Leader for today's Ramble: Linda
Authors of today’s Ramble report: Linda (plants) and Dale (animals). Comments, edits, and suggestions for the report can be sent to Linda at Lchafin@uga.edu.
Link to Don’s Facebook album for this Ramble. All
the photos that appear in this report, unless otherwise credited, were taken by
Don Hunter. Photos may be enlarged by clicking them with a mouse or tapping on
your screen.
Today's
emphasis: Springtime at the Garden
Number of Ramblers today: 34
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| Thursday morning was foggy as ramblers began to gather. |
Show
and Tell: Roger Collins gave a fascinating presentation, including maps, on the history of the land the Garden occupies as well as the surrounding nearly 2000 acres. The land was owned by three generations of the White family, beginning in the 1830s, the same family that created the mill village of Whitehall and built the mansion on the forestry school property of the same name. In 1936, the property was acquired by the state under a New Deal program, the Rural Rehabilitation Corporation, to salvage eroded and worn out agricultural land. Soon after, the property was deeded to Georgia's Board of Regents and turned over to UGA. A portion of the property was terraced and cultivated by UGA's Department of Agriculture–this is the terraced land along the Blue Trail; another portion became Whitehall Forest, at the south end of Milledge Avenue. In the map below, the blue lines are the Middle and North Oconee Rivers, which were the eastern and southern boundaries of the White family ownership. The northern and western boundaries of the White property are in brown. The approximate location of the Botanical Garden is in green. The location of the Whitehall mill, owned by the manufacturing company, and Whitehall Forest are labeled in yellow.
Announcements/Interesting Things to Note:
Catherine reported that the Oconee County Library has an exhibit by artist Sam Watson, who walked with us several times last year for inspiration for her native plant illustrations. Flagpole describes her work as an exploration of "...the line between organic and geometric forms through stylized landscapes and illustration."
In celebration of Women's History month, here are stories of nine women from around the world who advanced our knowledge of plants and plant conservation. https://botany.one/2023/03/a-celebration-of-women-who-revolutionized-the-history-of-botany-9-incredible-stories-for-international-womens-day/
Today's
Route: We left the arbor in the Children's Garden, walked downhill through the Shade Garden, crossed the road to the White Trail and the prairie in the right-of-way. From there we took the Blue Trail for a short distance then turned left across the meadow back down to the road, and returned by way of the Dunson Garden.
OBSERVATIONS:
Last week's cold snap damaged a number of shrubs planted in and around the Shade Garden.
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| Exotic species such as the Asian azaleas (above) and Chinese Ginkgo (below) seemed to fare the worst. |
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| Florida Anise, native to the Florida Panhandle and further west, also lost its flowers to the freeze. |
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| Native Piedmont Azalea is still in bud and undamaged by the cold. |
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| The leaves and flowers of Winterhazel were undamaged by the freeze. |
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| Winterhazel's "perfect" or "bisexual" flowers have both pistils and stamens. |
We saw examples today of three of the different types of mating systems in plants, each representing different strategies for limiting or preventing self-pollination:
Dioecious (die - ee - shus) plant species have female and male flowers on separate plants, thus eliminating any chance of self-pollination. While self-incompatibility ensures genetic diversity, it also means that only half of the individuals of the species are able to produce offspring. Only around 6% of all plant species are dioecious, and a disproportionate number of them are rare.
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| Early Meadow Rue: female (left) and male (right) flowers on separate plants |
Monoecious (moh - nee - shus) plants have female and male reproductive parts in separate flowers (or cones) but they are held on the same plant, with the females and males usually maturing at different times to reduce the chance of self-pollination; about 10% of all plant species are monoecious.
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| Both oaks and hickories are monoecious. In this photo, immature male red oak catkins dangle conspicuously near the tip of a twig. Mature female flowers–future acorns–are the small red structures at the very tip of the twig. |
In a third strategy, many plants have "perfect" or bisexual flowers with female (pistil) and male (stamens) reproductive structures in the same flower, thereby running a higher risk of self-pollination. In these flowers, the pistils and the stamens may mature at different times to prevent self-pollination. In some insect-pollinated plants with perfect flowers, the pistil is much longer than the stamens or vice versa; visiting insects usually fail to brush against both female and male parts in a single flower.
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Don's beautifully backlit photo of a Wild Geranium flower shows the central pistil and the surrounding stamens in this perfect flower. In this flower, it seems as though the anthers may be ready to shed pollen while the pistil is still growing. The photo also highlights the nectar guides which in this species are transparent, rather than the contrasting colors found in most flowers.
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| The green-flowered cultivar 'Athens,' identified and popularized by UGA's own Michael Dirr, is in flower near one of the gates to the Shade Garden. Its flowers are more reliably fragrant than the typical maroon-flowered Sweetshrub's. |
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| Scattered throughout the shade garden are plants of Bloodroot, coming up in the cracks and crevices of the sidewalk. |
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| Once we crossed the road and reached the White Trail, we began to see Bowl and Doily spider webs everywhere, stretched across grasses and hanging from the lower branches of shrubs, all bejeweled with fog droplets. |
Dale wrote about Bowl and Doily spiders in the Ramble Report for August 30, 2018: "The Bowl and Doily spider constructs a two-part web: the flat 'doily' and a bowl-shaped tangle of silk threads just slightly above. The spider lives in the space between. The silk is not sticky, but the tangle of threads in the bowl makes it difficult for small prey items to walk. In their struggles they alert the spider below and when they reach the bottom of the bowl the spider bites them through the silk. A doily, for you youngsters, is a flat, circular piece of lace work that was placed below plates and bowls to protect the surface below from being scratched." Thanks, Dale! Speaking as someone who knows next to nothing about spiders, I found this account in Wikipedia of the mating practices and physiology of Bowl and Doily spiders to be fascinating.
