue
to grow each kind of nucleus also divides and each remains separate within the
cytoplasm of the growing hypha. The different nuclei don't fuse together until
the mushroom is formed. Then, within the hyphae that makeup the mushroom gills,
the millions of descendants of the two original nuclei fuse together and
undergo the sexual divisions that produce spores.
Mycorhhizal fungi:
Some (but not all) fungi enter into a symbiotic relationship with plants. They
envelope the roots of these plants and provide them with more water and mineral
nutrients than the roots could get by themselves. In exchange, the plants feed
the fungi with sugars produced by photosynthesis in their leaves. It's a
partnership in which both members benefit. These fungi are called mycorhhizal,
a term that simply means "fungus-root." I don't know why the double
"r" is necessary, but that is the way it's spelled in English.
 |
| Tall Thistle flower and buds. |
Thistles: The
first flower encountered was a Tall Thistle, in the Sunflower family
(Asteraceae). Unlike the "typical" Asteracea thistles have no ray
florets; the flower heads are composed entirely of disk florets. The fuzzy
purple projections that give thistle flowers their characteristic look are the forked
styles of individual florets sticking up above the tiny corollas. There are a
number of invasive thistle species but one way to separate them is by the color
of the undersurface of the leaves. Our native thistle leaves have a white
undersurface while the non-natives have green undersides. (This is a good
rule-of-thumb, but there may be exceptions.)
 | |
| Cloudless Sulphur caterpillar on Maryland (Wild) Senna. |
The Cloudless Sulphur is a common summer butterfly that, like the
Gulf Fritillary, is an immigrant to our area from Florida. It cannot survive
our winters here in the Piedmont, so our population is renewed each year by
migrants from further south. The food plant of the Cloudless Sulphur
caterpillar is Senna and on the Wild Senna (Senna
marilandica) plants in the power line ROW we found several caterpillars. This
website has many photographs of all stages in the life history of the butterfly
as well as information about and photographs of its host plants in Florida.
(There is also a discussion of the extrafloral nectaries of the host
plants!) If you have an interest in this I strongly suggest that you visit the
site.
 | |
| Sleepy Orange caterpillar on Maryland Senna Notice the tiny droplets on hairs visible against the background. |
The Sleepy Orange is a resident butterfly whose larvae also feed
on Senna. Their caterpillars are even more cryptically colored than those of
the Cloudless Sulphur. Their entire body is green with a narrow white line on
each side. When the caterpillar is on the edge of a stem or petiole it looks
just like a part of the plant and is very hard to find. We probably overlooked
many of them. This caterpillar is covered with many fine, glandular hairs. (A
glandular hair secretes a tiny droplet of fluid.) The function of these hairs
in this species is not known, but it has been investigated in another species
in the same family, the Cabbage White butterfly. In that species the secretion
of the hairs is an ant repellant. Because the Senna plant has extra-floral
nectaries it attracts a lot of ants, so an ant repellant would be a good thing
for a caterpillar to possess. (But there is no such thing as a free lunch in
nature: the Cabbage White's secretion that repels ants actually attracts a
parasitic wasp that lays its eggs on the caterpillar. Sometimes you can't win.)
 | |
| Silvery Checkerspot butterfly |
 | |
| Silvery Checkerspot caterpillar |
Another butterfly that we often see flying in the Garden, the Silvery
Checkerspot, uses the various species of Wingstems as its larval host
plant. We located a single caterpillar this morning.
 | |
| Yellow-collared Scape moths mating. |
Don found a mating pair of Yellow-collared scape moths resting on
foliage. (The common name of this species really ought to be Orange-collared.
Since there are no rules about common names we can call it that if we want.)
This species is in the tiger moth family and belongs to a subgroup called
"Wasp moths," named for their superficial resemblance to wasps. The
males of related species are known to gather distasteful substances from plants
in the genus Eupatorium
(Thoroughworts). They store these in the sperm packages that they transfer during
mating to their female partner. She uses them to coat her eggs, thus protecting
them from predators. Males that collect more of the distasteful substances are
better able to attract mates. I've not been able to confirm that the
Yellow-collared scape moth does the same thing, but they are related to moths
that do, so it seems likely they could have similar habits.
