Friday, July 5, 2019

Ramble Report June 27 2019


Today's Ramble was led by Don Hunter.
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 is the edited “bullet list” compiled by Don Hunter.
Today’s Focus:
25 Ramblers met today.
Today's emphasis:  Dunson Native Flora Garden, ROW, Orange Trail and White Trail

Announcements: Linda made the following request: “please put a link to this new Georgia Trees website. It’s newly posted by Richard and Teresa Ware, who have been studying and photographing trees for decades. The photos are wonderful! And the text is too. They plan to create webpages for shrubs, ferns, wildflowers, etc. as they get to it.”

Today's reading: Eugenia brought a reading from the New York Times: ”Truck and Tree” by Laura Lim.

Truck and Tree

Dear Diary,

I was walking along Henry Street in Brooklyn.  A blind man with a white cane was walking toward me.  To my right, a truck was backing into a parking spot

Just as the man with the cane passed me on my left, I heard a bang.  I turned and saw a young man poke his head out of the truck to assess the damage to the tree that had just been hit.

The man with the cane stopped and turned his head.

“What was that?” he asked.

I took a couple of steps back.

“A truck was just backing up and hit a tree” I said.  “Don’t worry.  Nobody’s hurt.”

“So it’s O.K.?” he said.

“Yeah, the truck looks fine.  I don’t see any damage.”

He cracked a grin.

“Not the truck,” he said.  “The tree.”

Show and Tell:
Sicklepod
(click to enlarge)
1.      Kathy brought a large clump of Sicklepod (Senna obtusifolia) from her yard, curious about whether it was a native or invasive and wondering if it was a host plant for any butterflies.  She learned it is a fairly cosmopolitan plant and is likely to show up anytime a garden plot is tilled and planted.  She will keep a few in her yard for the butterflies. [Senna is the host plant for the Cloudless Sulfur.]
Firefly (Lightning Bug)
(click to enlarge)
2.      Betsy’s grandson, Clay, caught a lightning bug to share with the early arrivers.

Today's Route:   We left the plaza, taking the walkway from the arbor down to the mulched path to the Dunson Native Flora Garden where we through the gate just above the Passionflower vines on the deer fence.  From the vines we walked down to the river on the ROW path, then turned left onto the Orange Trail, following it downstream to the spur trail on the left, which we took to the White Trail, going up to the Children’s Garden and then to the Visitor Center.  We enjoyed refreshments and conversation at the Café Botanica.

LIST OF OBSERVATIONS:

Lower Shade Garden Mulched Path:

Sweet Betsy Trillium
(click to enlarge)

Chattachoochee Trillium
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Chattahoochee Trillium, still looking as if it were April or May.

Poison Ivy growing along the mulched path.

Wood Ear mushroom
(click to enlarge)
Cut tree sections, supporting many bracket fungi, most likely old, bleached Violet-toothed Polypores and some Wood Ear fungus.

A large Jack-in-the-Pulpit with fruits
(click to enlarge)

Cluster of Jack-in-the-Pulpit fruits
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A large, five-leaved Jack-in-the-Pulpit, with a cluster of green fruits located at the junction of the two leaf stalks.  This plant is definitely female (it has fruits).

Dunson Native Flora Garden:

Black Cohosh inflorescences
(click to enlarge)
The flowers of Black Cohosh begin opening at the bottom of the inflorescence. The bloom then progresses to the top, but it takes several weeks for a plant to finish blooming. The delicate, airy whiteness of the bloom is produced by the stamens because the flowers lack sepals and petals. When a flower finishes blooming the stamens fall off.

Bush Katydid nymph; note the position of the jumping legs.
(click to enlarge)
 A Bush Katydid nymph, with an unusual leg posture, on the Cohosh. [The extended legs resemble the long antennae at the other end of the insect. My first reaction to Don’s photo was that it might be attracting attention away from the head. Most katydids and grasshoppers will easily drop a leg if they are attacked by a predator – they escape while the predator thinks it has a mouthful of food. DH]

Northern Horsebalm
(click to enlarge)
Northern Horsebalm is big and healthy and should be flowering before too long.  We enjoyed the lemony smell of the foliage.

