Today's Ramble was led by Dale Hoyt.
Here's
the link to Don's Facebook album for today's Ramble. (All the
photos, except where otherwise credited, in this post are compliments of Don.)
Today's post was written by Dale Hoyt.
11 Ramblers met today.
Today's reading:
No reading today.
Today's route:
Down the access road to the passionflower vines, then up the hill to the
prairie patch and then return to the Visitor Center.
We weren’t sure anyone would show up this morning. There
was a light drizzle coming down when we left the house and the forecast was a
70% chance of rain/thunderstorm by 10 am. But a few hardy souls did brave the
threatening weather, including James and his mother. This was the last ramble
of the year for James as his school starts next week.
 | |
| Purple Passionflower, flower and flower buds. |
Out first stop was at the crowd of Purple Passionflower vines on the deer fencing at the bottom of the
Dunson Garden. I’d seen previously at least one Gulf Fritillary at the Garden
so I thought it would be interesting to search the vines for eggs and/or
caterpillars.
We did find a single, small caterpillar, probably in its second
instar. (An instar is the stage between events in an butterfly’s larval life:
egg –> 1st instar –> 1st molt –> 2nd
instar –> . . . 5th instar –> pupa (called a chrysalis in
butterflies) –> adult butterfly.)
 | |
| First instar Gulf Fritillary caterpillar (The bulge above the head is a rain drop.) |
This
website has a lot of information about our common Purple Passionflower,
Passiflora incarnata, including its
herbal preparation and usage. It is well worth visiting just for the beautiful
photographs.
If you’re interested in the medicinal use of
passionflower or just as an herbal tea, but sure to heed their warning! The
herbal information applies only to P.
incarnata; other species may be poisonous.
Another
post on the same website goes into detail about harvesting and
growing passionflower from seed.
 | ||
| Female Eastern Tiger Swallowtail, yellow phase, nectaring on Mountain mint. The blue on the hind wing margin is characteristic of females in this species. |
Southern Mountain Mint,
Pyncnathemum pycnanthemoides is planted not only at the
bottom of the Dunson Garden and by the wooden rail fencing but in the “prairie
patch” on the power line ROW. When the sun is shining and the weather not as
dreary as today these flowers will be swarming with bees, butterflies, skippers
and wasps. But today even the bumblebees weren’t flying and I was surprised to even
find a few Eastern Tiger Swallowtails
nectaring on these plants. Butterflies are usually very temperature sensitive
and disappear when the sky is overcast.
 | |
| Trumpet Vine |
The Trumpet vine
we have visited on previous Rambles is blooming. Spent blossoms are scattered
over the ground and provided us with an opportunity to review (or learn) the
flower parts. I split open the corolla (the name for the fused petals that make
up the showy red flower) to reveal the stamens and pistil.
There are four
stamens, each made of two parts, a long, slender filament and, attached to the
end of the filament, the anther. The anther contains the pollen. The stamens are
attached to the base of the corolla and the filaments are long enough that the
anthers are positioned just inside the opening of the corolla. There is a
single pistil that is composed of three parts: the ovary, the style and the
stigma.
The ovary is a swelling at the base of the corolla. It contains the
ovules which, when fertilized, will produce the seeds. The stigma is at the
other end and is the surface that the pollen grains adhere to. The style is the
long, thin structure that connects the stigma and ovary together.
 |
| Trumpet vine flower cut open to show the stamens and pistil. (Photo by Emily Carr) |
 |
| Trumpet vine pistil removed from the corolla and surrounding stamens. The style is the slender curved stalk; the ovary the brown swelling just above the index finger; the stigma is at the upper end of the style. |
The stigma stickiness is due to a sugary solution that
provides the pollen grain with energy to germinate and grow a pollen tube down
through the style. Inside the pollen tube is a sperm cell that will fertilize
the ovule that the pollen tube
comes in contact with.
In different plants these structures may differ in size
and number. For example, in corn the part we know as silks is the style. The
corn kernel is the ovary and each kernel has a single style that may be up to a
foot in length. The other end of each silk is the stigma, the location where
the wind-dispersed corn pollen will stick. The pollen tube must grow the full
length of the silk (the style) to reach the ovary and fertilize the single
ovule there to make a kernel of corn.
Notice in the dissected flower that all the anthers are
placed near the opening of the corolla. When a hummingbird visits the flower it
will thrust its beak into the opening and the feathers at the base of the beak
will come in contact with the anthers, picking up a load of pollen. The stigma
is also found in the same location and if the pollinator is carrying pollen on
its face to will be transferred to the stigma.
In this photo I pulled the pistil away from the corolla
so you can see just the pistil free from the other parts of the flower.
Other flowers:
 |
| Carolina Desert Chickory; the dark structures in the center of the plant are sleeves of anthers surrounding the style of each ray floret. |
Carolina Desert Chickory, Pyrrhopappus carolinianus, has a beautiful lemon colored flower head.
