Leader for today's Ramble: Linda
Authors of today’s Ramble report: Linda and Don. Comments, edits, and suggestions for the report can be sent to Linda at Lchafin (at) uga.edu.
Insect identifications: Don Hunter, Heather Larkin
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. Not all of Don's photos make it into the ramble report, so be sure to check out his Facebook album at this link.
Today's emphasis: Early spring in the Dunson Native Flora
Garden
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| Forty-one ramblers gathered at the Children's Garden arbor this morning. |
Reading: Kathy read Mary Oliver’s poem, “The Moth, the Mountains, and the Rivers.”
Who can guess the Luna’s sadness who
lives so briefly? Who
can guess the
impatience of stone
longing to be
ground down, to be part
again of
something livelier? Who
can imagine
in what heaviness the
rivers remember
their original clarity?
Strange questions, yet
I have spent
worthwhile time with
them. And I
suggest them to you
also, that your
spirit grow in
curiosity, that your
life be richer than it
is, that you
bow to the earth as you
feel how it
actually is, that we –
so clever, and
ambitious, and selfish,
and unrestrained –
are only one design of
the moving, the vivacious many.
Show
and Tell: Gary
brought several large Kudzu root crowns (above) from a patch he has been working to
eradicate in Oconee County. He pointed out that Kudzu can
only sprout and spread from a root crown, which is found just at ground level. By chopping off the crown, he kills that plant without having to dig up the entire root, which can be several feet deep. He has recently found and killed Kudzu vines that may have been as much as 40 years old. Aubrey mentioned that she has cooked with Kudzu, which is a very important herb in Chinese medicine. It soothes the gut and can be used as a
thickener in cooking.
Announcements and other interesting things to note:
Jim Porter will be leading a tour every Friday (2:00-3:30pm) of his exhibit "Sunken Treasure: The Art & Science of Coral Reefs," at UGA’s Special Collections Library on Hull Street. The tour begins in Room 268, next to the Hargrett Gallery and offers insight into the 50 years of research that made this exhibit possible.
Gary announced that Dr. Porter will also be the speaker at the Audubon Society meeting on April 4, which will be held at the Special Collections Library and not at the Nature Center where Audubon usually meets.
Linda relayed Emily’s thanks for everyone’s kind cards, gifts, and email messages following Dale’s passing.
"Gardeners aren't surprised as USDA updates key map.
Newsweek article: "Invasive plant species lay dormant for centuries."
Today's Route: Leaving the Children’s Garden, we wound our way along the paved trails through the Lower Shade Garden to the entrance to the Dunson Native Flora Garden, where we took the mulched trails through the garden along the creek and then returned on the trail on the hillside.
Spring is here! Beech trees are still holding on to last year’s leaves while most of the trees in Garden are still leafless, allowing the maximum amount of light to reach the forest floor.
Spring Ephemerals
Here
in north Georgia, the early spring forest floor belongs to flowering plants known
as “spring ephemerals.” They are a diverse group of native wildflowers that emerge in
late winter or early spring, then flower and set fruit before the tree canopy
leafs out and blocks sunlight. Shortly
after shedding their seeds, the aboveground portions of spring ephemerals wither
and the plants return to dormancy, spending the summer, fall, and winter as
bulbs, rhizomes, or corms. Spring ephemeral species have several things in common. They....
- complete their entire life cycle in 6-8 weeks between first warm temperatures and canopy closure.
- are usually long-lived perennials with delayed maturity, e.g. 3 - 7 years from seed to first flowering.
- provide nectar and pollen for the earliest emerging bees and flies.
- have extensive symbiotic mycorrhizal relationships that increase nutrient uptake.
-
have seeds with fatty elaiosomes that attract ants. Nearly all of our spring ephemeral
wildflowers are dependent on ants for seed dispersal. Luckily there are a lot
of ants out there – twenty-quadrillion to be more or less exact!
Here are some of the spring ephemeral species blooming in early March in the Dunson Garden: Trillium, Spring Beauty, Trout Lily, Virginia Bluebells, and Cut-leaf Toothwort.
