Today's Ramble was led by Linda Chafin.
The photos in this post, except where
noted, came from Don's Facebook album (here's the link).
Today's post was written by Linda
Chafin.
26 Ramblers met today.
Announcements:
1) Last week our fellow Rambler, George, passed away after a brief
illness. George had the keenest eye of all our Ramblers, including the young
ones. He also volunteered as a trail guide at Sandy Creek Nature Center. We
will miss him.
2) Gary
informed us that our effort to obtain a row of seats at Cine is a success. We
now have a row of twelve seats and two more, wrapped around one of the row ends.
Thanks to everyone who made this possible.
3) Don announced that he will be leading a Nature Ramble
at the Coweeta Hydrologic Laboratory the second weekend in September, most
likely on the Saturday. Details to follow.
Today's reading: Linda
read excerpts from a Mary Oliver poem, “Work,” from her book The Leaf and the Cloud.
I am a woman sixty years old and of no
special courage.
Everyday –– a little conversation with
God, or his envoy
the tall pine, or the grass-swimming
cricket.
Everyday –– I study the difference
between water and stone.
Everyday –– I stare at the world; I push
the grass aside and stare at the world.
The dreamy heads of the grass in early
summer.
In midsummer: thick and heavy.
Sparrows swing on them, they bend down.
When the sparrow sings, its whole body
trembles.
Later, the pollen shakes free.
Races this way and that way,
Like a mist full of life, which it is.
We stand at the edge of the field,
sneezing.
We praise god, or nature, according to
our determinations.
Then the grass curls or breaks, or we
cut it.
What does it matter?
Do you think the grass is growing so
wild and thick for its own life?
Do you think the cutting is the ending,
and not, also, a beginning?
This is the world.
The pink globes of the peonies
Open under the sun’s early morning
hands.
The vine of the honeysuckle
perks upward––
the fine-hold of its design
did not need to be so wonderful, did it?
But it is.
This is the world.
The bat squeaks.
The bat leans down out of dark July
With his elf’s face.
The twenty-winged cloud of yellow
butterflies
Floats into the field.
The mustard-heads bend under their soft
weight.
This is the world.
Today's route: We left the fountain plaza for the Shade Garden arbor, then went down the
right sidewalk through the Shade Garden to the Dunson Native Flora Garden,
crossed the road and explored the adjacent clearing to the power line right of
way, walked uphill to the White Trail and returned to the Visitor Center.
Shade Garden:
 | |
| Logs inoculated with mushroom spawn |
In the upper part of the Shade Garden there is a row of
small logs leaning against a wall. According to Joey Allen, curator of the
Shade and Dunson gardens, these and many other cut log and limb sections seen
around the Garden are inoculated with plugs of mushroom spawn to grow a variety
of edible and medicinal mushrooms. (Mushroom spawn is a mixture of sawdust and
living mushroom mycelia.) This makes beneficial use of limbs and tree trunks
salvaged after summer storms. They are ordinarily taken to the UGA bio-reclamation
plant on Whitehall Road where they are run through a chipper and added to other
plant and food waste from campus dining halls to make mulch.
 | |
| Bigleaf Magnolia leaves and fruits |
Near the bottom of the slope in the Shade Garden we
stopped at a Bigleaf Magnolia. All
magnolias are characterized by their distinctive fruits–a cone-like structure
made up of many fused follicles. (A
follicle is a small pod that opens along one side to release a bright red seed.)
We have seven native species of Magnolia in Georgia. Here
are some notes on how to tell them apart:
If you are in
North Georgia (north of line drawn between Columbus, Macon, and Augusta):
Cucumber Magnolia
(Magnolia acuminata) is the hardest
of all these to recognize. Both bark and leaves are sort of generic in
appearance. The leaves are small compared to those of southern magnolia and
they are deciduous. The bark is grayish-brown (not too dark) with flat vertical
ridges breaking into rectangular plates. This is similar to lots of other tree
species, but distinctive among magnolias which otherwise have smooth, gray
bark. The inner bark is cinnamon-colored. The leaves are green on the lower
surface, not whitish, and taper to both tip and base. They resemble a lot of
other tree leaves: sourwood, persimmon, and black gum, to name a few. It grows
in nearly all counties north of the Fall Line and likes cool, moist slopes and
bottomlands.
