Ramble Report November 1 2018

Today's Ramble was led by Linda Chafin.

Here's the link to Don's Facebook album for today's Ramble. (All the photos in this post, unless otherwise credited, are compliments of Don. Katherine Edison provided the photos of the pecan/hickory weevil and ant colony)

Today's post was written by Linda Chafin (plants) and Dale Hoyt (animals).

Today’s Focus: Seeking what we find on the Green and Blue Trails.

22 Ramblers met today.

Announcements:

1.      Sue shared with the Ramblers her experience with a local nursery, Beech Hollow Farms, that deals with native plants. It’s located near Lexington, about 6 miles from Goodness Grows.
Sue says: “This place is the real deal. They propagate their own native plants and most are from locally-sourced seeds/cuttings. They offer wildflowers, shrubs and trees. . . . Anyone who plans to visit should contact them first to let them know they're coming. They don't have regular hours.”

2.      Next Wednesday, Nov. 8, at 9:00 a.m. there will be a mushroom walk at SCNC, led by Bill Sheehan.

3.      Only two Nature Rambles remain this year. The last Ramble will be on November 15^th

4.      The first meeting of the Nature Rambler book group will be at 11:30 a.m., after the Ramble. The book to be discussed is “American Wolf”, by Nate Blakeslee. If you would like to participate in the discussion and are not on the book group mailing list send your contact information to Emily (egenecarr AT gmail.com) or Dale (dalehoyt AT charter.net).

Today's reading: Bob Ambrose recited one of his new poems: A Psalm of Gaia.

Show and Tell: 

1.      Richard brought some leaves and winged fruits from a tree he visited in a Paris park. Linda thought that they were possibly from a Chinese Wing Nut tree.

2.      Katherine told the group about a good hiking trail app, Hiking Project, by REI. The Garden’s hiking trails as well as old roads are shown. https://www.hikingproject.com/

Today's route: We left the plaza and walked down the road to the White Trail crossing and took it across the ROW. After entering the woods, we took the Green Trail to the old service road, then turned left and walked to the clearing from which we returned via the Blue Trail to the ROW and on back to the Visitor Center via the road.  We then enjoyed refreshments and conversation at the Cafe Botanica.

LIST OF OBSERVATIONS:

On our way down the access road we discovered a dead Red-bellied Snake, apparently killed by an automobile. These snakes can be confused with Ring-necked snakes which have a similarly colored belly, but with a pair of black dots on every belly scale. (Some Red-bellied snakes also have a light ring around the neck, but their belly scales are always uniformly red or orange.)

White Trail (at intersection with Green and Blue Trails):

The persistent leaves of Bloodroot

Bloodroot leaves are still visible. Bloodroot often appears in lists of spring ephemeral plant species, but this is a misunderstanding of what “spring ephemeral” means. Spring ephemerals complete their entire life cycle and go dormant (with no visible leaves or fruits) by early summer. Bloodroot leaves often persist till frost, expanding during the summer to increase the amount of leaf surface available for capturing the much reduced sunlight that reaches the forest floor in summer. Their leaves can reach 7 inches in width by late summer.

Perfoliate Bellwort, another "spring ephemeral" with persistent leaves.

Perfoliate Bellwort plants are also still around, which came as a surprise. This is another species often assumed to be ephemeral.

Wild Ginger leaves will remain green throughout winter.

Wild Ginger, one of the handful of Piedmont wildflower species that has evergreen (or winter-green) leaves and is identifiable all winter. Others include Partridgeberry, Hepatica, Cranefly Orchid and Pipsissewa. Cranefly Orchid is a special case: its leaves persist through the winter and disappear in late spring before the plant flowers; they then re-appear in early fall.

Cranefly Orchid leaves rising alongside this year's fruiting stalks.

Kathy asked how to distinguish Elliott's Blueberry/Mayberry from Hearts-a-bustin’ this time of year – both are shrubs with bright green stems. Blueberries have alternate leaves and Hearts-a-bustin’ has opposite leaves.

