Today's Ramble was led by Dale Hoyt.
The photos in this post, except where
noted, came from Don's Facebook album (here's the link).
Today's post was written by Dale Hoyt
& Linda Chafin.
29 Ramblers met today.
Announcements:
1) One of our Ramblers, Katherine Edison has started a private Facebook group. You may already be a member. The Administrators for the group are Katherine, Emily Carr and Don Hunter. They can add your name to the membership. Once you're a member you can invite others to join.
Here is the purpose of the group:
"This Facebook group was formed to give members of the Weekly Nature
Ramble at the State Botanical Garden of Georgia a way to connect, share
and communicate about nature topics outside of the actual Ramble. It is a
place for Ramblers to share their own photos or reports of interesting
sightings from the Bot Garden or from around the area. It is a place to
share relevant poems, readings, articles and research. It is a place to
connect Ramblers for nature related activities—hikes
with friends, book groups, interesting movies or lectures. It is a
place to share information about fellow Ramblers—significant milestones,
honors, achievements, moves, or health concerns."
Gary Crider is handling the campaign to have a whole row (12 seats) at the Cine theater become a "Rambler Row." If you haven't heard about this fund raising effort please contact Gary at gcrider AT charter DOT net (replace the capitals with the corresponding symbols).
Today's reading was sent in by a
Rambler who has difficulty making our 8:30 Rambles because of living in
Clarkesville. It's a poem by the German poet and author, Ranier Maria Rilke:
A Walk
My eyes already touch the sunny hill,
going far ahead of the road I have
begun.
So we are grasped by what we cannot
grasp:
It has its inner light, even from a
distance——
and changes us, even if we do not
reach it,
into something else, which, hardly
sensing it, we already are;
A gesture waves us on, answering our
own wave. . . .
But what we feel is the wind in our
faces.
Musot,
March 1924
Today's route: Through the
Garden to the Purple Trail; down the Purple Trail to the river; left on the
Orange Trail and back to the Visitor's Center via the Orange Spur trail.
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| Bottlebrush buckeye flower stalk, only one with a fruit |
In the International Garden, just beyond the Flower
Bridge, there is a large Bottlebrush Buckeye
with the tall, sweeping remnants of flower stalks that each bore 300 +/- blossoms
just a few weeks ago. Only a small number of these stalks have fruits. Those
that have fruits bear only one or two toward the tip of the stalk.
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| Most of the flowers are male only, but the pale thread crossing Linda's finger is the style (part of the pistil); the stamens are capped with yellowish tan anthers. (picture from last year) |
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| Terminal part of an infloresence with mostly male flowers (picture taken last year) |
The flowers are of two types, most of the flowers toward
the bottom of the stalk are functionally male – the stamens produce fertile
pollen but lack a complete pistil (the female part). The flowers toward the
tips of the stalk have functional stamens and
fertile ovaries and are therefore able to produce fruits. A quarter of all
inflorescences have all male flowers and of the remaining, only about 20% are
bisexual. So only about 15% of all the flowers produced are capable of setting
fruit.
It seems odd that a plant that produces literally
hundreds of thousands of flowers ends up with so few fruits and seeds (each
fruit has 1-2 seeds).
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| Tiger Swallowtail nectaring at Bottlebrush Buckeye (picture by Ed Wilde, last year) |
The flowers are visited by numerous kinds of bees and
butterflies and one study mentions that "During peak bloom, the wings of
the butterflies would become visibly orange with pollen." This observation
is consistent with butterflies being important pollinators, with the pollen
being transferred by the wings when they come in contact with the pistil as the
butterfly sips nectar.
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| Palmately compound leaves of Bottlebrush Buckeye |
Buckeyes have opposite, palmately compound leaves, which
means that the leaves grow in pairs on opposite sides of their twigs,. Compound
means that each leaf is composed of leaflets, five in the case of Buckeyes.
Palmate means that the leaflets are attached to the leaf stalk (petiole) at a
single point, similar to the fingers on your hand. Those leaf characteristics
make it easy to identify buckeyes.
