Twenty-three Ramblers assembled at the Arbor by the Lower Parking Lot for a Ramble on Grasses led by Linda Chafin.
Don Hunter's photo album for today's
ramble is here.
Event
of Interest:
Doug Tallamy, author of Bringing Nature Home is speaking at the Exotic Pest
Plant Conference at the Georgia Center, Nov 12 and 13, 3:50pm. Admission is
$15.00 for each presentation.
Today's
readings:
Today we had readings brought to us by Ed Wilde, Hugh Nourse and Linda Chafin.
Ed Wilde summarized his reading on using
your backyard to conserve the environment from Bringing Nature Home by Doug Tallamy
(Timber Press, 2009):
Chances are, you have never thought of your
garden - indeed,
of all of the space
on your property - as a wildlife preserve that represents the last chance we have
for sustaining plants and animals that were once common throughout the U.S.
But that is exactly
the role our suburban landscapes are now playing and will play even more in the near
future.
If this is news to you, it's not your fault. We
were taught from childhood that gardens are for beauty; they are a chance to express our artistic talents, to have fun with and relax in. And, whether we like it or not, the way we landscape our
properties is taken by our neighbors as a statement of our wealth and social
status. But no one has taught us that
we have forced the plants and animals that evolved in North America (our nation's biodiversity) to depend more and more on
human-dominated landscapes for their continued existence.
We have turned 54% of the lower 48 states into cities and
suburbs, and 41 % more into various
forms of agriculture. Humans have taken 95% of nature
and made in unnatural.
Once common species
such as the northern bobwhite,
eastern meadowlark, field sparrow, and grasshopper sparrow have declined dramatically in total numbers, and are completely absent from many
areas that used to support healthy populations. The pressures on wildlife
populations today are greater than they have ever been
and many gardeners assume they can remedy this situation by simply planting
a variety of flowering perennials, trees, and shrubs.
What will it take to give our local animals what they need
to survive and reproduce on our properties? NATIVE PLANTS,
and lots of them. There is an unbreakable link
between native plant species and native wildlife. Indeed, most native insects cannot, or will not, eat alien plants. When
native plant species disappear or are replaced by
alien exotics, the insects disappear, thus impoverishing the food
source of birds and other animals.
So many animals
depend on insects for food (e.g., spiders, reptiles and amphibians, rodents, 96% of all terrestrial birds)
that removing insects from an ecosystem spells its doom.
We have planted Kousa dogwood, a species from China that
supports no insect herbivores,
instead of our native flowering dogwood (Comus
florida) that supports 117 species of
moths and butterflies alone.
By way of introduction, Hugh read the first paragraph of Linda Chafin’s latest article, ID’ing Grasses for Beginners, in Tipularia (2014), p. 14.:
If I had a dollar for every time
I’ve said “I don’t do grasses…” over
the last 30 years, I could retire – to some fabulous place on the planet where
there are no grasses to do. But, wait
– there is no place on our planet without grasses and if there were, it sure
wouldn’t be fabulous: an environment without grasses would be a sad and
impoverished place. Plus there wouldn’t be much of anything to eat!
Then Linda read a poem by Veronica Patterson, reflecting on
what to do after Tuesday’s election:
A
Charm Against the Language of Politics
Say over and over the names of things,
the clean nouns: weeping birch, bloodstone, tanager,
Banshee damask rose. Read field guides, atlases,
gravestones. At the store, bless each apple
by kind: McIntosh, Winesap, Delicious, Jonathan.
Enunciate the vegetables and herbs: okra, calendula.
Go deeper into the terms of some small landscape:
spiders, for example. Then, after a speech on
compromising the environment for technology,
recite the tough, silky structure of webs:
tropical stick, ladder web, mesh web, filmy dome, funnel,
trap door. When you have compared the candidates' slippery
platforms, chant the spiders: comb footed, round headed,
garden cross, feather legged, ogre faced, black widow.
Remember that most short verbs are ethical: hatch, grow,
spin, trap, eat. Dig deep, pronounce clearly, pull the words
in over your head. Hole up
for the duration.
Say over and over the names of things,
the clean nouns: weeping birch, bloodstone, tanager,
Banshee damask rose. Read field guides, atlases,
gravestones. At the store, bless each apple
by kind: McIntosh, Winesap, Delicious, Jonathan.
Enunciate the vegetables and herbs: okra, calendula.
