Ramble Report March 14 2019

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 are compliments of Don, unless otherwise credited.)

Today's post was written by Linda, Don and Dale.

Today’s Focus: Dunson Garden and the ephemeral pool on the power line RoW.

30 Ramblers met today.

Show and Tell:  

Ed showed us a moss-covered tennis shoe found in Memorial Park. Dale said, “A running foot gathers no moss.”

Carla brought a sprig of vetch.  Species undetermined.

Richard passed around a neatly gnawed Black Walnut nut, completely emptied of meat, but leaving the complex internal structure intact.

Today's reading: Linda read “Greeting to Spring (Not Without Trepidation),” a poem by Robert Lax.

Today's Route:   From the Plaza past the Children’s Garden and through the Lower Shade Garden to the Dunson Garden. Through the Dunson Native Flora Garden, then the power line RoW to the ephemeral pool and back via the White Trail Spur.

Lower Shade Garden:

We stopped at a little patch of Witch Hazels, both American Witch Hazel and Ozark Witch Hazel, planted along the paved walkway.

Witch Hazel bud

Linda pointed out the fuzzy leaf buds on the tips of their twigs. Witch Hazel buds are not enclosed during the winter by bud scales, as are the buds of most woody plants. Instead, the tiny, new leaves are “naked,” protected only by a thick coat of hairs. It’s easy to see the undeveloped veins in the fuzzy, immature leaves.

The Winter Hazels, native to central China, are relatives of the Witch Hazel. They are still blooming, with gorgeous hanging inflorescences full of yellow flowers.

Sweet Betsy Trillium

 

We stopped at the uppermost stone bridge near the head of the rock wash to look at a pair of Sweet Betsy Trillium, growing so closely they are apparently rising from the same rhizome, a fairly unusual event. Linda and Dale talked about how trillium seeds are spread by both ants and deer. Ants grab the seeds by a tiny handle attached to the seed coat and carry them to their nests. The handle (called an elaiosome) is composed of fats and proteins, just the thing for a nest of developing ant larvae. The ants feed the elaiosomes to the larvae and discard the seeds into a waste dump of ant feces, dead ants, etc. The waste dump makes for a fertile seed bed. Almost all of our earliest blooming spring wildflowers have seeds with elaiosomes that are dispersed by ants. This includes Virginia Bluebells, Bloodroot, Hepatica, and many more.

Ants are great short distance dispersers of spring wildflower seeds, but botanists have long puzzled over how these flowers could possibly colonize the areas covered by the great sheets of ice during the last ice age. The fact that trilliums are found in New England and southern Canada requires that there must have been dispersal agent capable of carrying seeds further than ants can. Deer were not thought to be good candidates because they are ruminants – they chew their food twice: once in the eating and a second time when they chew the cud. It seemed unlikely that a seed could escape being ground up having passed between the grinding molars two times. But researchers examined deer fecal pellets and found they contained trillium seeds, a small number of which were still capable of germination. Furthermore, the researchers used information on the transit time in the deer’s digestive tract and the average distance a deer moves in 24 hours to predict that a few seeds could be carried more than 3 kilometers from their parent plant. So it seems possible that deer could have spread trillium seeds northward as the glaciers receded.

Dunson Native Flora Garden:

Virginia Bluebells

The pink buds and blue flowers of the Virginia Bluebell are conspicuous throughout the Dunson Garden. This color difference is an adaptation to bee pollination. Bees see colors in the blue and green end of the spectrum, and don’t see colors in the red and orange end of the spectrum. As a result, the pink buds and immature flowers, which do not yet have pollen or nectar to tempt a bee, are more or less invisible to bees, while the blue flowers, with their fully developed pollen and nectar rewards, are enticing. Bees are able to discern colors very quickly – five times faster than humans – and quickly recognize the reward-signaling blue flowers. https://www.beeculture.com/bees-see-matters/

Decumbent Trillium is in full bloom in several areas of the Dunson Garden. This species occurs in Georgia only in two limestone-rich areas, the Ridge & Valley of northwest Georgia and the blackland prairies of the Georgia Fall Line. It looks much like the common Sweet Betsy Trillium, except its stem is usually less than 3 inches long and S-shaped, hidden by the leaves, and trailing along the ground.

