Leader for today's Ramble: Linda
Authors
of today’s Ramble report: Linda. Comments, edits, and suggestions for the
report can be sent to Linda at Lchafin (at) uga.edu.
Insect identifications: Heather
Larkin,
Bill Sheehan
Fungi and gall identifications: Bill
Sheehan
All the photos that appear in this report,
unless otherwise credited, were taken by Heather Larkin. Photos may be enlarged
by clicking them with a mouse or tapping on your screen.
Number of Ramblers today: 29
Today's emphasis: Seeking what we found in the Children’s,
International, and Threatened & Endangered Species gardens.
Thursday, May 2, 2024
Ramble Report May 2, 2024
Thursday, April 25, 2024
Ramble Report - April 25, 2024
Leader for today's Ramble: Bay Noland-Armstrong
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 from
today’s ramble made it into the ramble report, so be sure to check out his
Facebook album at this link.
Number
of Ramblers today: 31
Today's emphasis: Birding the woods and right-of-way
Thursday, April 18, 2024
Leader for today's Ramble: Catherine
Authors of today’s Ramble report:
Linda, Catherine, and Don. Comments, edits, and suggestions for the
report can be sent to Linda at Lchafin (at) uga.edu.
Insect identifications:
Don Hunter
Gall identification:
Bill
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 from
today’s ramble made it into the ramble report, so be sure to check out
his Facebook album at this link.
Number of Ramblers today:
23
Today's emphasis:
Using watercolors to capture shapes and surface details of leaves and
flowers.
Ramble Report April 18, 2024
Leader for today's Ramble: Catherine
Authors
of today’s Ramble report: Linda,
Catherine, and Don.
Comments, edits, and suggestions for the report can be sent to Linda at Lchafin
(at) uga.edu.
Insect identifications: Don Hunter
Gall identifications: Bill
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 from today’s ramble made it
into the ramble report, so be sure to check out his Facebook album at this link.
Number of Ramblers today: 23
Today's emphasis: Using watercolors to capture shapes and surface details
of leaves and flowers.
Thursday, April 4, 2024
Ramble Report - April 4, 2024
Leader for today's Ramble: Linda
Authors of today’s Ramble Report: Linda and Don
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
from today’s ramble made it into the ramble report, so be sure to check out his
Facebook album at this link.
There is now a Link to the 2024 calendar of the Nature Rambles and book group meetings on the upper right of your screen. This is a work in progress. Thanks to Bill for setting this up!
Today's emphasis: Looking
for frog eggs and flowering Butterweed in the Middle Oconee River floodplain
Number of Ramblers today: 30
Today's Route: We left the Children's Garden and headed down the White Trail extension to the power line right-of-way, stopping to look for ephemeral pools. We then followed the ADA trail to the river and turned left on the White Trail, following it to the spur that crosses the floodplain and returns up the hill. We took the spur trail back to the White Trail and returned to the Children's Garden.
Announcements:
The April 18 ramble will be led by Catherine, who will lead us in another “art
ramble.” Please bring a clipboard if you
have one. If you don’t, we will have a few spare ones. Also bring your creative
spirit!
The April 25 ramble will be led by Bay Noland-Armstrong, a graduating senior in
the Wildlife Resources Department in the Forestry School. She will teach novices
how to bird and give experienced birders a chance to hone their skills during
migration. Please bring binoculars if you have them; if you don’t, we will have
a few spares on hand. Also, download the Merlin app available free from the Cornell Lab of
Ornithology to your phone.
The Nature Rambler book group meets next on April 18 in the Adult Education
Classroom in the Education Department in the Visitor Center at the Garden. Richard
will moderate a discussion of “The Life of a Leaf” by Steven Vogel.
The Garden has announced plans to re-route and convert the existing mulched trails
in the Dunson Native Flora Garden to paved, ADA-approved trails. Comments on
this proposed plan may be sent to the Garden’s Director, Jenny Cruse-Sanders (crusesanders@uga.edu)
and the Garden’s Director of Horticulture, Jason Young (Jason.Young@uga.edu).
The Garden’s Spring Plant Sale is this week. There will be a Friends Pre-sale
on Thursday, April 11, from 2:00 to 6:00 pm, with the general public welcome on Friday, 2:00 pm to 6:00 pm, and
Saturday, 8:00 am to 2:00 pm.
Interesting follow-up article to this week’s solar eclipse. “An eclipse is wondrous — don’t underestimate
it.”
Show-and-Tell:
Nathan brought a sample of Oriental False Hawksbeard, an exotic invasive species that has become incredibly widespread in just the last decade. Nathan recommends that we pull it up before it goes to seed, taking care to get as much of the root as possible. It’s a shallowly rooted plant and not hard to pull up. More info is here.Today’s Reading: Linda read an essay about a hummingbird building a nest from Barbara Kingsolver’s book Small Wonder.