Go deeper into the terms of some small landscape:
spiders, for example. Then, after a speech on
compromising the environment for technology,
recite the tough, silky structure of webs:
tropical stick, ladder web, mesh web, filmy dome, funnel,
trap door. When you have compared the candidates' slippery
platforms, chant the spiders: comb footed, round headed,
garden cross, feather legged, ogre faced, black widow.
Remember that most short verbs are ethical: hatch, grow,
spin, trap, eat. Dig deep, pronounce clearly, pull the words
in over your head. Hole up
for the duration.
(From The Sun, November 1992, issue 203.)
Today's
route:
Our ramble began at the Arbor and then proceeded down the walkway in the Shade
Garden to the road, across the road, and up the white trail to the power line
ROW. We walked up the path through the
Elaine Nash Piedmont Prairie. At one
point we turned around and walked down the hill to the service road to the
Mimsie Lanier Center for the Study of Native Plants. Then we returned to the Arbor.
The first stop had nothing to do with
grasses. A mockernut hickory nut husk
split opened by a squirrel was found by Linda
on the walkway. Linda suggested
that the name mockernut comes from the toughness of the nut. It is mocking those who try to get at the
nut. The tree with the typical cross or
diamond shaped ridges in the bark was next to the walkway.
Note: Throughout this report we will insert the
species accounts from Linda's recent Tipularia
(the journal of the Georgia Botanical Society) paper: ID'ing Grasses for Beginners. The quoted material is in
a different typeface.
Across the road, Linda stopped at the
sedge that we have discussed before. She
recited the ditty: Sedges have edges, rushes are round, and grasses have knees
all the way to the ground, and was also able to tell us that this mystery sedge
is probably fragrant flat sedge. (She
also noted that not all sedges have edges. Plants do not read books.)
 | |
| Witch grass |
In the open area next to the sedge and very
close to the ground was a rosette with extremely small flowers called witch
grass in the genus Dichanthelium.
Across the trail was a nice stand of
river oats, or fish on a pole.
 | |
| River Oats |
Next was broomsedge.
 | |
| Broomsedge |
Right beside it was splitbeard
broomsedge:
 | |
| Splitbeard Broomsedge |
Splitbeard
Broomsedge (Andropogon ternarius) is nearly as common as Broomsedge
in disturbed habitats and, at 60 mph, looks much the same. Up close, though, it
has several distinctive features. Its culms seem to be banded with broad
stripes of red and green. Actually, the culm is red and the leaf sheaths are
green. Splitbeard’s spikelets are not enclosed in a spathe like Broomsedge’s
are. Instead, the hairy, heavily awned spikelets are in pairs at the tips of
long, slender stalks. As they mature, the pair separates into two hairy parts,
ultimately forming a conspicuous V-shape. The spikelets eventually
break apart and disperse, leaving behind a little tuft of white hairs that
looks like a heavily used paintbrush. Little Blue Stem, Schizachyrium
scoparium, also has red and green banded culms, but it is a smaller plant
with a single, sparsely flowered spikelet.
We walked into the Elaine Nash Piedmont
Prairie named in honor of Elaine Nash.
Elaine was known in the Georgia Botanical Society as the Grass
Lady. Linda discussed how she had worked
in a soil conservation agency and had noticed that no one knew much about grasses,
so she taught herself, and became the expert in the State to go to for help in
identifying grasses, planning landscapes
with grasses, and growing grass meadows or prairies. She was the expert that
helped Panola Mountain convert a fescue pasture to a grassland and Sandy Creek Nature Center establish it’s grass pocket
prairie. Linda herself was
inspired by Elaine and began her own grass odyssey.
First was purpletop grass:
 | |
| Purpletop |
Purpletop
or Greasy Grass (Tridens flavus) is another common roadside grass
that flowers in the fall. Its large flower clusters have an open and airy look,
with wiry, slightly drooping, widely spaced branches whorled around the culm.
The spikelets are shiny red or purple and coated with a waxy substance. Grab
the flower cluster and pull it through your hand – you’ll definitely understand
the reason for the name Greasy Grass. The leaves are rough to the touch and
less than ½ inch wide. The leaf collar has tufts of hairs where it meets the
culm and the ligule is also a ring of hairs. Purpletop spikelets have all their
parts so, just for practice, use your hand lens to locate the pair of glumes
(one smaller than the other) and the two overlapping rows of lemmas. The genus
name Tridens refers to the fact that three lines of hairs occur on the
lower half of each lemma, letting you know that whoever named these plants had
a very good microscope nearby.