Fraser Magnolia
(Magnolia fraseri) is a Southern
Appalachian endemic, in Georgia found only in the 10 Blue Ridge counties of NE
Georgia. It is easy to recognize: the bark is smooth and gray, and the leaves
have “ears” at the base, i.e. the base of the leaf has lobes that curve down, one
on either side of the leaf stalk. The lower leaf surface is a dull green. Remember:
Fras-‘ear’ Magnolia. Its white flower opens in late April and early May but has
an unpleasant odor. It is a deciduous tree that grows in cool, acidic forests
with chestnut oak, sourwood, white pine, and hemlock.
Bigleaf Magnolia
(Magnolia macrophylla) is also
deciduous and its leaves are also “eared” at the base, but you would never
confuse it with Fraser because its leaves are huge (!), up to 30 inches long. This
is the largest simple leaf of any tree in North America! They are whitish on
the lower surface. Its bark is smooth and gray. The flowers are also the
largest of any tree on the continent–up to 16 inches across when fully opened–and
each petal is marked with a deep purple splotch at the base. They are
wonderfully fragrant. It has an unusual distribution in Georgia, growing in the
cool, moist ravines along the Chattahoochee River and its tributaries down the
west side of the state as far south as Fort Gaines, about 60 miles north of the
Florida line.
Ashe’s Magnolia
(Magnolia ashei) was once thought to
be just a variety of Bigleaf but is now recognized as a separate species. It is
not native to Georgia, but was planted in the Dunson Garden. It is more or less
a miniature Bigleaf Magnolia–it stays shrub size and often has multiple crooked
stems rising from the root crown. Its leaves and flowers are nearly identical
to Bigleaf’s. It grows only in the Florida Panhandle (Torreya State Park is a
great place to see it in its native habitat of moist slopes in ravines).
Umbrella Magnolia
(Magnolia tripetala) is another
deciduous Magnolia with large leaves, though not as large as Bigleaf’s, with
tapering tips and bases, like Cucumber. What distinguishes this species is that
the leaves are clustered near the tips of stout, upturned twigs, creating an
umbrella-like effect. They are pale green but not whitened on the lower
surface. It is an understory tree that generally occurs northwest and southwest
of Atlanta, though it occurs naturally at Stone Mountain Park.
Three species most
commonly seen in South Georgia (south of line drawn between Columbus, Macon,
and Augusta):
Pyramid Magnolia
(Magnolia pyramidata) leaves resemble
Fraser’s–they have tapering tips and eared bases–but the ranges of the two
species do not overlap; Pyramid Magnolia is strictly a Coastal Plain species.
Like Umbrella Magnolia’s, the leaves are clustered near the tips of twigs,
umbrella-fashion, but the eared leaf bases distinguish it from Umbrella. It has
smooth, gray bark and creamy white or yellowish flowers, usually less than 7
inches across.
Southern Magnolia
(Magnolia grandiflora) was once found
only in South Georgia, but it has spread from cultivation so that now it is
found throughout the state, except in the mountains. Some people consider it an
exotic invasive in north Georgia, spreading into the understory of Piedmont
Oak-Hickory forests where its dark, glossy, evergreen leaves look oddly out of
place. In South Georgia, it occurs in a moist plant community known as the
Beech-Magnolia-White Oak ravine forest. There its thick, leathery leaves help
prevent the spread of fire into this fire-sensitive community from surrounding
upland fires in the longleaf pine forest.
Sweet Bay (Magnolia virginiana) is one of four tree
species in the Coastal Plain that are called bays: Sweet Bay, Loblolly Bay, Red
Bay, and Swamp Red Bay. They share two traits:
evergreen leaves and a lowland, moist to wet habitat. Except for Loblolly Bay,
they all have sweetly spicy leaves. Sweet Bay leaves are less than 6 inches
long, dark green and leathery above, and chalky grayish white underneath. Its
bark is smooth and gray and its fragrant flowers are only about 3 inches wide. Primarily
a species of South Georgia, it is also scattered throughout the Piedmont.
