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 and Dale Hoyt .
24 Ramblers met today.
Announcements:
Tues., Sept. 26, Jaret Daniels talk: Backyard Bugs at the State Botanical Garden
Mon., Oct. 2, 7 p.m.; Janisse Ray will speak in Winterville at the Winterville Cultural Center. The reading will be followed by a book signing and light refreshments.
Today's reading: Bob Ambrose
read After the Storm, his most recent creation, this one inspired by Hurricane Irma.
Here's
the link to the poem.
Today's route: Down the Lanier
Center access road to the Passionflower fence and then across the grass to the
experimental grass removal plots and up the power line right away, returning to
the Visitor Center via the White Trail and the road.
Show &
Tell:
Carla brought some seed pods of Red Yucca, Hesperaloe parviflora. She had opened a
pod and found the seeds sprouting. Linda mentioned that the term “viviparous” is
applied to plants whose seeds sprout and grow while still on the plant, as well
as to animals that produce live young rather than laying eggs. The word means “live-bearing.”
A well known viviparous plant is the Red Mangrove, which grows in coastal
saltwater habitats in south Florida.
Dale brought a twig from a White Oak with a mature acorn on
this year’s growth. The Red Oak twig he brought earlier this summer had two
years of maturing acorns: those from last year that will complete maturation
this fall and this year’s acorns that will mature next year. This difference in
time-to-maturity is one of the main distinctions between the White Oak group
and the Red Oak group.
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| Pearl Millet "Purple Majesty" |
We stopped at the large planter on the steps up to the
plaza where ‘Purple Majesty,’ an ornamental cultivar of Pearl Millet, is
growing. Jeff told us about his and Phyllis’s time in Chad, where Pearl Millet
was a common and important grain. Pearl Millet, native to Africa, is an annual,
warm season grass that has a whorl of long bristles under each cluster of
seeds, giving the whole spike a bristly look. The bristles deter birds from
feasting on the Millet seed. Interestingly, Pearl Millet is the most widely
planted annual pasture grass in Georgia.
In one of the old garden display areas in the power line
right of way we stopped to admire the large, very hairy buds on a Japanese magnolia. These buds will
produce next year’s flowers, which emerge before the leaves. The dense coat of
hairs protect the buds from drying out and freezing over the winter.
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| Carolina Buckthorn Compare leaves with Possum Haw, below |
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| Possum Haw Compare leaves with Carolina Buckthorn, above |
Next to the magnolia we stopped to look at a deciduous
holly known as Possum Haw (though it
is not a hawthorn), with many red berries. Like all hollies, Possum Haw is
dioecious, having male (pollen-producing) and female (fruit-producing) flowers
on separate plants. All the shrubs growing here are females, planted for their showy
red fruit. Pollen carried by insects is probably brought to these plants from male
plants growing wild in the nearby floodplain.
We commented on how the red berries of Carolina Buckthorn
are similar to those of Possum Haw. Unlike the Possum Haw’s, these berries will
turn black soon. Linda also pointed out that the Carolina Buckthorn leaves are distinctive,
with crisp entire margins and straight, parallel lateral veins. This species is
indicative of basic soils.
A variety of native and exotic plants are flowering now
in the powerline right-of-way.
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| Red Morning Glory |
There were many Yellow
Crownbeard plants, intertwined with Red
Morning Glories, growing in and around the Possum Haw.
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| Sicklepod flowers and leaves |
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| Sicklepod seed pods |
Sicklepod or Coffee Weed is an invasive exotic that
Garden volunteers have worked to remove from the floodplain restoration area
that is now appearing in the plots; a tropical member of the bean family, it
has long curving fruits with dark brown seeds.
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| Common Storks=bill |
Common Storks-bill
is a European species in the Geranium family; its long pointed fruit is
responsible for several other common names such as Heron's-bill and Pin-clover.