Hophornbeam and Sapsucker
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| False Turkeytail |
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| Old Mustard-yellow polypore |
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| Turkeytail |
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| Violet-toothed polypore |
We saw four kinds of Bracket fungi today. The bracket refers
to the appearance of the fungal body – like a bracket or shelf to put a nick-knack
on. The four we saw today are dead wood rotters; they are almost never found on
living wood. As Don pointed out, you can tell when they started growing on the
tree by looking at the orientation of the mushroom. If it were growing on a
living tree its undersurface would be parallel to the ground and at right
angles to the axis of the trunk. If the tree then fell over, the undersurface
would be perpendicular to the ground but still at right angles to the trunk
axis. If the fungus started growing after the tree fell its undersurface would
be parallel to the ground and parallel to the trunk axis.
The undersurface of these bracket
fungi is where the spores are produced inside tiny pores that open on the
underside. Each pore is the opening of a tube and the cells on the inside of
the tube produce the reproductive spores. The tube has to be oriented with its
opening toward the ground in order for the spores to fall out, otherwise they
would simply fall inside the tube itself.
These various bracket fungi start the
process of wood decay. Without them the world would stacked high with fallen
tree trunks.
On this dead NRO log we found
Violet-toothed polypore, Mustard Yellow polypore, Turkey Tail and False Turkey
Tail bracket fungi. These fungi sometimes survive over winter to make another
layer of spore producing tissue the following year.
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| Betsy Beetle |
One of the fallen trees produced a Betsy Beetle, sometimes called Patent
Leather beetles or Bess Bugs. They are social insects in the sense that the
male and female remain with their young and care for them, providing them with
food and a tunnel system to live in. This
publication from the University of Florida summarizes quite nicely what is
known about their habits and life history. They communicate with their larvae
and mate by emitting sounds produced by rubbing the tip of the abdomen against
their wings. According to the literature, they have a repertoire of around a
dozen different sounds, which is more than a lot of "higher" animals
make. The sounds are used to communicate with their mate and larvae.
In the north the Betsy Beetles that
I've seen make squeaking noises when you pick them up. Here in the Athens area
I have yet to find one that does so.
Everywhere you go in the Botanical
Garden you will find fallen trees, many of them Northern Red Oaks (NRO). Why this should be is puzzling, but I have
an untested hypothesis. The Garden was established in 1968. Prior to that time
it had been in agriculture and was also logged. That means trees have been
growing unimpeded in the natural areas for almost 50 years. It is likely that
few of the NRO are older than that, especially in the logged and plowed areas
of the garden. NRO is supposed to be a moderate to rapidly growing tree,
depending on conditions. I think that the large NRO that have fallen in the
Garden were part of an even-aged group that survived the last logging/clearing
of the Garden area. They would have grown into the canopy at about the same
time, finally reaching the size where the force of wind acting on the upper
part of the tree exceeded the ability of the root system to resist pulling out
of the ground. The even age structure means that many of the NRO would be
susceptible to wind throw at the same time.
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| Trunk of a Musclewood tree |
Where the Purple Trail meets the Orange Trail there are
two trees, a Hophornbeam and a Musclewood that our former leader, Hugh
Nourse, always pointed out. The bark of these trees is quite different: smooth
and gray in the Musclewood and brown and shredded in the Hophornbeam ("cat
scratch" bark, as Hugh called it). The trunk of the Musclewood looks as if
there are sinews and muscles under the bark, giving the tree one of its common
names.
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| Hophornbeam fruits |
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| Musclewood fruits |
The leaves are similar in shape and double serration, but
Musclewood’s leaves are only slightly hairy (if at all) on the lower surface
while Hop Hornbeam’s leaves are finely hairy over the entire lower surface. The
fruits of both species are clusters of conspicuous bracts up to three inches
long, dangling from the tips of twigs. Musclewood clusters consist of
three-lobed, leafy bracts set below the nutlet; Hop Hornbeam clusters are composed
of papery, inflated sacs that enclose the nutlet.
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| Girdled twig; the dark brown marks where the beetle cut the twig. |
It's not unusual to find twigs and short, leafy branches
fallen from trees, either in your own home or in the Garden. Most people blame
squirrels but often the responsible critter is a twig girdling beetle. It's pretty easy to determine the culprit.