Along the sidewalk, we encountered a large planted patch
of a fern known as Mariana Maiden Fern,
a native of the Asian and African tropics including the Mariana Islands. It is
invasive in some parts of the south, and has shown up in the Oconee River
floodplain here at the Garden, where it is promptly eradicated. Unfortunately,
it is widely sold, and often mistaken for a native
We quickly encountered another aggressive exotic species,
Leatherleaf Mahonia, planted in the
Shade Garden. A shrubby member of the barberry family (like Nandina), it has large blue berries that
attract birds. Its leggy habit and prickly leaves would seem to make it an
unlikely candidate for the landscaping, but it is highly popular and widely
sold despite appearing on the Exotic Pest Plant list of several southern
states.
 | |
| Cardinal Flower |
Crossing one of the stone bridges, we saw one of
Georgia’s most striking native wildflowers, Cardinal Flower, with their velvety red flowers. It is the only
lobelia in Georgia not having white or blue flowers. It’s found in wetlands
throughout Georgia.
Near the entrance to the Dunson Garden, we saw much
evidence of damage due to deer browsing. Particularly hard hit were Acuba and Sweet Shrub.
Linda pointed out the contour piles on the side of the
hill above the Dunson garden. These have been created with limbs and twigs to reduce
erosion and also make a friendly place for birds and small animals.
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| Oyster Mushrooms |
We saw an enormous flush of Oyster Mushrooms on a large dead tree on the ground in the Dunson
Garden.
White
Trail:
Leaving the Shade Garden, we crossed the road on the
White Trail, where we took up today’s theme: grasses.
There are two informal
groups of grasses: cool season
grasses and warm season grasses. Cool
season grasses flower and go to seed in the spring and early summer. Warm
season grasses flower and fruit in the late summer and fall. Cool-season
grasses grow rapidly during spring and early summer when days are warm and
nights are cool. When temperatures rise much above 90°, they stop growing or
even go dormant. They begin to grow again in the fall when daytime temperatures
drop and stop growing only when it gets too cold. Some cool season species may
even remain green during Georgia’s mildest winters. Although warm-season
grasses are the “backbone of prairies,” cool-season grasses play an important role
in sustaining wildlife early in the growing season. On the other hand,
warm-season grasses flourish in Georgia’s hot summers and dry autumns. They
have adapted to such conditions by evolving a special kind of photosynthesis
called C4 that reduces the amount of moisture lost during photosynthesis,
allowing these plants to flourish in dry, hot, sunny climates. (Only about 3%
of all plants use C4 photosynthesis.) Cool season grasses have the common type
of photosynthesis, called C3. (C4 plants capture carbon dioxide in a 4-carbon
compound in the first step of photosynthesis; C3 grasses capture it in a
3-carbon compound.) The truth is: not all grasses fall neatly into these two
camps. Some species, like River Oats, a C3 grass, start flowering in the late
spring and bloom till fall.
 | |
| Coral Slime Mold |
The recent rains stimulated the growth of several kinds
of mushrooms found on downed limbs and twigs including a beautiful Coral Slime Mold (which is not even a fungus).
ROW and adjacent clearing:
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| Witch Grass with flower stalks |
As we headed closer to the ROW, we stopped to look at two
species of Witch Grass. Witch
Grasses have an interesting life cycle. As a C3, cool season grass, Witch Grass
flowers in the spring, usually producing several upright, unbranched stems
topped with a small but open cluster of spikelets (a grass flower is usually called
a spikelet). Each spikelet is tiny and oval, resembling a turtle’s head in
profile. The plants then stop growing in the summer; in early fall they begin
to produce sprawling, branched stems that have seed heads on the branches.
After this second flowering and seed set, they produce a rosette of shorter,
wider over-wintering leaves. Winter leaves allow the plants to photosynthesize
on sunny winter days, giving the plants a head start in the spring.
We looked at the distinctive basal leaves of Poverty Oat Grass, a cool season grass that
flowered back in May. There is no sign of their seed heads, but the base of the
plant is surrounded by pale tan, dried, curling leaves from the previous year.
These persistent leaves allow Poverty Oat Grass to be recognized year-round. It
grows in the worst soil that Georgia can throw at it; where this species is
abundant, its presence predicts a life of poverty for the farmers who try to
till that soil.
Jeff pointed out several tiny toads or frogs hopping near
the edge of the woods. We caught a couple and determined that they are recently
metamorphosed Eastern Spadefoots.
See last week's post for a rant about toads and frogs.