Confusing
names: Fritillaries. In our area there are only three species of butterflies that have
Fritillary in their common names: Variegated Fritillary, Gulf
Fritillary and Great Spangled Fritillary. (There are two other Fritillary
species found in the north Georgia mountains.) On previous Rambles this year we
have seen only the Gulf Fritillary here in the Garden. These three species share
the Fritillary name because they all have an orange-brown coloration with
darker spots, similar to the color pattern of a group of Eurasian plants called
"Fritillaries." The larval food plant of the Great Spangled
Fritillary is exclusively violets; the Variegated Fritillary caterpillars can
feed on violets or passion vines, but prefer passion vines and the Gulf
Fritillary larvae feed exclusively on passion vines. The Gulf Fritillary is
closely related to a group of tropical butterflies called Longwings that also
are passion vine specialists.
 | |
| Margined Blister Beetle |
One of the surprises this morning was the discovery of a Margined Blister Beetle, named for an unusual property: their blood contains a caustic chemical
called cantharidin. When roughly handled they release blood from their
leg joints that will cause blisters to develop on the skin. If ingested, cantharadin
produces an effect similar to Viagra on men, but with additional unpleasant
side effects. The late biologist Thomas Eisner, in his book For the Love of
Insects, tells the story of a French physician, J. Meynier, stationed with a
military garrison in Algeria in 1869. A large number of soldiers sought his
help, all suffering from the same symptoms: "abdominal pain, dryness of
mouth, pronounce thirst, frequent and painful urination, general weakness,
depressed pulse rate, reduced arterial pressure, lowered body temperature,
nausea and anxiety," accompanied by painful and prolonged Viagra-like
effects. Dr. Meynier discovered that all the men had feasted on frog legs they
had collected locally the night before. He then went to the nearby swamp and
discovered that the frogs had been eating large quantities of blister beetles that
were extremely abundant there. Dr. Meynier, as well as other physicians of the time,
knew of cantharidin and that it was found in Spanish fly, which is the finely
ground bodies of dried Blister beetles. The frogs had eaten the blister beetles
and absorbed cantharidin in their tissues and the poison was passed on to the
men who had eaten frog legs.
 |
| Bowl and Doily spider web enhanced by dew on the silk threads. |
 | |
| The Bowl and Doily spider, much enlarged, resting on the bottom of the Bowl. |
On a cool morning like today, when the air temperature is below the dew
point, spider webs become very conspicuous, being covered in dew. Especially
common are the beautiful webs of the Bowl and Doily spider, named for
the two parts of its web. Uppermost is the Bowl, a cup or bowl-shaped tangle of
silken threads, the part that captures prey. Beneath the bowl and separated by
a short distance is a flat platform, the "doily" of the name. (A
doily is a circular piece of lace used by your grandmother to protect the
surface of furniture from being scratched by objects like bowls that were set
on it.) The spider clings to the bottom of the bowl above the doily, waiting
for tiny insects to be entangled by the threads of silk in the bowl. As her
prey struggles to escape they fall to the bottom of the bowl and she bites
them, injecting a venom that kills or paralyzes them. She then can suck them
dry at her leisure.
 | |
| Wolf Spider |
 |
| Wolf Spider eyes (enlarged from above) There are 8 eyes -- count them! |
Wolf spiders have a
different, more active way of finding their prey. They do not spin webs and
passively wait for their food to blunder into their trap. They hunt, running
through the grass root jungles in search of their food. When they find it they
fall upon it like their vertebrate namesakes. Such an active lifestyle requires
good vision and Wolf spiders have it: eight eyes, a small pair on the top of
the head and, in the front, a large pair of eyes with a row of four small eyes
beneath. "The better to see you with, my Dear."
 |
| Dodder |
A bright orange Dodder was seen wrapped around some unfortunate
plant. Dodders are flowering vascular plants that are fully parasitic and
totally lack chlorophyll, thus their bright orange color. They start life as a
rooted plant, but once they sink their haustoria into a host plant, the connection
to the ground withers away.
 | |
| Frostweed |
Two of our three Wingstems (genus Verbesina) are starting to flower. One has small white flowers and
is known as Frostweed (V.
virginica). In late Autumn/early Winter when we get our first hard freezes
the stems of Frostweed split open and thin ribbons of ice curl out. To see
these beautiful ice formations you will need to get here before the sun hits
the plants and destroys them.
All the plants in the genus Verbesina can be collectively referred
to as "Wingstems" because they have long, thin ridges of tissue that
run most of the length of the stem. There is some variation in how well developed
these "wings" are from plant to plant as well as within the length of
the stem of some plants, but most plants clearly have the wings.
 | |
| Wingstem flowers |
The other Wingstem that has started to bloom is Wingstem (V. alternifolia); a little later another
yellow-flowered species, Southern (or Yellow) crownbeard (V. occidentalis) will start blooming.
 | |
| Side veiw of Passionflower showing androgynophore; from top down: 1) the 3 styles; 2) the ovary; 3) the stamens with their anthers; f) petals and 5) sepals |
 |
| Passionflower with down turned styles and Carpenter bee; the bee can easily brush against both anthers and stigmas. This is a bisexual (hermaphroditic) flower. (photo by Dale Hoyt) |
 |
| Passionflower with upturned styles and Carpenter bee; the bee will only pick up pollen as the stigmas are too high to be contacted. This is a male flower and will not produce a fruit because it will not be pollinated. |
Passion
flower or Passion vine is arguably one of the most beautiful flowers in the
Piedmont. It is also one of the most unusual. In the center of each blossom is
a structure called an androgynophore (literally, male-female bearer)
that bears the five male stamens with their anthers and, above them, the
pistil, composed of the ovary and three styles with their club-like stigmas. Each
flower opens for one day. The anthers are on the same level, approximately 1/2
to 1 inch above the nectaries at the base of the petals. This distance is just
right for large, husky bees to contact the anthers when they visit the flower
for nectar, but too large for smaller bees to accidentally pick up any pollen
as they visit for nectar. Watch A
Carpenter Bee nectaring on a Passion flower. They are the major pollinator
of Passion flowers.
