Ramble Report May 23 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 Dale Hoyt (Added Milkvine text by Linda.)

Today’s Focus: Power line right of way and Carolina Milkvine.

29 Ramblers met today.

Show and tell:

Luna moth cocoons
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1)      Kathy brought two empty Luna Moth cocoons.

Red Mangrove embryo
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2)      David brought a Red Mangrove embryo that he collected on a recent trip to the Florida Keys. He told us the fascinating story of mangrove reproduction. 

Blue Gray Gnatcatcher nest
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3)      Avis brought a Blue Gray Gnatcatcher nest. It resembles a gigantic hummingbird nest.

Announcements:

1)      Emily invited all the Ramblers to the Annual Open House of the Friends of the Georgia Museum of Natural History. You don’t need to be a member to come out and see the whale skeletons and enjoy free refreshments. Saturday, May 25, 1-3 p.m., at the Museum Annex (the old Robard’s furniture building on the Atlanta Highway, across from Sam’s Club.

2)      Emily also mentioned “Celebration,” the Friends of the Georgia Museum of Natural History fund raising event on October 4.

3)      Karen Porter shared the following:
Tuesday, June 18, 6pm at the City Hall: Pubic comment session for 2020 SPLOST proposals. Proposal #79 is for a small park at the Tallassee Forest. You can read the proposal and make written comments at the ACC SPLOST2020 website: https://www.accgov.com/splost2020
Linda agrees that TF is a remarkable area that should be preserved. The Oconee River Land Trust submitted the park proposal and the Friends of Tallassee Forest, and the Greenway Commission support it.
For those who don’t know: Tallassee Forest is a 310-acre mature oak-hickory forest, with a marsh, holly forest, canebrakes and 1+ miles of river frontage on the Middle Oconee River. Project #79 will allow public access with a small nature park off of Tallassee Road and walking trails throughout.

Today's reading:

Bob Ambrose recited of his poems, “When in Late May.”

Today's route: We walked from the visitor center plaza down the access road to the White Trail, turned right on the White Trail, walked to the

OBSERVATIONS:

Road (between plaza and White Trail crossing):

Flowering Quince fruit infected by Cedar Quince Rust
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Several Flowering Quince trees have fruits with spiky, bright orange outgrowths. These are spore producing structures of the Cedar Quince rust, a type of fungus with a complex life cycle. As the common name implies, the fungus alternates between two host plants, Eastern Red Cedar and the Flowering Quince. Spores are produced on both host plants but can only infect the alternate host. Spores from the Quince won’t grow on the Quince – they must land on a Cedar where they will produce a spore shedding structure that looks different than the one on the Quince tree. It’s vice versa for the rust on the Cedar. There are similar rusts that alternate hosts between Cedar and other rose family species such as apples, cherries and pears.

Kousa Dogwood inflorescence
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Kousa Dogwood is not a native plant but it shares a similar flower structure with our native Dogwood. The white “petals” are really bracts that surround the inflorescence of tiny flowers. The bracts are pointed whereas the bracts of our native dogwood are rounded and have shallow cleft in the center. It is unlikely that the Kousa would hybridize with our native dogwood because the have different flowering times.

Wild Onion bulbils
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The Wild Onion at the road’s edge has many small bulbils in place of flowers. This is a form of vegetative reproduction. A bulbil falls off and can root and grow into a new plant, genetically identical to its parent. Many of the onions seen today had bulbils.

Chattahoochee Trillium
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The big surprise was the discovery of a number of Chattachoochee Trilliums. These must be escapees from the Dunson Garden, possibly transported to this location via deer feces.

White Trail:

Orchard Grass flowering vigorously
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ROW:

Exposed Fire Ant mound; white object at bottom center is one of the brood (larval ant).
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Fire Ant mounds are just the surface of an ant colony. The rest of the nest may be up to 6 feet underground. When you disturb the surface of the mound you reveal hundreds of ants and small, white objects. The objects are ant larvae and pupae. They have been brought to just below the surface where it is warmer. Warmth speeds development and ants carry their brood up and down in the nest, seeking out the best temperature. When the nest surface is disturbed the ants that are tending the brood very rapidly carry it deeper, away from danger. In less than a minute there is almost no sign that the brood was there.

Young Eastern Redbud; notice the redness of the youngest leaves.
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Small sapling Eastern Redbuds are abundant in the grass on the west side of the ROW. The youngest leaves are very red, supporting the hypothesis that the red anthocyanin pigment protects the developing leaves from damage by intense sunlight.

Rough Daisy Fleabane has been flowering for several weeks
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The brilliant yellow flower of Carolina Desert Chicory
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The bracts of Coreopsis are unique and make it easy to distinguish from other yellow composites.
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The flowers of Little Sensitive Brier have inconspicuous petals; the fuzzy appearance is due to all the stamens.
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Little Sensitive Brier is in the bean family (Fabaceae), but it doesn’t have the “typical” bean type of flower – a large banner petal, two lateral wing petals and two lower keel petals. Instead, the flowers have inconspicuous petals from which numerous stamens project. Tight clusters of such flowers produce a pom-pom effect.

The flowers of Flowering Spurge
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Yellow Star Grass

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Long-leaf Bluet
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Long-leaf Bluet differs from the Summer Bluet by having much narrower leaves.

Spittlebug “spittle”
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Masses of "spittle" are produced by the immature stages of spittle insects (they have piercing, sucking mouthparts and are related to the true bugs and leafhoppers). As they suck sap from the plant the excess passes quickly out of the body and is kicked into a slightly sticky froth, hiding the insect from its potential predators.

The nymph with the spittle removed.
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By removing the spittle you can find the nymph.