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| Beaked Panic Grass spikelets |
Beaked Panic Grass,
a C4 grass, is just beginning to flower. It flourishes along the trails and
roads in the Garden wherever there is plenty of light. Ramblers’ interest was
piqued by the genus name Panicum, and
someone looked up its etymology. Chambers's Twentieth Century Dictionary says
that the name derives from panicula a
Latin word meaning “a thread wound around a bobbin.” No connection to Panic
Grasses as we know them could be made. The genus name Panicum was first applied to Millet, so maybe there’s a connection
there? Was Millet wound round a bobbin when it was harvested? Were its sheaves
tied with a string? Big prize awaits the Rambler who can puzzle this one out.
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| Foxtail Grass |
Foxtail Grass,
a C4 grass, is also beginning to flower, putting up its distinctive flower
cluster; each tiny Foxtail Grass spikelet sits just above one or many bristles,
so that the whole cluster resembles the bushy tail of a fox fixed to the top of
a slender stem. This is a common grass of roadsides and looks especially pretty
on fall mornings when low angled sunlight shines through the bushy spikes.
 | |
| Crab Grass flowers closeup stamens are white with tan anthers dark fuzzy structures are stigmas |
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| Crab Grass flower cluster |
Crab Grass also
has a distinctive flower cluster held at the top of its slender stems. Two to
several spikes radiate from the top of the stem like fingers from a hand (which
accounts for its scientific name Digitaria).
Each spike is covered with many minute spikelets. While there are a few native Digitaria species, most are exotic,
invasive, and a bane to those who manage lawns.
Chinese Silk Grass
is still hanging on in the powerline right-of-way. Widely planted in the Garden
in the early days, clumps of Chinese Silk Grass are still turning up despite
our efforts to eradicate it. It’s an invasive exotic, native to eastern Asia.
Photos of it enveloping hills in North Carolina are frightening. It’s only
recently showing up in natural areas in Georgia and may be inhibited by hotter
weather. Unfortunately, it is widely sold and planted by commercial
landscapers. Dozens of clumps of it were planted along the front edge of the
EPA property on College Station Road.
 | |
| Johnson Grass |
Grasses are dominating the test plots in the
right-of-way, including both planted natives and several species of invasive
exotics, including large clumps of Vasey
Grass and Johnson Grass. The
wide leaves with broad white midveins of both of these grasses could be
mistaken for those of our beautiful native, Silver Plume Grass. Fortunately,
the flower clusters are very different. Several Silver Plume Grass flower
stalks are up and just beginning to display the large, silvery-pink flower heads.
Greasy Grass (aka Purple-top) also has its showy flower
clusters in full form–the waxy coating on each spikelet is easily felt when you
run the cluster tightly through a fist.
 | |
| Mountain-mint (center) & Spotter Bee-balm (L&R) |
 | |
| Eastern Tiger Swallowtail, dark form female The dark tiger stripes are visible on the underside of the wing, but obscured on the upper wing surface. |
The test plots are also putting on quite a display of
native mints. Mountain-mints and Spotted Bee-balm are in full glory and
attracting lots of pollinators. A black form female Eastern Tiger Swallowtail could be seen moving from plant to plant.
A Sicklepod is growing along the
edges of the test plot.
The stems of Bluestems
(Andropogon sp. ) are beginning to emerge from their basal rosettes. The leaf
sheaths that enclose the stems have a waxy whitish coating that retards water
loss and gives the plants a blue-green color. They are the last grasses to
flower; we’ll examine them in detail in October.
 | |
| Fragrant Flat Sedge |
Fragrant Flat-sedge
provided an opportunity to review the differences between sedges and grasses,
with a recounting of the jingle that describes their stems: “sedges have edges, rushes are round, and
grasses are hollow down to the ground.” Most sedge stems are strongly 3-angled.
Rushes have round stems that are solid with pith. And grasses have round or
slightly two-edged stems that are hollow except at the leaf nodes.
 | |
| White Crownbeard (Frostweed) |
The emerging prominence of warm season grasses is one of
the best harbingers of fall, along with the colorful flower heads of many Aster
family species. As we approached the base of the Nash Prairie, we stopped to
look at White Crownbeard, aka Frostweed. Ramblers are big fans of
Frostweed because of the frozen sap “frost flowers” produced on the stems after
the first autumn frosts. It is one of the alternate-leaved wingstems.
