Ramble Report November 21 2019

Today's Ramble was led by Dale Hoyt.

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.

Today’s Focus: A walk on the Green and White Trails to enjoy the fall color.

24 Ramblers met today.

Announcements:

1.      Today’s Ramble is the last “formal” Ramble of the year.

2.      After Thanksgiving we will continue to meet for a social hour, starting at 10:00 a.m., in Café Botanica, whenever the Garden (University) is open. The schedule can be found on our Announcements page (link here).

3.      The Book Group will meet at 11:00 a.m. on Dec. 19 to discuss Winter World by Bernd Heinrich. If you’re having trouble finding a copy you can find a used copy for around $5 at various online booksellers (Amazon, Powells, bookfinder.com, etc.).

4.      Until we resume “formal” Rambles on March 5 I will not be sending out weekly reminders by email. I may send an occasional email announcement.

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Show and Tell:

Ginkgo fruits, courtesy of Kurt

Kurt brought some Ginkgo fruits for us to see and smell. Ginkgo fruits are notorious for their foul odor. In fact, the female trees are usually cut down after they mature and their sex is revealed. (The flesh of the fruit also contains an irritant that causes severe rashes, similar to poison ivy.} In China, Japan and Korea Ginkgo fruit is considered a delicacy. That’s not really accurate – it is the seed, not the surrounding flesh, that is good to eat. Removing the flesh is a tricky process revealed in the book, Ginkgo: The Tree that Time Forgot, by Peter Crane, 2013, Yale Univ. Press:

Traditionally, after collection, the seeds are buried to encourage decay of the smelly flesh, then dug up, washed, dried in the sun, and made ready for sale. Alternatively, the seeds are collected in a bucket of water, where the pulp is allowed to partially rot until it can be rubbed off in changes of water until all of the flesh is gone. However, growers wanting to get paid more quickly are even more direct. In the countryside around Sobue, seeds are loaded into small vats that are stirred by large screwlike blades that help break up and remove the fleshy seed coat. The putrid flesh is then washed off as a gut-wrenchingly malodorous slurry. Active depulping needs to be done carefully, to avoid damaging the shells and squirting the noxious juices.

Germinated White Oak acorns with new shoots.

Germinated White Oak acorn with primary and secondary roots.

Dale brought the same White Oak acorns that he showed last week. The roots were almost one foot in length and two of the three had sent up shoots, probably because they were kept inside and not subjected to low temperatures overnight.

Today's reading: Our poet laureate, Bob Ambrose, recited his poem, Witness (link here). Everyone wished Bob a safe journey to see his new granddaughter.

Today's route: Through the Dunson Garden to the White Trail, then turned left on the Green Trail to the Service Path and returned to the Visitor Center via the White Trail.

Shade Garden Arbor:

Broad-winged Hawk basking in the morning sun.
(photo by Tom Shelton)

Looking over the top of the Arbor, Tom noticed a Broad-winged Hawk sunning itself on one of the large trees in the Shade Garden.

Ramblin' down the Shade Garden sidewalk

Shade Garden mulched path:

Red Maple (this one is actually in the upper parking lot).

Florida Maple near the top of the mulched path.

Red Maple near the top of the mulched path.
Not every Red Maple turns red in autumn.

Comparison of Florida Maple (L) and Red Maple (R) leaves.
The lobes of the Red Maple have toothed edges; Florida Maple leaves have smoother edges. (Florida Maple resembles the Maple on the Canadian flag.)

Near the top of the path to the Dunson Garden is a small Maple tree with lovely yellow-orange leaves. This tree is most likely a Florida Maple (=Southern Sugar Maple). Nearby is a Red Maple and we took the opportunity to compare the leaves of the two.

Florida Maple leaves are very similar to the leaves of another maple that grows in the Garden's natural areas: Chalk Maple. This table summarizes the differences:

Florida Maple vs Chalk Maple; leaf differences

	Florida Maple	Chalk Maple
Leaf lower surface color	Whitish	Yellow-green
Leaf lower surface hairs	Slightly fuzzy	Slightly fuzzy
Leaf central lobe	Same width or wider at tip	Narrower at tip

Dunson Native Flora Garden:

Moss; the slender stalks with swollen tips are sporophytes, the spore-producing part.
The leafy green parts that the sporophyte grows out of are the gameteophytes, the part that produces the sex cells (gametes).

Although they are green year-round mosses have something in common with the flowering plants we know as spring ephemerals. They grow and reproduce while the tree leaves are not present and the canopy is open. Thus, fall and winter are the times when mosses can do most of their growing and reproduction. 

A close look at the moss we found today reveals it is made of two structures: 1) a green, leafy part, which is what we normally think of as the moss and 2) a tiny, slender stalk with a swollen end that is growing out of the leafy part.

The leafy, green part is called a “gametophyte.” It is the plant that produces the gametes (sex cells, eggs and sperm) at the top of the green part. When the egg cell fuses with a sperm cell the fertilized egg starts to grow out of the end of the gametophyte. It forms the thin stalk that you see protruding out of the gametophyte. This second plant depends on the gametophyte to supply food for it to grow and produce spores in the swollen structure at top of the stalk. This plant is called a “sporophyte” because it produces spores, which are the closest things to seeds that a moss can produce. Like seeds in flowering plants, spores are the dispersal phase of the moss. When the sporophyte matures the capsule at the top opens and the spores inside are shaken out by wind and carried great distances on it. When a spore lands in an appropriate environment it germinates and produces a gametophyte. This gametophyte grows vegetatively and becomes a clump of moss. Then, usually in the fall or winter, each small gametophyte in the clump of moss produces sperm and egg cells that fuse and create a new generation of sporophytes.

 

Green Tail:

Winged Elm bark has the appearance of tongue depressors laid down side-by-side and end-to-end.

This Gray Squirrel was out foraging for nuts.

American Beech leaves. The "wavy" edges are a useful mnemonic - "You find the waves at the Beech." There is a sharp-pointed axillary bud at the base of the right-most leaf.

Service Path:

Scarlet Oak leaf; the lobes are deeply separated by the U-shaped space that reaches nearly to the middle vein of the leaf.

Scarlet Oak acorn. The circular groove surrounding the tip of the nut is characteristic of this species.

White Trail:

Ceramic Parchment fungus revealing itself as a group of small bracket fungi.

Ceramic Parchment fungus in its crusty form under fallen wood.

Don found Ceramic Parchment fungus growing on a fallen limb. When this fungus grows under a piece of wood it looks like a crust, but growing on the exposed sides it reveals itself as a cluster of small bracket fungi.

Ramblers heading back on the White Trail.

Power Line:

High Bush Blueberry leaves turn brilliant red in autumn.

Eve saw a row of red shrubs along the far side of the power line clearing. Linda identified them as High Bush Blueberry.

Field Trip Sculpture on the way back to the Visitor's Center.
Last Nature Ramble of the year.
THANK YOU ALL!

SUMMARY OF OBSERVED SPECIES

Broad-winged Hawk	Buteo platypterus
Florida Maple	Acer floridanum
Red Maple	Acer rubrum
Moss	Division Bryophyta
Winged Elm	Ulmus alata
Eastern Gray Squirrel	Sciurus carolinensis
Scarlet Oak	Quercus coccinea
Post Oak	Quercus stellata
Ceramic Parchment Fungus	Xylobolus frustulatus
High Bush Blueberry	Vaccinium corymbosum