Green Trail:

Shagbark Hickory

There are only a few Shagbark Hickories in the Garden’s forests, all concentrated in the area where Dan Williams mapped amphibolite bedrock. Amphibolite raises the pH of soils that develop over it, so it’s not a surprise to see calcium-loving plants like Shagbark growing there. The crevices under the plates of loose bark are used by bats for roosting and by Brown Creepers as nesting habitat.

 

False Turkey Tail mushrooms

False Turkey Tail mushrooms are wood-decaying fungi that are common on down-and-dead logs at the Garden, often occurring in large patches of fruiting bodies. Each fruiting body is more or less shell-shaped and composed of colorful bands of tissue. The lower surface lacks pores and is smooth and plastic-like in texture, thus distinguishing it from “true” Turkey Tail mushrooms which have a rough, porous texture on the lower surface.

Dwarf Pawpaw

A patch of Dwarf Pawpaw in an unusually sunny and dry situation for this species.

Northern Red Oak with buttressed trunk

A Northern Red Oak with a buttressed trunk also seemed out of place–buttresses are typically found on trees growing in wetlands. The swollen trunk base provides greater stability in the shifting sediments of floodplains. We speculated about why a tree growing in the uplands would develop a buttress–perhaps in response to an injury or pathogen.

Wild Yam

Heart-shaped leaves of a young Wild Yam plant. Older plants have long twining stems that sprawl over other plants.

Old Service Road:

Blown down Scarlet Oak trees

Many large, blown down trunks crisscross the service road and the floor of the adjacent woods. They are in varying stages of decay, suggesting that damaging high winds have come through this area several times over the last decade. The more recently blown down trees seemed to be mainly Scarlet Oaks.

Violet-toothed Polypore mushrooms on Scarlet Oak

Sparkleberry leaves turning color

There are still some berries on the Sparkleberry!

Sparkleberry’s leathery leaves turn maroon in the fall and many persist on the stems til late winter.

Two Scarlet Oaks acorns, prematurely dropped, showing the concentric circles around the tip of the acorn.

Scarlet Oak acorns are easily identified by the fine, concentric grooves etched around the tip of the acorn, and by the cap that covers about half of the nut.

Norther Red Oak (L); Scarlet Oak (R)
The sinuses on the Scarlet Oak leaf are much deeper than in the Northern Red Oak.

Scarlet Oaks are common on dry ridges like the one we followed down the service road. The service road is deeply entrenched into the ridge, indicating that it has been in use for many decades.

A typical, cross-shaped Post Oak leaf

Another dry-site oak that is common on this ridge is Post Oak, which has cross-shaped, leathery leaves. Its acorns lack the concentric circles seen on Scarlet Oak acorns, and the cap covers less than one-third of the nut.

Red Mulberry leaf

We were surprised to see Red Mulberry, its large leaves intertwined with Sparkleberry’s, growing on this dry ridge; it is usually found in bottomlands.

Ebony Spleenwort

Ebony Spleenwort is one of two evergreen ferns found in the Garden’s woodlands and forests. Its stalk and rachis are a dark, shiny black-brown. The other locally common evergreen fern is Christmas Fern, which has much larger fronds and stocking-shaped leaflets. Both of these species grow well in fairly dense shade in the Piedmont’s highly eroded, acidic soils.

Haircap Moss with sporophytes

Haircap Moss is a common, widespread spread moss, often forming large colonies. Looking down on the colony, individual plants have a star-shaped appearance due to the spirally arranged leaves held at right angles around the stem. In summer and fall, each plant sends up a sporophyte, a thin, wiry stalk topped by a spore-bearing capsule. The capsules have pointed caps that pop open and release spores which then develop into the familiar leafy green plants we recognize as mosses. These are the female and male plants that carry out sexual reproduction that results in the growth of the sporophyte..

Carbon balls fungi

Carbon balls are the fruiting body of a wood-decaying fungus. It has several common names, all referring to its hard, black appearance. Lots of interesting information about this fungus is here.

Cinnabar polypore

Betsy found a Cinnabar polypore fungus, another fungus that lives on dead deciduous tree branches. It is a bracket fungus and easy to identify since there are few (or no) other bracket fungi with such a vivid orange color. More information here.