Bloodroot closed up to protect its pollen.

Bloodroots are still in flower, most with their petals held upright this morning, protecting their stamens and pistils till the air had warmed enough for insects to become active. A few were fully open, showing the golden whorl of stamens.

Carolina Spring Beauty

Spring Beauties of both species, Carolina and Virginia, are in flower though only a few were fully open due to the early hour and cool temperatures. They are pollinated by a variety of small bees, including the Spring Beauty Bee which is entirely dependent on Spring Beauty pollen for larval food.

Painted Buckeye buds are beginning to swell.

Painted Buckeyes are coming along, with fat flower buds and developing vegetative buds. Most seemed to have fared pretty well during the recent freeze, though several in the lower Dunson Garden looked a little frost-bitten.

Perfoliate Bellwort

Perfoliate Bellwort is just beginning to unfurl its leaves and flowers.

Walter's Violet

Walter's Violet is abundant in the Dunson Garden. Its leaves and flowers are smaller than the common Blue Violet that many people know from their lawns and flower beds and doesn’t spread aggressively. Walter’s Violet flowers are a paler purple, and its leaves are a soft, dull green with tinges of purple on the lower surface. Walter’s are the only vining violets in Georgia, spreading under the leaf litter on runners that produce new plantlets.

Blue Phlox

The first flowering Blue Phlox of the year was spotted along the Rock Wash.

Cutleaf Toothwort

Green and Gold

Rue Anemone

Celandine Poppy

Many of the “usual suspects” of early spring are in flower including Trout Lily, Rue Anemone, Cut-leaved Toothwort, Green-and-Gold, and Celandine Poppy.

Several later blooming wildflowers are just emerging, including Early Meadow Rue, Shooting Star, and Mayapple.

Golden Ragwort

Golden Ragwort is still in flower and bud, the buds enclosed by purple bracts that make a nice contrast with the golden flower heads. The purple pigment in the bracts is due to the presence of anthocyanin, a natural plant sunscreen, which protects the flowers contained within the buds until they can handle sunlight.

New leaves are expanding on the native Coral Honeysuckle planted by the little foot bridge. Though this plant appears each year, we have yet to see it flower in this shady location.

Dwarf Pawpaw, with its small, dark maroon flowers, in in bloom. Though insignificant from a distance, the flowers up close are perfect replicas of the much larger flowers of Tall Pawpaw. The fruit too is a small version of those produced by Tall Pawpaw.

Georgia Dwarf Trillium

The patch of Georgia Dwarf Trillium is spreading and is now found on both sides of the path. Its pure white flowers have been open for more than a week. This is one of the rarest plant species in Georgia, and is a state endemic, found nowhere else in the world. It occurs naturally in the Ridge & Valley region in northwest Georgia; these plants were originally rescued from a development site there.

Allegheny Spurge; male flowers (white stamens) above, female flower (redish) below.

We stopped at the large, ground-covering patch of Allegheny Spurge and were excited to see quite a few flower stalks popping up above the foliage and leaf litter. The male flower clusters are somewhat showy even though they consist only of beige-tipped white stamens–no petals or sepals are present. The red female flowers, consisting only of a pistil and four reddish bracts, could be seen on the same flower stalk below the male flowers when the leaf litter was pulled back to expose the base of the plants.

Seersucker Sedge

Seersucker Sedge is one of the easiest of the sedges to identify year-round: its leaves are less than 10 inches long with three raised veins giving the leaves a pleated look.

Seersucker Sedge beginning to flower

The slender, dark purple, male flower spikes are just now developing at the ends of the stems. At full flower, the stamens emerge and turn the spike into a small, yellow shaving brush. Several green, inch-long female flower spikes form lower on the stems. 