Two mint family species, Southern Mountain-mint and Spotted
Beebalm, are winding up their flowering season, but are still attracting
pollinators such as bumblebees and butterflies.
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| Beggar-Ticks |
The Nash Prairie is home to Beggar-Ticks. Today we saw their lovely, deep pink flowers, each marked with two
tiny yellow patches at the base of the banner petal, pointing bees to the
stamens tucked inside the folded wing petals.
Late summer and early fall is the peak flowering time for members of the Aster family in the Georgia Piedmont. Today we saw all three types of the Aster family flower head: heads with both ray and disk flowers, heads with only disk flowers, and heads with only ray flowers.
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| Grass-leaved Goldenaster |
Grass-leaved
Goldenaster heads have both disk and ray flowers, both bright
golden-yellow. The stems and leaves of this plant are covered with long, white,
silky hairs that reflect the light and heat of its typical sandhill habitat.
Several people asked, “why grass-leaved”? Though mostly withered by flowering
time, the early leaves of this plant are long, grass-like, and clustered at the
base of this plant’s stem.
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| White Prairie Goldenrod |
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| Frostweed (White Crownbeard) |
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| Yellow Crownbeard |
White Crownbeard,
aka Frostweed, is at its peak
flowering now. It’s in the same genus (Verbesina)
as the wingstems but its white flower heads distinguish it from the two
yellow-flowered species at the Garden, Yellow
Crownbeard and Common Wingstem.
We’ll be back to see these plants after the first hard frost, in hopes of
catching some “frost flowers” that form at the base of the stems.
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| Late Flowering Thoroughwort |
Late Flowering
Thoroughwort/Late Boneset is common in the Nash Prairie and elsewhere in
open sunny areas at the Garden. Both it and Rabbit Tobacco have small flower heads made up only of tightly
packed disk flowers. The stems and undersides of Rabbit Tobacco are matted with
dense, white hairs which reflect heat and light and prevent the plant from
drying out.
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| Carolina Desert-chicory |
A single flower head of Carolina Desert-chicory was seen in the plots; this species
typically flowers March through June, but may have been fooled by the recent
rains and cool temperatures into thinking it’s spring. Its flower head has only
ray flowers.
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| Bottlebrush Buckeye fruits |
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| Bottlebrush Buckeye seeds (Buckeyes) |
Emily took a short side trip over to a small grove of fruit-laden
Bottlebrush Buckeyes and collected a
few buckeyes for us to look at. The large, glossy brown seeds (“buck’s eyes”)
are encased in a brownish rind that splits into three sections to reveal the
seeds. All parts of Buckeye plants are poisonous, especially the seeds.
According to Wikipedia, “Native Americans used to crush the seeds and the
resulting mash was thrown into still or sluggish waterbodies to stun or kill
fish.”
Late summer and early fall is also the best time to look
at warm-season grasses, most of which are beginning to flower and set seed. The
dark red or purple flower clusters of Purple Top (aka Greasy Grass) is conspicuous
in the Nash Prairie; running its flower cluster tightly through your fist
leaves a waxy substance on the palm of your hand. The wax helps to prevent the
spikelets from drying out during what is usually a dry time of the year.
Big Top Love Grass is just past flowering; the large,
airy flower heads will dry out this fall, break off at the base, and tumble
across the ground, shedding seeds as it goes. This close-up photo shows that the
spikelet, held at the tip of delicate wavy branches, is made up of three
florets.
Silver Plume Grass is a favorite of the Ramblers. Among
the tallest of Georgia’s grasses, its large, mauve or pink flower clusters have
a silvery sheen at this point. As the cluster goes to seed, it becomes tan and
fluffy. This is a common, unmistakable species in roadsides and clearings.
Most of the grasses in the Nash Prairie are one of three
species of Bluestem: Little Bluestem, Split-beard Bluestem, and Broomsedge. The
name Bluestem is a bit misleading: the stems are actually reddish or maroon
while the leaf sheaths that enclose the stems are blue-green. These are among the
last of our native grasses to flower. yellow,
pollen-containing anthers dangle at the tips of delicate filaments; the brushy
pink styles will mature later and comb pollen from the air.
