Ramble Report June 24 2021

Leader for today's Ramble: Dale
Link to Don's Facebook album for this Ramble
Today's emphasis:  Since this is National Pollinator Week we planned to find Insect pollinators in the formal gardens (International, Herb and Physic, and Heritage Gardens)
Number of Ramblers today:  30
Readings:

Charlie Seabrook recited a timely little bit of verse:

"Kissing spreads germs,
the doctor has stated;
but kiss me baby,
I'm vaccinated!"

Dale read an excerpt of the entry for June 24 from An Almanac for Moderns by Donald Culross Peattie:

. . . the name of a bird is nothing but the opening of a door to knowledge: it is not knowledge in itself, and the pleasures of study consist in making one's self a Sherlock Holmes, intent upon every trace and detail of one's subject's life.

Today's Route:   We left the arbor and headed down the paved path, past the American South Section towards the Flower Bridge, turning left on the path before reaching the bridge and walking through the Spanish America, Mediterranean and Middle East Sections.  We then passed through the Herb and Physic Garden into the Heritage Garden where we completed the Ramble for the day and headed back to the conservatory where we enjoyed a little social hour at the Café Botanica tables.

This FINE Thing was recommended by Jan Coyne.

OBSERVATIONS:

American South Section:

A group of Scarlet Beebalm flowers in the American South Section of the State Botanical Garden.

Scarlet beebalm has all the classic features of mint family plants: square stems, opposite leaves, aromatic leaves, and two-lipped flowers. The style and stamens project well beyond the lip of the flower, and brush against the head of back of pollinators as they enter and exit. The large patch of flowering plants was eye-catching, with lots of deep red flowers.  A Ruby-throated Hummingbird made an appearance while we were there, the ruby-colored throat competing with the beebalm for brightest red.  Large patches of flowers are more attractive to pollinators, who will often ignore single examples of the normally attractive flowers. This is a good garden plant for folks who contend with deer - its pungent leaves discourage browsing.

Summer Sweet

Summer Sweet or Downy Sweet Pepperbush is a large shrub sporting numerous white-flowered racemes, now in bud. It is sometimes treated as a variety of the native Sweet Pepperbush (Clethra alnifolia) that Ramblers know from the roadside fence along the Dunson Garden. Both are largely Coastal Plain species. (Note: Linda told a group of ramblers that this is a non-native species - wrong! She didn't know of this variety-now she does.)

A Bumble Bee collects pollen from a St. John's-wort flower.

St. John's-wort 'Sunburst' is a cultivar of a native species of Hypericum frondosum. It has slightly larger flowers, up to 2 inches across, than the native form and a more compact growth habit (less than 3 feet tall). The large flowers with their numerous showy stamens are attractive to bumblebees. St. John's-wort plants get their name from their flowering time which coincides with the Feast Day of St. John the Baptizer.

Spanish America Section:

Spanish Bayonet has dangerously sharp-pointed leaves.

Spanish Bayonet. This large species of yucca grows from Virginia south to Mexico in coastal sand dunes. It is just one of dozens of Yucca species in the USA, most abundant in the southwest.

A Carpenter Bee cutting a hole in the base of a Red Salvia.
Carpenter Bees are large and have hairless, shiny black abdomens.

A Honey Bee at the mouth of a Red Salvia flower.
This bee may be gathering pollen, but it cannot reach the nectar at the base of the flower.
Or, it may be a novice forager and is learning that no nectar is available this way.

A Honey Bee "robbing" nectar from a Red Salvia flower.
Honey Bees often take advantage of openings cut by larger bees, like the Carpenter Bee. Honey Bee tongues are too short to reach nectar from the mouth of the flower as in the previous photo.

The rectangle surrounds two slits made by Carpenter Bees to gain access to the nectar at the base of the Red Salvia flower. The smaller Honey Bee cannot cut the flower, but can learn to find the openings made by Carpenter Bees.

Red Salvia ('Heatwave Blaze' Salvia):  We saw quite a few Western Honeybees and one Eastern Carpenter Bee working the salvia.  Both were "nectar-robbing," piercing the narrow bottom of the tubular flower, while only the Honeybee was attempting to access the nectar through the flower opening.

 

Nectar Robbing is interesting because it shows that bees can learn how to access a food source that would otherwise be unavailable to them. 

 

Eastern Cottontail Rabbit, unfazed by the presence of all the Nature Ramblers.

An Eastern Cottontail Rabbit appeared at the edge of the path and remained around for most of the Nature Ramblers to get a glimpse.