 | |
| Elephant's Foot |
Elephant’s Foot
is now blooming. Although it is a composite, it does not follow the typical
composite flower head model: a central
disk of tiny flowers surrounded by a whorl of petal-like ray flowers. Held only
at the top of the stem, each Elephant’s foot flower head has 2 or 3 green, triangular, ½ - inch bracts and
several pink or lavender
flowers, each about ⅓ inch long and deeply dissected into 5 narrow
lobes.
 | |
| Carolina Desert Chicory |
One Carolina Desert
Chicory, aka False Dandelion, is still in flower, perhaps fooled by
the recent heavy rains into thinking it's spring–it typically flowers March
through June. Its flower heads also depart from the composite pattern, being
consisting only of disk flowers. Its disk flowers are long and narrow and look
a lot like rays.
Several Trumpet
Vine flowers lay scattered on the ground at the edge of the right-of-way.
They fooled us into thinking we’d lucked on a stand of chanterelle mushrooms. From
a distance, they looked much like chanterelles because they had landed with the
trumpets pointed straight up, looking like the mushrooms.
 | |
| Peppermint Surprise Lily |
The old display
beds that were planted in the powerline when the Garden was young (1970s and
80s), and largely cleared about twenty years ago, are still producing some
ornamental lovelies, in this case Peppermint Surprise Lily, one of the Lycoris species that seem to pop up out
of nowhere with no leaves in sight (the more commonly seen Surprise Lily, the
one with the ruffled coral-colored flowers, is Lycoris radiata). Lycoris
leaves wither in early summer and will re-emerge in late winter. Surprise! Surprise Lily is not actually a lily – it is in
the Amaryllis Family.
 | |
| Buckeye fruits |
Two Buckeyes,
probably Red Buckeyes, are still surviving in the right-of-way and are
loaded with their large brown fruits, in one case splitting open to reveal the
glossy brown seeds that resemble a deer’s eye. We noted how small the leaflets
are compared to the Red Buckeyes growing in shady parts of the Garden, a classic
example of how much smaller “sun leaves” are than “shade leaves.”
 | |
| Scarlet Creeper |
Scarlet Creeper, aka Red Morning Glory, with its heart-shaped leaves, is twining
over some of the old plants and was loaded with bright red-orange flowers that
are butterfly magnets. Though native to the SE US, its aggressive growth can
become a problem for gardeners.
SUMMARY OF OBSERVED SPECIES:
Big Leaf Magnolia
|
Magnolia macrophylla
|
Marianna Maiden Fern
|
Macrothelypteris torresiana
|
Cardinal Flower
|
Lobelia cardinalis
|
Mahonia
|
Mahonia sp.
|
Acuba
|
Acuba sp.
|
Sweetshrub
|
Calycanthus floridus
|
Oyster Mushroom
|
Pleurotus ostreatus
|
River Oats
|
Chasmanthium latifolium
|
Coral Slime Mold
|
Ceratiomyxa fruiticulosa
|
Witch Grass
|
Dicanthelium sp.
|
Poverty Oat Grass
|
Danthonia spicata
|
Eastern Spadefoot
|
Scaphiopus holbrookii
|
Beaked Panicgrass
|
Panicum anceps
|
Peppermint Surprise Lily
|
Lycoris incarnata
|
Trumpet Vine
|
Campsis radicans
|
Foxtail Grass
|
Setaria sp.
|
Crabgrass
|
Digitaria sp.
|
Buckeye
|
Aesculus sp.
|
Scarlet Morning Glory
|
Ipomoea coccinea
|
Chinese Silk Grass
|
Boehmeria nivea
|
Flat sedge
|
Cyperus sp.
|
Johnson Grass
|
Sorghum halepense
|
Vasey Grass
|
Paspalum urvillei
|
Mountain Mint (two species)
|
Pycnanthemum sp.
|
Spotted Beebalm
|
Monarda punctata
|
Eastern Tiger Swallowtail
|
Papilio glaucus
|
Purple-top/Greasy grass
|
Tridens flavus
|
Sicklepod
|
Senna obtusifolia
|
Silver Plume Grass
|
Saccharum alopecuroides
|
White Crownbeard/Frostweed
|
Verbesina virginica
|
Carolina Desert Chicory
|
Pyrrhopappus carolinianus
|
Broomsedge
|
Andropogon virginicus
|
Elephant's Foot
|
Elephantopus tomentosa
|