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| Little Bluestem flowers |
Assorted critters:
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| Ailanthus Webworm Moth |
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| Bumblebee on Mountain Mint |
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| Two-lined Spittlebugs mating |
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| American Birdwing Grasshopper |
Several critters were also seen at this location,
including an Ailanthus Webworm Moth on
Wingstem flowers, a couple (in the literal sense) Two-lined Spittlebugs in the grass and a huge and sporty looking American Bird Grasshopper. Angeli also
spotted a small bumblebee starting
to warm up on the Mountain Mint. A black
& yellow Tiger Swallowtail could
be seen flitting through the grasses and other plants.
On a wingstem we found an Asian Multicolored Lady beetle devouring an aphid. This is an
introduced species that appears to be responsible for the decline in our native
Lady beetle species. They were originally introduced to the US to control
insect pests (aphids, scale insects, etc.) in citrus orchards. They were highly
successful but spread across the country.
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| Asian Multicolored Lady beetle eating an aphid Note the black "W" outlined in white on the thorax it's the easiest way to identify this Lady beetle |
Identification of the Asian multicolored lady beetle is
made difficult by its high degree of variability. The best characteristic is to
look for a black "M" (or "W," depending on how you look at
the beetle) on the head end. In the photograph the beetle has two conspicuous
white spots on either side of the first thoracic segment (the part just behind
the tiny head). In the center of this segment you can see a small white spot on
the front and another white spot on the back of the segment. Together these
white marks divide up the black area so that it takes the shape of an
"M" when you view the beetle from the back or a "W" when
you view it from the front. Our native species don't have this mark on their first
thoracic segment.
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| Green Lynx spider with egg case |
Dale found a Green Lynx
spider guarding large, brown and not quite spherical egg case on Spotted Beebalm.
Passionflower
fence. Having spent a lot of time in the past several weeks observing the Gulf Fritillary caterpillars and
chrysalises, our stop was brief this week. We saw several caterpillars, though
not as many as in the past several weeks. We also saw quite a few chrysalises
on the fencing, away from the area where the passion-flower vines were growing.
Linda mentioned that her friend, Jan Coyne, has passion-flower vines and the
caterpillars leave the vine and crawl across the ground to her recycling and
trash bins, where they climb up and pupate along the edge of the bin lids. [Review: the pupal stage of a butterfly
is known as a chrysalis or chrysalid; the latter is often referred because the
plural is easier to say: chrysalids vs. chrysalises.]
Wandering chrysalids puzzle many Ramblers. (Well, the chrysalids don't really wander – it's
the caterpillars that do that. When they are ready to pupate it's very common
for butterfly caterpillars to wander away from their food plant. The result is
that the chrysalis is often found many feet from the plant the caterpillar was
eating. Why should a caterpillar do that? One reason is that caterpillars not
averse to eating sources of protein that they stumble across. They will eat
butterfly eggs and smaller caterpillars if they encounter them, even if they
are the same species. An immobile chrysalis on a plant with feeding
caterpillars runs the risk of being eaten, so it's safer for the caterpillar to
leave its food plant when it's ready to pupate. A caterpillar can run away from
another hungry caterpillar but a chrysalis can't.
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| Green Stink Bug eating a Gulf Fritillary chrysalis |
Hungry caterpillars aren't the only
danger that a chrysalis is exposed to. We noticed that one was being attacked
by a Stink Bug. Stink Bugs, also
known as Shield Bugs, get their name because when disturbed they emit
unpleasant smelling compounds. The shape of their body is like a shield and is
the source of the alternate common name. Like all true bugs, stink bugs have
piercing, sucking mouthparts and many species are of economic importance
because they damage to agricultural crops by sucking out plant juices. But
mouthparts that can stab and suck can also be used to attack animals and some
kinds of stinkbugs are predators.