Nearby was wild ryegrass:
 | |
| Wild Rye |
Eastern
Wild-Rye (Elymus virginicus) is another common grass of moist
forests and bottomlands with easy-to-see parts. Wild-Ryes are cool season
grasses, but the seed head of this species can often be found, dry and tan, in
the summer or fall. Its fresh seedheads are erect spikes up to 6 inches high.
There are several distinctive features of Eastern Wild Rye. Its lemmas and
glumes have long awns, so the whole seed head looks bristly. Its hard, pale
glumes bow out at the base, forming a U-shape. The leaf nodes are swollen
and usually coated with a waxy, white, powdery substance called (confusingly) bloom.
And the whole plant, when fresh, is a lovely, grayish-green color.
We went off the path toward a silver plume grass, but before we
could get there we found a spring flowering witchgrass related to the first
rosette we saw. Also on the way was big
top lovegrass. This plant is 60 to 120
cm tall with densely long hairy stems (culms).
The head of the plant has many horizontal branches, not drooping like
purpletop grass. Then we reached the
silver plume grass.
 | |
| Silver Plume grass and Ramblers |
Silver
Plume Grass (Saccharum alopecuroides) is one of our tallest grasses,
up to 10 feet tall. It is conspicuous on road banks and in other dry disturbed
areas in north Georgia. Its stout culms are crowned by a large, showy seed head
packed with hundreds of spikelets. As the seed head expands in late summer, it
turns a silvery, pinkish-purple color. After blooming, it becomes a white and
woolly plume. Each spikelet is covered with long hairs and the lemmas are awned
with long, spirally twisted bristles. Its leaves are up to 2½ feet long and 1
inch wide with a conspicuous white midvein. Pull back the blade and look at the
fringed, ¼ - inch high ligule. Sugarcane Plume Grass (S. giganteum)
occurs in wetlands and wet ditches, mostly in the Coastal Plain, and grows to
13 feet tall. Its awns are straight, not spirally twisted.
Linda did discuss the white mid vein on the leaf as not a very
good diagnostic feature because it appears on other grasses such as Johnson
grass, as well as other grasses. This
gave her a chance to discuss Johnson grass:
Johnson
Grass (Sorghum halepense) is an exotic species that has invaded
roadsides, pastures, and other clearings. It is a large, coarse grass and, once
you know it, it is easy to spot at 60 mph. Johnson Grass has the distinction of
being one of the worst pest plants in the world and is resistant to glyphosate
(aka Roundup), which is very bad news for farmers. Its leaves are large, up to
3 feet long and 1½ inches wide. Running the length of the leaf blade is a
thick, white midvein – it is slightly off center and gives a satisfying snap if
you bend the blade in two. (Since this is an exotic pest plant, feel free to
maul as many leaves as you’d like!) Pull the leaf blade away from the stem and
look for the ligule at the top of the sheath:
it consists of a fringe of ¼ - inch long, silvery hairs. Johnson Grass
flowers in the fall, and its large, much branched flower clusters are purple or
dull red. If you have a good hand lens or dissecting microscope, look at the
spikelets. You will see that they are in pairs or in 3’s. One spikelet of the
group has no stalk, and the other 1 or 2 are on tiny stalks. The glumes are
hard, shiny, and reddish.
We did ooh and aah over the late purple aster by the silver
plume grass. Someone asked if it was
Georgia aster. It was not, and we were
to see the difference when we found several at the Mimsie Lanier Center.
As we moved back toward the walkway several new grasses were
found. One was black needlegrass which
has long needle awns projecting from the terminal spikelet.
Black
Needle Grass (Piptochaetium avenaceum) is a cool season grass found
in upland woods, especially around granite outcrops. Its leaves are long and
wiry, and the ligule is a delicate, transparent tube. The foot-long flower
cluster is open and airy with long, wiry, nodding branches. The spikelets are
black, and each has a set of short barbs at its base and a long,
spirally twisted awn at its tip. Once the seed is mature and the spikelets are
shed, the awn reacts to changes in humidity by twisting and untwisting, boring
the seed into the ground; the barbs secure the seed in place. You have to
admit: seed dispersal strategies don’t get much cooler than that.
 | |
| Beaked panicgrass |
Nearby was beaked panicgrass.
I remember looking through the hand lens to see the beaks on the seeds.