“In the slender shoulders of the myrtle tree outside my kitchen window, a
hummingbird built her nest. It was in April, the sexiest month, season of
bud-burst and courtship displays, though I was at the sink washing breakfast
dishes and missing the party, or so you might think. Then my eye caught a
flicker of motion outside, and there she was, hovering uncertainly. She held in
the tip of her beak a wisp of wadded spider web so tiny I wasn't even sure it
was there, until she carefully smooshed it onto the branch. She vanished then,
but in less than a minute she was back with another tiny white tuft that she
stuck on top of the first. For more than an hour she returned again and again,
increasingly confident of her mission, building up by infinitesimal degrees a
whitish lump on the branch-and leaving me plumb in awe of the supply of spider
webbing on the face of the land. When the lump had grown big enough — when some
genetic trigger in her small brain said, "Now, that will do " — she
stopped gathering and sat down on her little tuffet, waggling her wings and
tiny rounded under- belly to shape the blob into a cup that would easily fit
inside my cupped hand. Then she hovered up to inspect it from this side and
that, settled and waddled with greater fervor, hovered and appraised some more,
and dashed off again. She began now to return with fine filaments of shredded
bark, which she wove into the webbing along with some dry leaflets and a
slap-dab or two of lichen pressed onto the outside for curb appeal. When she had
made of all this a perfect, symmetrical cup, she did the most surprising thing
of all: She sat on it, stretched herself forward, extended the unbelievable
length of her tongue, and licked her new nest in a long upward stroke from
bottom to rim. Then she rotated herself a minute degree, leaned forward, and
licked again. I watched her go all the way around, licking the entire nest in a
slow rotation that took ten minutes to complete and ended precisely back at her
starting point. Passed down from hummingbird great-grandmothers immemorial, a
spectacular genetic map in her mind had instructed her at every step, from
snipping out with her beak the first spiderweb tuft to laying down whatever
salivary secretion was needed to accrete and finalize her essential creation.
Then, suddenly, that was that. Her busy urgency vanished, and she settled in
for the long stillness of laying and incubation.”
Anna's Hummingbird in her nest Photo by Steve Berardi |
Eastern Red Columbine flowering
at the edge of the Children’s Garden Flowering time of Red Columbine (and
several other species such as Red and Painted Buckeyes) usually coincides with the
arrival of Ruby-throated Hummingbirds, who fly across the Gulf of Mexico from
their wintering grounds in Central America. Our native Eastern Red Columbine has a special relationship with hummingbirds: their
red color is especially attractive to hummers and their nectar has twice the amount of sugar
as western Columbines. Columbine flowers produce nectar inside the very tips of the “spurs” (modified
petals) that point upward at the top of the flower. As hummingbirds probe for
nectar, their foreheads pick up pollen from the flower’s stamens, pollen which
is hopefully transferred to stigmas on the next plant they visit. Columbine is
capable of producing viable seeds from self-pollination but repeated
self-pollination within a plant population carries the risks of inbreeding: populations
of plants with low genetic diversity are more vulnerable to disease and may lack
the ability to respond to changing environmental conditions. |
Piedmont Azalea is planted at the top of the paved path through the Lower Shade Garden. |
Pollinators of native Azalea
flowers were a mystery for many years. The nectar is produced deep inside the
tubed portion of the flower, while the pollen-producing anthers at the tip of
the stamens are held inches from the tube. Not to mention the pollen-receptive stigma,
which protrudes even further than the stamens. How does an insect probing the
tube come into contact with all three important parts of this system: the
nectar glands, the anthers, and the stigma? North Carolina State University
biologist Mary Jane Epps found out the answer which you can read about here.
|
White Agreeable Tiger Moth on a Viburnum leaf |
A White Oak twig bearing very young leaves The tender leaves are protected by a dense coating of hairs and just a blush of anthocyanin (on the smallest leaf on the upper right). |
Winged Elm bark is characterized by narrow oblong plates that some wag likened to tongue depressors. |
New Rambler Luna (left) and
Nathan (right) looking for insects and fungi under a log. They turned up a
beautiful, pinkish, resupinate polypore crust fungus (below). |
Four-winged Silverbell trees at the edge of the floodplain forest are in flower. |
The different world of the flooded slough between the base of the slope and the Middle Oconee River levee |
Wild Chervil in flower beside the White Trail along the river |
A weedy native found along the
river bank, Kidney-leaf Buttercup has the extra-shiny yellow petals typical of
buttercups. |
Near the base of the ridge along the spur trail, we saw Butterweed in the greatest numbers of any place we’d seen them this morning. |
Ramblers spotted a vigorously flowering Cross-vine in a trailside tree. Cross-vine climbs by wrapping tendrils around a supportive tree or fence. |
Early Forget-Me-Not is covered with long, bristly hairs throughout. |
Annual Fleabane in early flower |
SUMMARY OF OBSERVED SPECIES
Oriental (Asian) False Hawksbeard Youngia japonica
Eastern Red Columbine Aquilegia canadensis
Piedmont Azalea Rhododendron canescens
Pale Yellow Trillium Trillium discolor
Viburnum Viburnum sp.
Agreeable Tiger Moth Spilosoma congrua
White Oak Quercus alba
Winged Elm Ulmus alata
Solomon’s Seal Polygonum biflorum
Cranefly Orchid Tipularia discolor
Chattahoochee Trillium Trillium decipiens
Trailing (Decumbent) Trillium Trillium decumbens
Resupinate Polypore Crust Fungus Physisporinus crocatus (Tentative ID)
Jack-in-the-Pulpit Arisaema triphyllum
Hearts-a-bustin', Strawberry Bush Euonymus americanus
Rue Anemone/Windflower Thalictrum thalictroides
Yellow Crownbeard Verbesina occidentalis
Four-winged (Mountain) Silverbell Halesia tetraptera
Hop Hornbeam Ostrya virginiana
Ground Ivy Glechoma hederacea
Henbit Lamium amplexicaule
Purple Deadnettle Lamium purpureum
Box Elder Acer negundo
Box Elder gall midge Contarinia negundinis
Wild Chervil Chaerophyllum procumbens
Kidney-leaf Buttercup Ranunculus abortivus
Stinging Nettle Laportea canadensis
Beaked Corn Salad Valerianella radiata
Butterweed Packera glabella
Cross-vine Bignonia capreolata
Early Forget-Me-Not Myosotis verna
Annual Fleabane Erigeron annuus
Mayapple Podophyllum peltatum
Carolina Anole Anolis carolinensis
Blue Japanese Oak Quercus glauca
Coral Honeysuckle Lonicera sempervirens
Northern Parula Setophaga americana