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| Brown Stink Bug eating Sleepy Orange caterpillar |
We saw two such Predatory Stink Bugs today, one sucking the juices out of a Gulf
Fritillary chrysalis and the other attacking the caterpillar of a Sleepy Orange
butterfly. In the second case the immobilized caterpillar was hanging from the bugs
mouthparts. A second stink bug approached and the bug with the impaled
caterpillar rapidly ran away, the caterpillar still hanging from the
mouthparts.
When a predatory stink bug attacks
another insect it injects substances that paralyze the victim and other enzymes
that digest the internal organs. The bug then slowly sucks the liquid out of
the victim.
A well-illustrated guide to telling
the difference between one kind of predatory stinkbug and a common stinkbug agricultural
pest can
be found here.
Fire Ants: (you can skip
to the next topic if Fire Ants give you the creeps.)
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| Fire Ant nests dot the mowed landscape |
The most obvious sight on the mowed,
grassy hillside is the number of Fire
Ant nests. Many people remarked they seemed to be more numerous (obvious?)
lately. There are a couple of reasons for this: When it rains the soil at the
surface is wetted and the above ground part of the nest collapses. The harder
the rain, the more of the nest is damaged. When the rain stops the worker ants
begin rebuilding the tunnel system. Each worker picks up a grain of soil and
brings it to the surface and drops it. The net effect of thousands of ants
doing this makes a large pile of soil on the surface. The dirt is damp and
darker because of the moisture, making it more conspicuous. Also, later in the
season, the colonies are larger and there are more workers, so the nests get
larger. Then, when the weather is dry, the surface of the nest dries out and
becomes lighter in color. The dry soil also blows away so the initial height of
the mound gradually diminishes.
The nests are always located in sunny
areas, preferably in a situation with low vegetation. This enables the colony
to bring its brood (the larvae and pupae) up to the top of the nest, just
beneath the surface of the nest. Here the temperature is highest and the brood
develops faster in the warmer environment.
You can see this when the top of the
nest is disturbed by dragging a finger or a stick through the dirt. The ants
and brood will be revealed and they will rush to carry their immatures lower in
the nest, out of danger. The nest is not just restricted to the surface, it can
extend for several feet beneath. Here's a link to
aluminum castings of Fire Ant nests, just to give you an idea of what the
underground structure looks like.
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| Fire Ants with brood in disturbed nest |
Fire Ants are native to Brazil and
Argentina and were introduced into the United States in the 1940s, most likely
at the port of Mobile, Alabama. We know this approximate date because E. O.
Wilson was a child living in Mobile at the time. He collected ants and his
collection included the first Fire Ants ever seen in the USA. From Mobile the
ants spread across the South. I moved to Athens in the late 1970s and never saw
any Fire Ant nests, but encountered them in Macon, GA. They appeared in the
Athens area just a few years later.
The native habitat of Fire Ants is seasonally
flooded and the ants are able to use this as a means of dispersal. They are
unwettable and when the nest is flooded the ants emerge and grab hold of one
another, forming large rafts of ants many layers thick. The ants on the bottom
gradually work their way up being replaced by others that were formerly on top.
The raft floats about and when they drift to drier ground they can begin a new
nest. We have seen such rafts of ants when the Middle Oconee River overflows
its banks in the lower flood plain.
One more fascinating thing about Fire
Ants. In most social ants, bees or wasps the colony has a single reproductive
individual, called the queen, although she has only one role: laying eggs. All
the other colony members are sterile female workers or males. Such colonies are
called "monogyne," meaning a single reproductive female. But in the
US Fire Ants exhibit two colony types: monogyne and polygyne (many reproductive
females). Monogyne colonies will not tolerate more than a single queen and will
kill any other reproductive female in the nest. Polygyne Fire Ants were
discovered by a UGA professor, Ken Ross, and he determined that a single gene with
two forms controlled whether a colony would be monogyne or polygyne. The
polygyne colonies often have multiple interconnected nests and some of the
closely spaces nests we saw today were probably polygyne.