Some of the Wild Ginger plants in Dunson are in full flower, with a nice crop of “Little Brown Jugs,” another common name for this species. The “jugs” are actually fleshy sepals fused into a flaring tube (there are no petals). Enclosed inside the “jug” are 12 stamens, a pistil, and, eventually (if pollination occurs), the seeds.

Persistent Trillium
[Edna's Trillium]

Persistent Trillium (AKA Edna's Trillium) is “persisting” in the same location in the Dunson Garden for many years. Although it is not spreading, the plants flower each year. Named for local luminary, Edna Garst, who first found it growing near Toccoa, its leaves persist later in the summer than most trillium’s do. It shares space with a few Three-parted Yellow Violets, a pair we see blooming together here each spring.

ROW:

After emerging from the western end of the Dunson Garden, we stopped to admire the peppermint-striped flowers of Highbush Blueberry planted at the edge of the powerline right-of-way. Commercial blueberries are the result of selections or hybrids of Highbush Blueberry.

Young tadpoles, possibly Leopard Frog, Spring Peeper, American Toad, or Chorus Frog.

The ephemeral pools in the lower, southern end of the right-of-way are full of black tadpoles swimming around. Four species of frogs and toads have been heard calling in this area: Spring Peepers, Chorus Frogs, Leopard Frogs and American Toads. Many egg masses of the Leopard Frogs were deposited in early February and Tom spotted another egg mass today. To identify the tadpoles it is necessary to examine the mouth parts under a dissecting microscope, otherwise the newly hatched tadpoles all look pretty much alike.

Kidney Leaf Buttercup

The damp, sunny right-of-way supports many early flowering plants that are commonly called weeds, such as the natives Kidney Leaf Buttercup and Wild Pansy, and European species such as Hairy Cress, Gill-over-the-Ground, Henbit, and Purple Dead-nettle.

SUMMARY OF OBSERVED SPECIES

American Witch Hazel	Hamamelis virginiana
Ozark Witch Hazel	Hamamelis vernalis
Saucer Magnolia	Magnolia x soulangeana
Winter Hazel	Corylopsis veitchiana
Sweet Betsy Trillium	Trillium cuneatum
Trout Lily	Erythronium sp.
Mahonia	Mahonia sp.
Virginia Bluebell	Mertensia virginica
Chattahoochee Trillium	Trillium decipiens
Decumbent Trillium	Trillium decumbens
Bloodroot	Sanguinaria canadensis
Carolina Spring Beauty	Claytonia caroliniana
Virginia Spring Beauty	Claytonia virginica
Painted Buckeye	Aesculus sylvatica
Perfoliate Bellwort	Uvularia perfoliata
Walter's Violet	Viola walteri
Blue Phlox	Phlox divaricata
Highbush Blueberry	Vaccinium corymbosum
Early Meadow Rue	Thalictrum dioicum
Shooting Star	Dodecatheon meadia
Golden Ragwort	Packera aurea
Rue Anemone	Thalictrum thalictroides
Cut-leaved Toothwort	Cardamine concatenata
Coral Honeysuckle	Lonicera sempervirens
Green-and-Gold	Chrysogonum virginianum
Dwarf Pawpaw	Asimina parviflora
Cucumber Magnolia	Magnolia acuminata
Wild Ginger	Hexastylis arifolia
American Coralbell	Heuchera americana
Celandine Wood Poppy	Stylophorum diphyllum
Georgia Dwarf Trillium	Trillium georgianum
Allegheny Spurge	Pachysandra procumbens
Mayapple	Podophyllum peltatum
Seersucker Sedge	Carex plantaginea
Atamasco Lily	Zephyranthes atamasca
Persisent (Edna's) Trillium	Trillium persistens
Three-part Violet	Viola tripartita
Georgia Basil	Clinopodium georgianum
Hairy Bittercress	Cardamine hirsuta
Tadpoles
Kidneyleaf Buttercup	Ranunculus abortivus