This suede-like fungus with ruffled edges is a corticoid fungus living on a dead branch.

Blue Trail:

Sawtooth Oak leaf (tip broken off)

A large Sawtooth Oak is growing on this slope above the Mimsie Lanier Center for Native Plants, which is located at what was the base of horticultural operations at the Garden until 2010. In the early days of the Garden, exotic plants such as this Asian native were planted near the horticultural center.

Winged Elm twigs with wings, outgrowths of the bark that may provide strength to the young branches.

Longleaf Wood Oats is a good choice for gardeners who want a native grass that will grow in dry, shady conditions.

Persimmon bark is quite distinctive: it is nearly black, much darker than that of other Piedmont trees. The individual rectangular blocks that make up the bark have a layered look when viewed from the side, with dark layers alternating with pale.

Armadillo sign was spotted on the forest floor near the area where the Shagbark hickory grows. A large area of leaf litter, about 12 by 3 feet,  had clearly been disturbed and Ramblers wanted to know what had done this. Jeff told us that armadillos feed exclusively on invertebrates and find them by scraping up leaf litter.

Deer sign was seen in two locations. A small sapling had bark rubbed off at three different places and some twigs nibbled off. Deer grow their antlers anew each year and the bony growths are covered by a specialized skin called the “velvet” that nourishes the growing antlers. When the antlers reach their full size the velvet dries up and is removed from the antlers by scraping against a small tree. The scraping also scent marks the tree with secretions from glands in the deer’s forehead.

A deer scrape made in soil and leaf litter.

Another type of deer sign we saw was an area near a small tree that had leaf litter removed. Jeff told us that deer will scrape the ground up with their feet, urinate on the scraped area and then further paw it up.

If you have deer in your neighborhood you may be able to find such scent-marking evidence yourself. Look at small trees one to three inches in diameter, the size preferred for scraping.

Old, broken up, Oak Apple gall

An old Oak Apple gall was found on the old roadway, the leaf it was attached to so degraded it was impossible to identify which kind of oak. The gall itself was broken and filled with debris. Such galls are caused by a small wasp laying a single egg in the leaf of an oak tree. The leaf responds by producing a swelling the size of a golf ball. The interior of the gall is mostly empty except for a small sphere of plant tissue in the center, held there by a network of plant tissue. The center is where the wasp larva feeds. When it is mature it will pupate in the center and, later, the adult wasp will emerge and chew an opening in the wall of the gall. This link will take you to a short video with Sir David Attenborough narrating aspects of the life history of several types of gall forming insects.

Wax Scale insects on small sapling

Underside of Wax Scale insect showing, perhaps, vestigial legs

Wax Scale Insect (Ceroplastes sp.)

Another mysterious object was encountered: soft, white and sticky blobs about 1/4 inch in diameter adhering to a small, leafless sapling, likely a blueberry. These waxy blobs resemble small mushrooms but are, in reality, scale insects. You will be forgiven your skepticism – scale insects only resemble insects in their early stages. The adult females are often  immobile blobs, like this Wax Scale. Scale insects have a complex life history that culminates in the adult female insect sucking sap from a host plant, similar to an aphid. Unlike aphids, once attached to a host plant the adult scale doesn’t move; it can’t because its legs are either vestigial or absent. The other features that are usually found in insects, eyes and wings are also absent. These sticky white blobs do have a piercing, sucking mouthpart that is imbedded in the vascular tissue of its host plant. The scale sits there, sipping sugary sap and laying eggs under its waxy covering. In many scale insects there are no males. The females reproduce parthenogenetically. When the eggs hatch the new born scales look like tiny ticks. They wander away from their mother, looking for a place to feed. This larval form is called a “crawler.” When the crawler first moults it begins to lose it eyes and legs and eventually fully transforms into a copy of its mother. Some scale insects produce males that have eyes, wing and legs, but lack mouth parts. All they need to do is find a female, mate with her and die.