River Oats seed heads are plumping up.
(click to enlarge)

Leaf mine in Golden Ragwort; the mine starts on the right and gets wider as it progresses over to the left side.
(click to enlarge)
Leafminers, as they do every year, have created feeding trails inside the Golden Ragwort leaves. The mine, either a caterpillar or a fly maggot, starts at the point where the egg is laid on/in the leaf. The larva eats its way between the upper and lower epidermis of the leaf, leaving winding trail of consumed leaf. The trail grows in width as the larva grows and, at the very end, you can see the brown pupal case from which the adult insect will emerge. (In some leafminers the larva leaves the leaf and pupates in the leaf litter below the plant.

Royal Fern
(click to enlarge)
Royal Fern is growing in the Upper Bog (just below the Doghobble).

We looked for Gulf Fritillary eggs or caterpillars on the Purple Passionflower vines but found none.  Several Gulf Fritillary butterflies have been seen in the Garden so it’s just a matter of time before we start seeing the caterpillars.

Carpenter Bee on yesterday's Passionflower
(click to enlarge)
A Carpenter Bee and a shield bug/stinkbug nymph were seen on the vines and flowers of the Purple Passionflower vines.

Two boys in front of a Longleaf Pine (for scale)
(click to enlarge)
Don took Nathan and Clay into the Dunson Garden to get them to pose next to the Longleaf Pine, which really seems to have taken off this past year. Longleaf pines spend several years in the “grass” stage where they look like a clump of grass. In that stage they are establishing their root system. Then they shoot up over the next few years, growing eight feet or more, which gets the growing tip of the tree out of range of mile ground fires.

Mayberries/Juneberries
(click to enlarge)
The Mayberry/Juneberry bushes along the split rail fence have nice, plump berries.

ROW:

Wild Petunia
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Wild Petunia continues to be seen along the edges of the mown paths in the ROW.

Virginia Buttonweed
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Virginia Buttonweed, also growing in the closely mown paths of the ROW.

Wingstem
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Wingstem is now in bloom, the first of the flowers of the summer.

Rough Daisy Fleabane
(click to enlarge)
Rough Daisy Fleabane also grows along the edges of the mown paths in the ROW.

Orange Trail, along river:

Deer tracks are seen on the sandy path.

Nymph of Leaf-footed bug (Acanthocephala sp.?)
(click to enlarge)

A plant hopper nymph
(click to enlarge)

A predaceous Stink Bug
(click to enlarge)
A coreid nymph (Leaf-footed bug family), a predaceous pentatomid Stinkbug and several early instar planthopper nymphs were seen on the vegetation.

Orange Trail, spur back to White Trail:

False Turkeytail
(click to enlarge)

Mustard Yellow Polypore
(click to enlarge)
False Turkeytail and Mustard Yellow Polypore bracket fungi growing on a fallen dead tree trunk.

Laughing Cap mushroom
(click to enlarge)
Bright orange examples of Laughing Cap or Spectacular Rustgill fleshy cap mushrooms

White Avens
(click to enlarge)
White Avens were seen along the trail before the intersection with the White Trail.

A black, spiny caterpillar, species unknown, possibly a moth.


SUMMARY OF OBSERVED SPECIES
Sweet Betsy Trillium
Trillium cuneatum
Chattahoochee Trillium
Trillium decipiens
Poison Ivy
Toxicodendron radicans
Violet-toothed Polypore
Trichaptum biforme
Wood Ear fungus
Auricularia auricula-judae
Jack-in-the-Pulpit
Arisaema triphyllum
Black Cohosh
Actaea racemosa
Bush Katydid (nymph)
Scudderia sp.
Northern Horsebalm
Collinsonia canadensis
River Oats
Chasmanthium latifolium
Golden Ragwort
Packera aurea
Royal Fern
Osmunda regalis
Purple Passionflower
Passiflora incarnata
Carpenter Bee
Xylocopa virginica
Shield-backed Bug (nymph)
Hemiptera: Scutellaridae
Longleaf Pine
Pinus palustris
Mayberry/Juneberry
Vaccinium corymbosum
Wild Petunia
Ruellia caroliniensis
Virginia Buttonweed
Diodia virginiana
Wingstem
Verbesina alternifolia
Rough Daisy Fleabane
Erigeron strigosus
American Whitetail Deer (tracks)
Odocoileus virginianus
Florida(?) Leaf-footed Bug
Acanthocephala sp.
predaceous Stink Bug
Hemiptera: Pentatomidae
Planthopper (nymph)
Order Hemiptera, superfamily Fulgoroidea
False Turkeytail Mushroom
Stereum ostrea
Mustard Yellow Polypore
Fuscoporia gilva
Spectacular Rustgill
Gymnopilus junonius
White Avens
Geum canadense