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| Virginia Bluebells flowers are pink while in bud
and then turn blue as they open, due to a change of the pH of the cell sap from acid
to alkaline. Virginia Bluebells' long, tubular flowers are pollinated by
long-tongued bees. |
 | |||
| Trout Lily flowers cope with the uncertain
weather of early March by folding their petals closed at night to protect the
pollen on the prominent anthers. On warm, sunny days when pollinators are
active, the petals begin to reflex, fully exposing the stamens by late morning. |
 |
| Cut-leaf Toothwort is a member of the Mustard Family (Brassicaceae), along with cabbage, collards, broccoli, etc. Its leaves are packed with mustard oils that are absorbed by the caterpillars of Falcate Orange-tips, a small white butterfly with orange-tipped wings. The adult butterfly retains some of the distasteful oils in its body and is therefore somewhat protected from predators. |
 |
| The base of each Perfoliate Bellwort leaf wraps around the stem, creating the impression that the
stem perforates the leaf. Their drooping flowers have three petals and three
petal-like sepals and are pollinated by several bee species. |
.jpg) |
| Spring Beauty's anthers are packed with pink
pollen. The anthers open before that flower's pistil is
mature, thus reducing the chances of self-pollination. Bright pink nectar
guides attract the insects that pollinate these flowers while collecting both
nectar and pollen. |
Spring Beauty flowers are pollinated by a variety of insects, including the Spring Beauty Bee. This bee is completely dependent on Spring Beauty flowers – it gathers pollen for its larvae only from Spring Beauty flowers. The female bees collect the pink(!) pollen and form it into balls then deposit them in underground chambers along with their eggs. As temperatures warm, the larvae emerge from the eggs and eat the pollen balls. The larvae pupate during the summer and develop into adults by late fall. Adults spend the winter underground, emerging in the spring when they mate on the petals of Spring Beauties. As much as I’d love to see a Spring Beauty Bee at work here in the Dunson Garden, I’m afraid our patches are too small to support a population of this bee. I have seen acres and acres of Spring Beauties in flower in the Smokies in late April – that would be the time and place to search for the Spring Beauty Bee.
TRILLIUMS IN THE DUNSON GARDEN
More than 35 species of Trillium occur in eastern North America and 21 (possibly more) of these occur in Georgia. In fact, thanks to our varied geology and climate, Georgia has more Trillium species than any state in the country.
 |
| Chattahoochee Trillium is the most abundant
Trillium in the Dunson Garden. The bright silvery-green stripe along the
midvein of each leaf make it easy to identify. It is native to southwest
Georgia, found in the moist ravines along the Flint and Chattahoochee Rivers. |
All of the Trilliums in
the Dunson Garden were planted (or are offspring of those planted) by the
Garden staff when Dunson was created in the early 1980s. The transplants had
been collected from all over the state and brought together in Dunson. Species that wouldn’t ordinarily cohabitate are now close neighbors. As a
result, there
has been a lot of hybridizing going on and it’s not always easy to figure out
which species you’re looking at. This is especially true with Chattahoochee
Trillium, which seems prone to crossing with four other
sessile-flowered species in Dunson: Sweet Betsy, Trailing Trillium, Spotted
Trillium, and Lance-leaf Trillium. (The fifth sessile-flowered Trillium in Dunson,
the Pale Yellow Trillium, does not seem to cross with other species, possibly
because it blooms a bit later.)
 |
| Lance-leaf Trillium has twisted petals and
relatively narrow, drooping leaves. |
Oddly, sadly, Trilliums are
not currently known to occur in the undeveloped areas of the Garden. I remember seeing Trilliums at the Garden in the late 1970s, but when Charlie Wharton, author of
the Natural Environments of Georgia, surveyed the Garden’s natural areas
in 1998, he found none. No one else has seen any either since then. This loss is mainly due to deer predation, and probably
some poaching too.
 |
| Sweet Betsy Trillium is in the Toad-shade group – its flower sits directly on top of the leaves, a stalkless condition known as "sessile." |
Trilliums are divided into two groups: the Toad-shades and the Wake-robins. In the Toad-shade group, the flowers do not have a stalk but sit directly atop the leaves, a condition called “sessile.” Their flowers range in color from yellow through greenish-yellow, bronze, and maroon, and their leaves are patterned or mottled with several shades of green. Sessile-flowered Trillium flowers sometimes have an unpleasant odor that attracts flies as pollinators.
 |
| Spotted Trillium, a Toad-shade species, is found in Georgia's Coastal Plain. Its petals narrow abruptly toward the base, exposing the stamens and ovary. |
 |
| Trailing Trillium is such a short plant that its
leaves rest on the leaf litter. The sessile bud can be seen on the leftmost
plant; the other, smaller plant is too young to flower. Trailing Trillium occurs
in Georgia only where the soil pH is neutral or higher, primarily in the northwest counties. |
In contrast, Trilliums in the Wake-robin group have flowers
on stalks, a condition called “pedicellate” (puh-DISS-uh-late). The stalk may
be erect, leaning, horizontal, or nodding below the leaves but is always present. Pedicellate flowers
may be white, cream, pink, or maroon and often have a pleasing fragrance; the
leaves of these Trilliums are solid green, not mottled.