Arrow
feather threeawn grass was next. The three awns (bristles) seemed to
go all the way up the stem. The leaves were curly.
 | |
| Threeawn grass |
Here we turned around and headed down the hill to the road to
the Mimsie Lanier Center. Along the way
we found a tulip tree samara. Beside the
walkway was an exciting find, yellow foxtail grass and small foxtail grass:
 | ||
| Yellow and Small foxtail grasses |
Foxtail
Grasses (Setaria spp.) are a group of easy-to-recognize grasses
found throughout Georgia in many kinds of habitats. They range in size from a
few inches to 20 feet tall, but they all have a distinctive seed head: cylinder-shaped
and densely packed with spikelets that radiate out from the axis. The seedheads
are very bristly and, in this case, the bristles really are bristles (meaning
they arise from the base of the spikelet rather than the tip), not awns. Yellow
Foxtail Grass (S. pumila), a European native, is commonly seen in
roadside rights-of-way and disturbed areas in Georgia. It’s 1 - 3 feet tall and
the stiffly erect flower clusters are 1 - 6 inches tall, with yellow bristles.
Another grass that looks like Setaria was Purple Bristle Grass or Fountain Grass (Pennisetum sp.). The bristles were purple and much thicker than the yellow foxtail
grass.
Walking down the terraces from the walkway across the field to
the road we encountered terraces from the former farm that was located where
the Mimsie Lanier Center is now located.
Linda had a chance to talk about the Roosevelt Administration
conservation effort in the thirties to get farmers to avoid erosion by making
terraces on slopes. Soon after, farmers reverted
back to the old ways plowing straight up hills causing erosion, rather than the
contour plowing that saves soil from so much erosion.
At the Mimsie Lanier Center propagation area we saw rows of
yellow indian grass:
 | |
| Yellow Indian grass |
Yellow Indian
Grass (Sorghastrum. nutans) [occurs] throughout Georgia in dry to moist woodlands
and on roadsides. There are long stretches of GA Hwy 15 that are lined with
Yellow Indian Grass, which forms large patches by the spread of rhizomes. Both
species have upright flower clusters, with the spikelets on branches that
encircle the culm, so they look like plumes. The spikelets are golden brown and
contrast beautifully with the blue-green leaves and culms. Slender Indian Grass
has awns that are 1 - 1½ inches long. Yellow Indian Grass has shorter awns,
less than 1 inch.
Indian Grasses have very cool ligules–you can identify them to
genus even when they are not in flower. Pull the leaf away from the culm and
look for a low membrane with two sharply pointed ears – they always make me
think of Yoda. Some people think the ligules look more like rifle sights than
they do Yoda.
 | |
| Georgia Aster |
It was great to see the lovely Georgia aster in bloom in a row
next to the Indian grass. It was also
cool to see a sample of the silver plume grass at a much earlier stage of
growth than it was out on the prairie.
This showed how it gets its name, silver plume grass, because the head
had a silvery sheen.
It was time to turn around and head back to the arbor. But
along the service road was a trumpet vine with a seed pod hanging on the
vine. We opened it up to see the seeds
which were flat with two papery wings.
It was a good day. The
threatened rain did not materialize until we finished the ramble, and retired
to Donderos for refreshment and conversation.
Hugh
SUMMARY OF OBSERVED SPECIES:
Common Name
|
Scientific Name
|
Mockernut hickory
|
Carya tomentosa
|
Fragrant flat sedge
|
Cyperus odoratus
|
Witch grass
|
Dichanthelium sp.
|
River oats
|
Chasmanthium latifolium
|
Broomsedge bluestem
|
Andropogon virginicus
|
Split-beard bluestem
|
Andropogon ternarius
|
Purpletop grass
|
Tridens flavus
|
Purple lovegrass
|
Eragrostis spectabilis
|
Wild rye
|
Elymus virginicus
|
Big top lovegrass
|
Eragrostis hirsuta
|
Silver plume grass
|
Saccharum alopecuroides
|
Late purple aster
|
Symphyotrichum patens
|
Black needlegrass
|
Piptochaetium avenaceum (Stipa avenacea)
|
Beaked panicgrass
|
Panicum anceps
|
Arrowfeather threeawn
|
Aristida purpurascens
|
Tulip tree seeds
|
Liriodendron tulipifera
|
Yellow foxtail grass
|
Setaria lutescens
|
Purple bristle grass
|
Pennisetum sp.
|
Small foxtail grass
|
Alopecurus sp.
|
Yellow indian grass
|
Sorghastrum nutans
|
Georgia aster
|
Symphyotrichum georgianum
|
Trumpet vine
|
Campsis radicans
|