Betony and White-bordered Burrower Bug

Betony is a European plant with a storied past, used for everything from a charm against sorcery to a treatment for "anxiety, gallstones, heartburn, high blood pressure, migraine and neuralgia, and to prevent sweating." (Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betonica_officinalis)
Betony's scientific name is Stachys officinalis. An "officina" was a building on the grounds of medieval monasteries where medicinal potions, usually plant-based, were prepared. When Linnaeus began naming plants and encountered ones that were well known for their medicinal uses, he usually gave them the species name "officinalis" in recognition of their traditional use.
We saw two examples of Betony in flower attracting bees.  Many small White-bordered Burrower Bugs were crawling on all parts of the plants. 

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Close up of White-margined Burrower Bug.

White-margined Burrower Bugs are related to the Peanut Burrower Bug, but do not inflict harm on peanuts or cotton. 

According to Mary Holland of Naturally Curious:

These bugs [White-margined Burrower Bugs] feed on the seeds of plants in the mint and nettle families. Being true bugs, they feed not by chewing but by piercing seeds with a sharp beak, injecting digestive enzymes, and then sucking in the partially digested food.

White-margined Burrower Bugs are fairly unusual for non-social insects in that the mothers provide care and provisions for their young, much like social insects such as ants, paper wasps and honeybees. The adults dig shallow burrows into which they place a supply of seeds and lay between 120 and 150 eggs next to the seeds. They guard their eggs and brood and bring more seeds as needed for 1-3 days after the eggs hatch. At this point, the young bugs can forage for themselves.

Adults dig down into the leaf litter in late fall, where they overwinter and emerge next spring ready to mate. If you see a large cluster of White-margined Burrowers Beetles, do not be alarmed, as they do not bite nor are they interested in eating anything but species of mint and nettle.

Chaste tree, purple flowered variety with Bumble Bee

Chaste Tree:   Although not a native tree, its purple flowers were attracting bumble bees.  Both the common name and the species' scientific name (agnus-castus) refer to the medieval belief that the tree's fruits suppress sexual desire and lead to a chaste life. Another common name is Monk's Pepper. A white-flowered variety is also growing in the garden.

Fig tree. Figs may be pruned to the shape of a shrub, with many stems or a tree with a single stem. As a tree it can grow to a height of 20 feet. At such a height access to the figs without resort to a ladder making access to the figs more difficult. Then you'll have to share the figs with fruit-eating birds. This variety of Fig is "Brown Turkey," One of the  Ramblers asked me: "We have a fig tree that always produces figs, but we never see any flowers?" The answer is that the flowers are actually inside the developing figs. This structure, called a syconium, contains thousands of tiny flowers. Many figs require specialist insects to pollinate the flowers in the syconium, but the Brown Turkey variety poduces edible figs in the absence of fig wasps. This process is called parthenocarpy, the development of a fruit without fertilization.

 

Herb and Physic Garden:
 

Long spires of Culver's Root flowers were attracting Honey Bees, as well as a Large Milkweed Bug.

Rattlesnake Master flower head with a flower scarab beetle named Channeled Valgus.

Rattlesnake Master was used by Native Americans and pioneers as an antidote to snakebite as well as to reduce fever. We saw several small Channeled Valgus flower scarab beetles on the flowers. This plant was a US Forest Service plant of the week:

"In the prairie or in the garden, rattlesnake master is a favorite of native insects. Monarch butterflies, skippers, and other butterflies visit the flower heads for nectar. Soldier beetles visit the flowers to eat pollen; major pollinators include a diversity of bees, wasps, and flies.
One specialized insect, the rattlesnake master stem-borer (Papaipema eryngii) is dependent of the rattlesnake master to complete its life-cycle; this moth's caterpillars burrow in the stems and roots of this plant. The surviving populations of this moth are now restricted to prairie remnants that support large populations of rattlesnake master. The moth's natural range is limited to the central United States.
Another dependent insect is the larva of a seed-eating moth (Coleotechnites eryngiella) that burrows through the flowerheads, eating seeds as it grows. Caterpillars of the black swallowtail butterfly (Papilio polyxenes) occasionally feed on the leaves, but the caterpillars prefer other members of the carrot family (both native and introduced). In our native prairies, rattlesnake master is a characteristic flowering plant that contributes greatly to insect diversity."

Wild Quinine

Wild Quinine was used by Native Americans to treat a variety of ailments, including dysentery, sore backs, and burns. Although a member of the Aster (or composite) Family, Wild Quinine's flower heads are unusual. There are only 5 or 6 ray flowers on the rim of the central disk and they are very small. In most composites, the ray flowers are showy and sterile, and serve only to attract pollinators. In this species, they are fertile and produce seeds (the black dot seen inside each ray flower are the stigmas where the pollen germinates). The 15-35 tiny flowers packed into the central disk have stamens only, producing pollen but not seeds. Given that each head can produce no more than 6 seeds, it is surprising that the plant is so abundant in a variety of habitats across the southeast.
Don has also seen many Channeled Valgus flower scarabs on Wild Quinine in other localities.
 