(End
of Fire Ant topic)
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| Communal Sawfly larvae feeding on a small Loblolly Pine sapling |
On a small pine sapling we saw a large
group of Sawfly larvae. Sawfiles are
a group related to the ants, bees and wasps. They lack stings and the adults
are usually not noticed by most people. The larvae resemble caterpillars but
differ in the number of abdominal "legs." If you look closely at a butterfly
caterpillar you will discover that it has two kinds of legs. Up near the head
end there are three pairs of jointed legs, one pair on each of the three body
segments behind the head. These are the legs that define the Insects as a group
(three pairs of thoracic legs). Behind these jointed legs is the abdomen and
some of its segments have legs, but they are not jointed and look like stumpy
protrusions ("prolegs")from the segments. Butterfly and moth
caterpillars have five pairs of prolegs. Sawfly larvae have six or more pairs
of prolegs.
As we saw on the pine tree today,
Sawfly larvae often feed together in a group. When they are threatened they
will, as a group, stick their head and tail end in the air and thrash about,
sometime expelling partially digested food from their mouths. Since pine
needles contains all kinds of volatile compounds, this can be quite a
deterrent.
SUMMARY OF OBSERVED SPECIES:
Pearl Millet
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Pennisetum
glaucum
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Ornamental Millet
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P. glaucum 'Purple Majesty'
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Purple Passion-flower
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Passiflora incarnata
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Japanese Magnolia
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Magnolia liliiflora
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Deciduous Holly/Possumhaw
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Ilex decidua
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White Crownbeard
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Verbesina virginica
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Yellow Crownbeard
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Verbesina occidentalis
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Common Wingstem
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Verbesina alternafolia
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Red Morning Glory
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Ipomoea coccinea
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Coffee Weed/Sicklepod
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Senna obtusifolia
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Grass-leaved Goldenaster
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Pityopsis gramnifolia
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Common Storks-bill
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Erodium cicutarium
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Silver Plume Grass
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Saccharum alopecuroides
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Southern Mountain Mint
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Pycnanthemum pycnanthemoides
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Spotted Beebalm
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Monarda punctata
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Carolina Desert Chicory
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Pyrrhopappus carolinianus
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White Prairie Goldenrod
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Solidago ptarmicoides
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Bottlebrush Buckeye
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Aesculus parviflora
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Split-beard Bluestem Grass
|
Andropogon ternarius
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Late Boneset/Late Flowering
Thoroughwort
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Eupatorium serotinum
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Little Bluestem Grass
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Schizachyrium scoparium
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Purple-top Grass
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Tridens flavus cupreus
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Big Top Love Grass
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Eragrostis hirsuta
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Beggar-Ticks
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Desmodium sp.
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Rabbit Tobacco
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Pseudognaphalium obtusifolium
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Carolina Buckthorn
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Frangula caroliniana
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American White Tail Deer (evidence
– scat)
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Odocoileus virginiana
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Bumblebee
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Bombus sp.
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Fire ant
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Solenopsis
invicta
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Saw Fly (larva)
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Family Tenthridinidae
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Stink bug
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Family Pentatomidae
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Two-lines Spittlebug
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Prosapia bicincta
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Aphid
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Family Aphididae
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Asian Multicolored Lady Beetle
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Harmonia axyridis
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Lynx Spider
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Peucetia veridans
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American Bird Grasshoper
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Schistocerca americana
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Sleepy Orange (caterpillar)
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Abaeis nicippe
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Gulf Fritillary (caterpillars and
chrysalises)
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Agraulis vanillae
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Yellow Tiger Swallowtail
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Papilio glaucus
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Ailanthus Webworm Moth
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Atteva aurea
|
]