Look at the broken end of the twig. If a smooth channel has been cut around the
circumference at the broken end the guilty party was twig girdler. These
beetles lay their eggs in the twigs at branch ends. The female beetle then
girdles the twig some place below where she has laid her egg. Girdling prevents
the tree from sending chemical defenses that might kill or harm the beetle
larva. It also weakens the twig and the central supporting tissues are easily
broken by winds. If you examine the photo of the Sweet Gum you will clearly see
the smooth, brown girdle chewed by the beetle. The central remaining part is
broken, allowing the twig to fall. Some of the beetles that do this are tree
species specific, others can attack a wider range of host trees.
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| Dead cicada with dead Yellowjacket that got caught with its head in its lunch. |
It's dead cicada
time in the Garden, this week and last week. Again we found the body of a
cicada with the stinger end of a Yellowjacket wasp sticking out of it. This
time the wasp was also dead, apparently drowned by its own gluttony. Other
deceased cicadas have the look of being attacked by a fungus. They have white
areas in parts of their bodies that are normally dark, suggesting the
spore-producing surface of an insect-attacking fungus.
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| Fall Webworm nest |
This week we again found another nest of the Fall Webworm on a small sapling. If the
silken nest contains caterpillars and encloses a leafy branch that they have
fed on, you have a Fall Webmorm nest. If the silken structure is in the crotch
of a large branch or tree and the caterpillars leave the nest to feed you have
the nest of the Eastern Tent Caterpillar. (It will also be early springtime and
the tree will usually be a cherry.)
Last week we looked for Cranefly Orchids and today we just stumbled onto them. A few
Ramblers noticed them in time to keep the rest of us from trampling them. See
last week's Ramble Report for photos.
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| Beech Blight Aphids |
Near the start of the Purple Trail is an American Beech
tree with a large colony of Beech Blight
Aphids on one of its lower branches. These aphids colonies always bring joy
to the hearts of Ramblers when they induce a choreographed boogie woogie of
performing aphids by merely touching the branch or waving their hand nearby.
Search youtube for "beech blight aphid" and you'll find several
movies of their performance. A bowl of popcorn is suggested.
The aphids, in spite of their name, never seem to do
significant damage to the Beech trees. Their sugary droppings (aphid poo) make
them ecosystem engineers for a Sooty Mold fungus that only grows on the
droppings below a colony.
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| Sensitive Fern (sterile frond) |
On the Orange Trail at the end of the
Scout Bridge a group of Sensitive Fern
grows in the wet, marshy area spanned by the bridge. Sensitive Fern has a
separate fertile frond that hasn't developed yet. It looks completely different
from the sterile fronds that are here now. By the way, it's called Sensitive Fern because it's sensitive to cold weather.
SUMMARY OF OBSERVED SPECIES:
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Fungi
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pinwheel mushroom
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Marasmius sp.?
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Violet-toothed polypore
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Trichaptum biforme
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Mustard yellow polypore
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Phellinus gilvus
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False turkey tail mushroom
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Stereum ostrea
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Turkey tail mushroom
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Trametes versicolor
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Berkeley's polypore
mushroom |
Bondazewia berkeleyi
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Pallid bolete
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Boletus pallidus (tentative)
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Insects
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Hemiptera
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Beech blight aphid
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Grylloprociphilus imbricator
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Lepidoptera
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Fall webworm moth
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Hyphantria cunea
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Coleoptera
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Twig girdler
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Family Cerambycidae
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Coleoptera
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Betsy beetle
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Odontotaenius disjuntus
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Coleoptera
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Eastern Hercules Beetle
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Dynastes tityus
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Hemiptera
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Cicada
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Order Hemiptera
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Hymenoptera
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Yellow jacket
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Family Vespidae
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Arachnid
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Golden garden spider
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Agriope aurantia
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Flowering Plants
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Hippocastanaceae
Sapindaceae |
Bottlebrush buckeye
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Aesculus parviflora
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Fagaceae
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American beech tree
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Fagus grandifolia
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Orchidaceae
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Cranefly orchid
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Tipularia discolor
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Betulaceae
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Musclewood tree
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Carpinus caroliniana
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Betulaceae
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Hophornbeam tree
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Ostrya virginiana
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Lamiaceae
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Lyre-leaf sage
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Salvia lyrata
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Ferns
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Sensitive Fern
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Onoclea sensibilis
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