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| Don was able to zoom in on the Bowl and Doily Spider. It is one of the smallest of our common spiders, only 4 mm (0.16 inch) long. |
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| Don goes to any lengths to capture the Bowl and Doily Spider web. (photo by Linda) |
Hundreds of Funnel-web Spider webs were also stretched across the grasses along the White Trail and in the right-of-way.
Perhaps less enamored of spiders, Bill and Heather were nearby rolling logs in search of slime mold and fungi. Instead, they turned up a Marbled Salamander, one of the prettiest salamanders in our area, thus launching a stampede (really!) of ramblers back down the White Trail.
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| The body and tail of Marbled Salamanders are dark gray or black and covered with irregular, silvery gray markings that are the basis for the common name. |
Marbled salamanders have an unusual life cycle. They mate during autumn (September to November) and deposit their eggs in dry depressions that are likely to be filled with water by winter storms. The female constructs a nest and remains curled around her eggs. If she has judged correctly, the depression where she huddles with her eggs will fill with water and the larval salamanders hatch. After leaving the gelatinous membranes within which they developed, the larval salamanders begin to search for and capture small invertebrates that inhabit the temporary pools with them. (Unlike the larvae of toads and frogs, which mostly feed on aquatic algae and plants, salamander larvae are predators, feeding on worms, crustaceans and insect larvae.)
By laying eggs in depressions and under dried leaves, the female salamander risks losing her entire clutch if rains are absent or insufficient. But when the rains fill the dry depressions with water, the larval salamanders avoid their most dangerous predator: fish. The downside is that if rainfall is insufficient to form their temporary ponds the entire clutch of eggs will be lost. But there is an advantage to the developmental head start. They can hatch and start feeding before the winter breeding species and this gives them a size advantage – they have been feeding for several weeks before the winter-laid eggs hatch. That size advantage means that they can eat the smaller salamander larvae hatching from winter-laid egg clutches. Yes, that means that salamander larvae can be cannibalistic.
A small buckeye with multi-colored flowers caught our eye next to the White Trail. Painted Buckeyes, which are common in the Piedmont, have yellow flowers with a touch of orange in the throat and green or yellow calyces. As you can see in Don's photos below, this plant's petals are a mix of orange, red, and yellow, and the calyxes are reddish.
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| Green-and-Gold in a large patch around the edge of the meadow. |
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| Perfoliate Bellwort near the Blue Trail |
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| A patch of mostly immature Carolina Lily plants is established just off the Blue Trail near the meadow. We hope to remember to come back in July when this mature plant may be in flower. |
A rambler noticed an interesting fungi and called Don over. He identified it as Split Gill Mushroom. As you can see in the photo, the gills are indeed split from the edge of the cap all the way to the center.
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| Top view of the Split Gill Mushroom |
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| Bill and Heather found this slightly sleepy Greater Bee Fly |
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| Unfortunately, Bush Honeysuckle (aka Amur Honeysuckle), one of the worst invasives in the Piedmont, has established around the edges of the meadow. |
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| A large American Plum tree (flowers above, bark below) grows near the point where the meadow approaches the service road. This tree is a close relative to the Chickasaw Plum that forms low thickets along roadsides and fence rows. |
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| Don remarked that his wife, Karen, loves the colors of spring much more than those of fall, and calls them "fifty shades of green." |
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| Johnny-jump-ups aka Wild Pansy are reliably present in the right-of-way in early spring. Though native, they seem to prefer disturbed areas. Their roots smell of wintergreen. |
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| Highbush Blueberries near the gate to the Dunson Garden |
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| Georgia Trilliums have been flowering about three weeks and the flowers are turning pink, signaling the end of their bloom. |
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| Don asked which of the trilliums now thriving in the Dunson Garden would have been here before the Garden was created. Neither Decumbent Trillium from northwest Georgia (above) or Pale Yellow Trillium from the Savannah River drainage (below) would have been here. Sweet Betsy and Catesby's Trillium are the only trilliums known to be native to Clarke County. (There are herbarium records for two rare species, Relict Trillium and Edna's Trillium, but these are from planted populations.) |
More scenes from the Dunson Garden...
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| Cut-leaf Toothwort We looked for Falcate Orange-tip butterflies, who lay their eggs on members of the mustard family, but without success. |
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| Dwarf Pawpaw flowers |
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| Emerging stems and leaves of Black Cohosh I wonder if this nearly black shade of purple is the source of the name? The unrelated mountain species, Blue Cohosh, has blueish green foliage. The word "cohosh" is an Algonquin Indian word meaning "rough," referring to the knotty rhizomes of both these species. |
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| Orchard Orbweavers (3.5-7.5 mm or 0.13-0.3 inch) are among the smallest spiders in our area. According to this University of Florida website, "are most commonly found in shrubby meadows and along woodland edges (Evans 2008). They are also
common in wooded suburban areas of cities and often between hedges and
houses under overhanging eaves. They are often gregarious and attach
their webs together when prey is plentiful." |
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| Blue Phlox (photo by Linda) |
SUMMARY OF OBSERVED SPECIES
Piedmont Azalea Rhododendron canescens