Like dandelion, it lacks disk florets. Its common name is often given as “False
Dandelion,” but many people think that a plant should not be named what it is not.
The alternative common name, Carolina Desert Chickory, seems to be an oxymoron.
Whoever heard of a desert in either Carolina? The Desert Chickory part refers
to a subtribe of plants. So the name isn’t Carolina-Desert Chickory, but
Carolina Desert-Chickory; i.e., a Desert Chickory that is found in the
Carolinas.
 |
| Peppermint Surprise Lily -- not a lily, it's in the Amaryllis family. |
Peppermint Surprise
Lily, Lycoris incarnata, may be a
surprise but it is certainly not a Lily; it is in the Amaryllis family. This
individual is a leftover from many years ago when this area was a formal garden.
It is native China. Other species of Lycoris can be found elsewhere in the Garden.
They are called “Surprise Lilies” because the leaves and flowers appear at
separate times of the year. First the leaves emerge and persist for several
months, then wither, the plant seeming to have disappeared. Then, suddenly, the
flower stalk rapidly appears and, almost like magic, there is the flower.
Surprise!
Miscellaneous
Insects:
 | |
| Rough Stink Bug |
Gary found what we first thought was the infamous Brown
Marmorated Stink Bug (BMSB) on a Cottonwood leaf. But it turned out to be a Rough Stink Bug, Brochymena quadripustulata, identified for us by Rick Hoebeke, Curator
of Insects at the Georgia Museum of Natural History. Rick passed on this
information:
“It is a very common member of
the genus that occurs across much of the continental U.S and southern Canada.
Members of the genus occur on trees and shrubs. The real give-away if it is
BMSB is that the antennae have whitish bands while in Brochymena the
antenna are unicolored and dark. Also, the lateral margins of the pronotum in
BMSB are entire or smooth, while in Brochymena the lateral margins are
distinctly toothed. Great image though!”
A good summary of what is known about the habits of
these bugs is here.
Stink bugs get their name from the strong, unpleasant
odor they emit, when disturbed, from glands on the underside of their thorax.
Like all true bugs, they have piercing, sucking
mouthparts. These enable them to suck the juices out of plants, making some species
economically important because of damage they do to crops. But it would be a
mistake to tar all the stink bugs with the “bad” brush, because those same
mouthparts can suck the juices out of other insects. These predatory stink bugs
are agriculturally beneficial. Some of them have sharp points on their “shoulders,”
making them easy to identify. Virginia Tech has an illustrated guide to common
stink bugs that you
can download from this site.
 |
| A Scoliid wasp. |
Scoliid wasps
are often found nectaring on mints and other plants. These wasps have no common
name. They are parasitic on scarab beetle larvae that live in the soil. A
female wasp somehow senses the presence of the beetle grub and burrows into the
ground. When the grub is found she paralyzes it with her sting and then lays an
egg on the grub. Japanese beetle grubs are often attacked by scoliids.
 | |
| Ailanthus Webworm Moth |
The Ailanthus
Webworm Moth is frequently seen on flowers from now through fall. As the
name implies, the moth lays eggs on Ailanthus trees. The caterpillars spin a
communal nest enclosing a group of leaves that they feed on.
 |
| Margined Calligrapher, a hover fly, family Syrphidae. |
The Margined
Calligrapher is a hover fly in the genus Toxomerus. They are also known as flower flies or syrphid flies. As
adults they visit flowers to eat pollen and search for food for their young.
When they find a plant with aphids or other plant sucking insects they lay eggs
on it. When the eggs hatch the predacious larvae begin to feast.
SUMMARY OF
OBSERVED SPECIES
|
Common Name
|
Scientific Name
|
|
Purple Passionflower
|
Passiflora incarnata
|
|
Gulf Fritillary
|
Agraulis vanillae
|
|
Eastern Tiger Swallowtail
|
Papilio glaucus
|
|
Atteva
aurea
|
|
|
Southern Mountain Mint
|
Pycnanthemum pycnanthemoides
|
|
Trumpet Vine
|
Campsis radicans
|
|
Poison Ivy
|
Toxicodendron radicans
|
|
Beebalm
|
Monarda sp.
|
|
Margined Calligrapher
|
Toxomerus marginatus
|
|
Ocola Skipper
|
Panoquina ocola
|
|
Bumblebee
|
Bombus sp.
|
|
Scoliid Wasp
(no common name) |
Scolia nobilitata
|
|
Flesh Fly
|
Sarcophaga sp.
|
|
Carolina Desert Chicory
|
Pyrrhopappus carolinianus
|
|
Rough Stink Bug or
Four-humped Stink Bug |
|
|
Peppermint Surprise Lily
|
Lycoris incarnata
|