Scale insects are important pests of citrus crops. In the late 19^th century the Cottony Cushion Scale was decimating  California citrus groves. A lady beetle from Australia, Rodolia cardinalis, commonly known as the Vedalia Beetle or the Cardinal Ladybird, was introduced to California citrus orchards to control the scale. It was spectacularly successful and is recognized as the beginning of biological control concept.

Some scale insects are actually farmed to produce useful products. Cochineal, a brilliant red pigment, is extracted from a scale insect that is grown on Prickly Pear cactus. It was used to produce the red coats worn by the British army and the red stripes in the flag that inspired Francis Scott Key to write our national anthem. (ref)

Other species of scale insect are the source of lacquer, shellac and other varnishes.

Fuzzy orange oak leaf gall

“Fuzzy orange” Oak leaf gall is produced by a tiny cynipid wasp in the genus Callirhytis. The wasp lays an egg in an oak leaf. As the egg hatches and the larva grows it induces the leaf to form the fuzzy gall. In the fall the gall will fall of the leaf before the leaf drops from the tree. It may take two to three years for the life cycle to complete. The reason this gall make is not a Wool Sower is that the galls are formed on the leaves, not the stems, which is where the Wool Sower lays its eggs. Also, Wool Sower eggs are laid in early spring and these galls are present in the fall.

A pecan/hickory weevil with elongated snout.
(photo courtesy of Katherine Edison)

Hickory/Acorn Weevils lay their eggs on the developing fruits of their host trees. The long snout of the weevil, long even by weevil standards, has a pair of mandibles at its very end. With these the weevil can chew its way through any thick or thin husks that cover the developing nut and then lay an egg in the hole. When the egg hatches the weevil grub starts feeding on the nutritional tissue intended for the embryonic plant. As fall approaches the weevil achieves its full growth and is ready to leave the host nut. After the nut falls the grub chews it way through the hard nut shell and, in the case of hickory nuts, through the husk that covers the nut. Wiggling through the hole it just made it falls to earth and buries itself in the leaf litter and soil where it pupates. The following spring the adult weevils will emerge just in time for their host plants to be flowering.

A nut opened to show the ant colony inside. The worker ants are black and their brood, eggs, larvae and pupae are white. Such a colony is never very large, composed of a queen and a dozen to hundred workers.
(photo courtesy of Katherine Edison)

But that’s not the end of the story. The grub has left behind a partially eaten oak or hickory nut with some empty space. Apartment for rent! There are certain species of ants that seek out and colonize the empty space in the acorn/hickory nuts. They make a snug home for the queen and her brood, protected from the weather. In nature there seems to be a use for everything.

 

SUMMARY OF OBSERVED SPECIES:

Red-bellied Snake	Storeria occipitomaculata
River Oats	Chasmanthium latifolium
Bloodroot	Sanguinaria canadensis
Perfoliate Bellwort	Uvularia perfoliata
Wild Ginger	Hexastylis arifolia
Elliott's Blueberry	Vaccinium elliottii
Cranefly Orchid	Tipularia discolor
Shagbark Hickory	Carya ovata
False Turkey Tail Mushroom	Stereum ostrea
Nine-Banded Armadillo	Dasypus novemcinctus
Dwarf Paw Paw	Asimina parviflora
Northern Red Oak	Quercus rubra
Pine tree	Pinus sp.
Wild Yam	Dioscorea villosa
Scarlet Oak	Quercus coccinea
Wax Scale	Ceroplastes sp.
Red Mulberry	Morus rubra
Ebony Spleenwort	Asplenium platyneron
Oak Apple Gall	Family Cynipidae
Post Oak	Quercus stellata
Moss	Bryophyta
Carbon Balls	Daldinia sp.
Cinnabar Polypore	Pycnoporus sp.
Orange/rust brown resupinate corticoid fungus	Stereum sp.
White-tailed Deer	Odocoileus virginianus
Sawtooth Oak	Quercus acutissima
Fuzzy Gall	Callirhytis sp.
Winged Elm	Ulmus alata
Longleaf Wood Oats	Chasmanthium sessiliflorum
Silver Plume Grass	Erianthus alopecuroides
Persimmon Tree	Diospyros virginiana