When the flower first opens in the morning the styles are pointed upward.
In this position they are unlikely to receive any pollen because they are not
positioned low enough to contact the bodies of pollinators hunting for nectar
in the lower part of the flower. After opening the styles bend downwards in
many, but not all plants. In the downward position they are able to contact the
backs of the large carpenter bees that are the major pollinators of the Passion
flower. Those flowers whose styles remain upright are functionally male-only.
The plant and/or its individual flowers can control whether they will be
hermaphrodites or males. Why should a flower give up the ability to produce
seeds? One reason might be competition between flowers for limited resources.
It takes a lot of energy to mature a fruit that contains a lot of seeds. So if
there are a lot of flowers already developing fruits on a plant the newer
flowers might not have enough energy available to produce their fruits. This
idea was tested by cutting the ovary off every flower after it opened in one
group of plants. Another group of plants was left undisturbed. At the end of
the season the first, ovariectomized, group had produced twice as many flowers
as the untreated plants. In addition, the proportion of hermaphroditic flowers
in the first group was almost double that of the untreated plants. Because the
first group never produced any fruits there was more energy available to
produce growth and additional flowers. In the control group (the unmanipulated
flowers) the flowers that were setting fruit used more energy, making less
available for further growth of the plant. Also, because of the smaller amount
of energy available the later flowers were more likely to be functional males
and less likely to be hermaphroditic.
 | |
| Chinese yam (Cinnamon vine) Note the small tubers like miniature potatoes |
We also saw several vines of Chinese yam (aka cinnamon vine), a highly
invasive Asian species. It can be distinguished from our native wild yams by
the presence of small, potato-like tubers in the axils of the leaves
SPECIES OBSERVED:
Common Name
|
Scientific Name
|
Mushrooms
|
|
Chanterelle
|
Cantharellus cibarius
|
False
chanterelle
|
??Hygrophoropsis
aurantiaca??
|
Fragile
Dapperling
|
Leucocoprinus fragilissimus
|
Fruit
|
|
Camellia
fruit
|
Camellia
japonica
|
Flowering plants
|
|
Tall
thistle
|
Cirsium
altissimum
|
Wild senna
|
Senna marilandica
|
Frostweed/white
crownbeard
|
Verbesina
virginica
|
Woodland
sunflower
|
Helianthus
strumosus
|
Wingstem
|
Verbesina
alternifolia
|
Tall
ironweed
|
Vernonia
gigantea
|
False
nettle
|
Boehmeria cylindrica
|
Climbing milkweed/
Eastern anglepod |
Gonolobus suberosus
|
Dodder
|
Cuscuta sp.
|
Passionvine/Passion flower
|
Passiflora incarnata
|
Small white morning glory
|
Ipomoea lacunosa
|
Arrow-leaf tearthumb
|
Persicaria sagittata
|
Mild waterpepper
|
Persicaria hydropiperoides
|
Carolina horsenettle
|
Solanum carolinense
|
Virginia buttonweed
|
Diodia virginiana
|
Lurid sedge
|
Carex lurida
|
Ragweed
|
Ambrosia artemisiifolia
|
Late-flowering thoroughwort
|
Eupatorium serotinum
|
Cinnamon vine/Chinese yams
|
Dioscorea polystachya
|
Ground ivy AKA Gil-over-the-ground
|
Glechoma hederacea
|
Tall goldenrood
|
Solidago altissima
|
Insects & Spiders
|
|
Cloudless sulfur caterpillar
|
Phoebis sennae
|
Sleepy
Orange caterpillar
|
Abaeis nicippe
|
Wolf
spider
|
Family
Lycosidae
|
Silvery
checkerspot butterfly
|
Chlosyne nycteis
|
Sheetweb
spider (webs)
|
Stiphidiida family
|
Bowl and
doily spider (webs)
|
Frontinella communis
|
Margined Blister beetle
|
Epicauta funebris
|
Eastern leaf-footed bug
|
Leptogolossus phyllopus
|
Yellow-collared scape moth
|
Cisseps fulvicollis
|
Plant hopper
|
Superfamily Fulgoroidea
|