Channeled Valgus Beetle: see Rattlesnake Master photo. This tiny beetle consumes nectar from the flowers it visits. The larvae are found "feeding on the walls of termites galleries," but no one seems to know what they are eating. 
 

Heritage Garden:
 

Female Hop flowers

Hop bracts with golden glands that contain the "hoppy" flavor.

Hop vines on the arbor in the Heritage Garden are beginning to flower. Hop plants are usually dioecious, meaning the female (seed-producing) flowers are held on a separate plant from the male (pollen-producing) plants. We examined female flower clusters in two stages. In the burr stage, the styles and stigmas are prominently displayed to catch wind-borne pollen, and the leaf-like bracts separating individual flowers are quite small. In the cone stage, the bracts have expanded to cover the developing seeds. For beer makers, this is where the action is: the inner surfaces of the bracts are coated with golden, glistening lupulin glands that produce acidic compounds, resins, and oils that give beer its traditional aroma and "hoppy" flavor. The acids also act as antibiotics, preserving and stabilizing the beer.

Planthoppers,and Leafhoppers are insects related to aphids, They have piercing-sucking mouthparts that enable them to suck sap from the plants they feed on. The adults have powerful legs and can jump into the air and then fly away. When numerous they can seriously damage their host plants.

Adult Citrus Flatid Planthopper on Hop vine.

Nymph of a Flatid Planthopper
The insect is on the upper left-hand side of the stem. The waxy material was secreted by the insect and was removed by the photographer (Don) so you could get a view of the nymph.

Broad-headed Sharpshooter, a kind of Leafhopper; the head is toward the bottom.

Glassy-winged Sharpshooter, a kind of Leafhopper.

 

Long-handled Dipper Gourd

Long-handled Dipper Gourds developing on vines in the Heritage Garden. Like many traditional southern agricultural plants, this species originated in Africa and likely came to the south via the slave trade. The Gourd Place, in Sautee, about an hour's drive north of Athens, is a great place to learn about the history, uses, artistry, and manufacture of gourd products (https://gourdplace.com/).   

 

The Heritage Garden curator, Gareth Crosby, pointed out several beetles, including two kinds of Lady Beetles:

Squash Lady Beetle

Squash Lady Beetle: Most Lady Beetles are predators and regarded as beneficial. The eat aphids and assorted other insects that suck sap from plants. But the Squash Lady Beetle is an exception: it eats plants, making Gareth unhappy.

Pink Spotted Lady Beetle

Pink Spotted Lady Beetle is a more typical Lady Beetle -- it's a predator, eating aphids and other sap sucking insects.
 

SUMMARY OF OBSERVED SPECIES:
 

Scarlet Beebalm	Monarda didyma
Ruby-throated Hummingbird	Archilochus colubris
Summer Sweet	Clethra tomentosa (synonym Clethra tomentosa var. pubescens
St. John’s Wort ‘Sunburst’	Hypericum frondosum cv. ‘Sunburst’
Bumblebee	Bombus sp.
Spanish Bayonet	Yucca aloifolia
Heatwave Blaze Salvia (Red) Salvia	Salvia microphylla x greggii
Eastern Carpenter Bee	Xylocopa virginica
European Honey Bee	Apis mellifera
Eastern Cottontail Rabbit	Sylvilagus floridanus
Betony	Stachys officianalis (synonym: Betonica officinalis)
White-margined Burrower Bugs	Sehirus cincta
Chaste Tree	Vitex agnus-castus
Common Fig	Ficus carica
Stilt-legged Fly	Taeniaptera trivittata
Culver’s Root	Veronicastrum virginicum
Large Milkweed Bug	Oncopeltus fasciatus
Rattlesnake Master	Eryngium yuccifolium
Channeled Valgus beetle	Valgus canaliculatus
Wild Quinine	Parthenium integrifolium
Hops	Humulus lupulus
Citrus Flatid Planthopper	Metcalfa pruinosa
Brazilian Vervain	Verbena brasiliensis
Broad-headed Sharpshooter	Oncometopia orbona
Glassy-winged Sharpshooter	Homalodisca vitripennis
Flatid planthopper nymph	Hemiptera:Flatidae
Long Handled Dipper Gourd	Lagenaria siceraria
Squash Lady Beetle	Epilachna borealis
Pink Spotted Lady Beetle	Coleomegilla maculate