This is an adult Two-lined Spittlebug, probably the same species as the nymph we saw today.
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Katherine spotted this Common Buckeye butterfly resting on Cudweed.
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Carolina Horsenettle
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Carolina Horsenettle is in the Tomato family (Solanaceae) and has flowers that resemble those of tomatoes, potatoes, eggplant and other solanaceous plants. The anthers (the structure that holds the pollen) do not release their pollen by splitting open, as do many other plants. Their anthers have a single pore at one end through which the pollen can emerge, but only when shaken in the appropriate way. Bumblebees are able to do this by grabbing the anthers and vibrating their flight muscles at the appropriate frequency. As the dry pollen grains are shaken from the anthers they are attracted to the hairy body of the bumble bee by static electricity. Honeybees cannot perform this trick and are, therefore, poor pollinators of solanaceous crops.

Velvet Witchgrass
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Velvet Witchgrass,as we saw last week, has very hairy leaf sheaths with a stick hairless band beneath the leaf node.

Eastern Bracken Fern
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Avis noticed a large patch of Eastern Bracken Fern growing in the tall grass. Bracken is notorious for taking over an environment, but it can be controlled by periodic burning.

Examples of Stink bugs
Art Cushman, USDA; Property of the Smithsonian Institution, Department of Entomology, Bugwood.org [CC BY 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)]
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Page found an immature stink bug on one of the plants. Stink bugs are shield-shaped insects with piercing, sucking mouthparts. They fall into two groups, those that prey on other insects and those that suck plant juices. Many of the later are agricultural pests. There is no easy way to tell them apart, but some guidelines are helpful. Look at the bug’s proboscis on the underside of its head. If it is very thin, you are holding one of the plant feeders. If it is shorter and stouter, you’ve got a predatory bug. Another, less reliable feature is the “shoulder.” A sharp-pointed shoulder indicates a predatory stink bug. Rounded shoulders are usually found in the plant suckers. Good comparison photos can be found here. (no photo available)

Eastern Smooth Penstemon
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Assassin bug nymph
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A bright red assassin bug stood out like a sore thumb on the green vegetation. As the name suggests, assassin bugs are predators, grabbing and stabbing other insects and sucking them dry. The red coloration is typically found in insects (and other animals) that taste bad or are poisonous to eat or that release noxious chemicals. Harmless insects can gain protection from predators by mimicking the coloration of a noxious species. 

Carolina Milkvine
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Carolina Milkvine is in the same plant family as the milkweeds–Asclepiadaceae (or Apocynaceae, in some people’s opinions, though not mine). But milkweeds are all in the genus Asclepias and milkvines are in two different genera: Matelea and Gonolobus. All three genera have milky latex but only the milkweeds play host to Monarch larvae.

In Georgia, we have seven species of milkvine, but only three occur in Clarke County and other eastern Piedmont counties: Carolina Milkvine, Spiny-pod Milkvine, and Eastern Anglepod. Carolina Milkvine is my favorite of the three–the rich maroon color of the flowers is so appealing. Finding it in the Nash Prairie was a big thrill because it indicates that the soil there is nutrient-rich, confirming that this part of the Garden is underlain by amphibolite, a type of rock that is high in the nutrients calcium and magnesium. Telling milkvines apart is impossible without fruits or flowers–the leaves are identical. All have five-lobed flowers that differ in color or shape.

Carolina Milkvine has deep maroon flowers with relatively wide lobes held in a horizontal plane.

Spiny-pod Milkvine (Matelea decipiens) is a similar maroon color but its lobes are narrower and are held upright.
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Eastern Anglepod flowers are brown or maroon at the base and olive green at the tips of the lobes, rarely solid green.

Both photos by Mason Brock, courtesy of Wikipedia https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Gonolobus_suberosus.jpg
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Nettle-leaf Sage
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Wild Bergamot/Bee Balm (click to enlarge)

Fringed Loosestrife (click to enlarge)

SUMMARY OF OBSERVED SPECIES:

River Oats	Chasmanthium latifolium
Quince	Cydonia sp.
Kousa Dogwood	Cornus kousa
Trumpet Vine	Campsis radicans
Tulip Tree	Liriodendron tulipifera
Wild Onion	Allium mobilense
Hophornbeam	Ostrya virginiana
Chattahoochee Trillium	Trillium decipiens
Orchard Grass	Dactylis glomerata
Fire Ant	Solenopsis invicta
Eastern Redbud	Cercis canadensis
Venus’ Looking Glass	Triodanis perfoliata
Yellow Crownbeard	Verbesina occidentalis
Tall Ironweed	Vernonia sp.
Rough Daisy Fleabane	Erigeron strigosus
Carolina Desert Chicory	Pyrrhopappus carolinianus
Woodland Coreopsis	Coreopsis sp.
Little Sensitive Brier	Mimosa microphylla
Flowering Spurge	Euphorbia corollata
Yellow Star Grass	Hypoxis hirsuta
Long-leaf Bluet	Houstonia longifolia
Spittlebug	Prosapia bicincta??
Common Buckeye	Junonia coenia
Cudweed	Gnaphalium sp.
Carolina Horse-nettle	Solanum carolinense
Velvet Witchgrass	Dichanthelium scoparium
Eastern Bracken Fern	Pteridium aquilinum
Stinkbug	Hemiptera: Pentatomidae
Eastern Smooth Penstemon	Penstemon laevigatus
Assassin Bug	Hemiptera: Reduviidae
Carolina Milkvine	Matelea carolinensis
Fringed Loosestrife	Lysmachia ciliata
Wild Bergamot	Monarda fistulosa
Nettle-leaf Sage	Salvia urticifolia
Small’s Ragwort	Packera anonyma