 |
| Georgia Dwarf Trillium has stalked (pedicillate) flowers with three white petals, three green sepals, and a dark reddish-brown stalk. Its leaves are solid green in color. It is endemic to a very narrow area in northwest Georgia, outside of Dalton. |
Like many spring
ephemerals, Trilliums have seeds that are dispersed by ants attracted to the elaiosome
– a fatty, protein-rich blob or "handle" – attached to each seed. The ants
carry the seeds back to their nest, remove the elaiosome to feed to their
brood, and discard the seed in their nearby waste dump. Thus, the Trillium seeds
get a nice rich seed bed some distance from their parent, and the ant larvae
get a nutritious meal. (Deer are also known to eat Trillium fruits, which accounts
for the longer distance dispersal that we sometime see.)
There
are many early spring-blooming wildflowers in the Dunson Garden that are not
ephemerals – instead, their leaves and stems persist aboveground through much
of the summer and, in some cases, even last through the following winter.
 |
| Sharp-lobed Hepatica (above) leaves last for a year. New
leaves emerge after the flowers appear and last till the following spring.
These days, Blunt-leaved Hepatica (below) often blooms as early as January along the Orange Trail at the Botanical Garden.
The leaves are able to photosynthesize on warm winter days and support
flowering before other species get up and going. |
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| Bloodroot is not a spring ephemeral species; its leaves do not disappear when fruiting is over, but will continue to expand till mid-summer, sometimes reaching 9 inches wide. |
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| We tend to associate golden-colored composite flowers with hot September days, but Golden Ragwort is one of the first flowers to bloom at the Garden. It will be followed soon by its sister species, Butterweed, which explodes in early April in the floodplain. |
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| Another golden-flowered composite, Green-and-Gold blooms early but its mat-forming stems spread and produce leaves all year. |
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| Allegheny Spurge stems, bearing clusters of inconspicuous flowers, are buried in the leaf litter. Its leaves are evergreen. |
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| Sedges don’t get a lot of love,
but Seersucker Sedge, with its pleated leaves and showy spike of male
flowers, is quite eye-catching this time of year. Its leaves persist
through the fall. |
Speaking of flowering early, two yellow-flowered shrubs in Dunson, Painted Buckeye and Spicebush, are among the earliest of woody plants to flower in the Piedmont.
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| Painted Buckeye is in bud; when its showy, yellow-and-orange flowers open, you can bet that hummingbirds have arrived from their winter haunts. |
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| Spicebush flowers in early March. Spicebush is monoecious with female flowers (left, note pistils) and male flowers (right, note stamens) held on separate shrubs. In Dunson, they were planted side-by-side, just about guaranteeing a nice crop of shiny red berries in late summer. |
SUMMARY OF OBSERVED
SPECIES:
'White Cloud' Muhly Grass Muhlenbergia capillaris
Hairy-eyed Flower Fly Syrphus torvus
Star Magnolia Magnolia stellata
Japanese Pieris Pieris japonica
Winter Hazel Corylopsis sp.
Eastern Red Columbine Aquilegia canadensis
Sasanqua Camellia Camellia sasanqua
Japanese Camellia Camellia japonica
American Beech Fagus grandifolia
Virginia Bluebells Mertensia virginica
Dimpled Trout Lily Erythronium americanum
Cut-leaf Toothwort Cardamine concatenata
Perfoliate Bellwort Uvularia perfoliata
Carolina Spring Beauty Claytonia caroliniana
Virginia Spring Beauty Claytonia virginiana
Sensitive Fern Onoclea sensibilis
Celandine Wood Poppy Stylophorum diphyllum
Chattahoochee Trillium Trillium decipiens
Lance-leaf Trillium Trillium lancifolium
Sweet Betsy Trillium Trillium cuneatum
Spotted Trillium Trillium maculatum
Trailing Trillium Trillium decumbens
Georgia Trillium Trillium georgianum
Sharp-lobed Hepatica Hepatica acutiloba, synonym Anemone acutiloba
Round-lobed Hepatica Hepatica americana, synonym Anemone americana
Bloodroot Sanguinaria canadensis
Golden Ragwort Packera aurea
Green-and-Gold Chrysogonum virginianum
Allegheny Spurge Pachysandra procumbens
Seersucker Sedge Carex plantaginea
Western Honey Bee Apis mellifera
Yellow-rumped Warbler Setophaga coronata
Chinese Witch Hazel Hamamelis mollis
Mantle Slug Family Philomycidae
Leatherwood Dirca palustris
Spicebush Lindera benzoin
Painted Buckeye Aesculus sylvatica
