Thirty-one Ramblers met today for the first time since March 5, 2020, when we held our last gathering before the Covid shutdown. There was much joy in reuniting with friends and catching up before we began our ramble.
Today's report was written by Linda Chafin with minor additions 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.)
Cora Keber, the Garden's Education Director, found a beautiful Giant Leopard Moth near the visitor Center and offered it for Show and Tell. It wasn't clear if it was dead or alive so, after making the round of Ramblers, it was placed on a tree.
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Leopard Moths are
found throughout eastern North America and are the largest member of the
eastern tiger moth group; its caterpillar is one of the woolly bears.
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Giant woolly bear,
Hypercompe scribonia. Photograph by Donald W. Hall, University of
Florida.
https://entnemdept.ufl.edu/creatures/MISC/MOTHS/Hypercompe_scribonia.htm
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Reading: Dale provided today's reading, one of Hugh Nourse's favorite passages. It is from "Nature Near Home" by American naturalist John Burroughs.
"After long experience I am convinced that the best place to study nature is at one's own home, on the farm, in the mountains, on the plains, by the sea, no matter where that may be. You have it all about you then. The seasons bring to your door the great revolving cycle of wild life, floral and faunal, and you need miss no part of the show.
"At home you should see and hear with more fondness and sympathy. Nature should touch you a little more closely there than anywhere else. You are better attuned to it than to strange scenes. The birds about your own door are your birds, the flowers in your own fields and wood are yours, the rainbow springs its magic arch across your valley, even the everlasting stars to which you lift your eye, night after night, and year after year, from your own doorstep, have something private and personal about them. . . . The wild creatures about you become known to you as they cannot be known to a passer-by. . . .The traveler sees little of Nature that is revealed to the home-stayer. You will find she has made her home where you have made yours, and intimacy with her there becomes easy. Familiarity with things about one should not dull the edge of curiosity or interest. The walk you take to-day through the fields and woods, or along the river-bank, is the walk you should take to-morrow, and next day, and next. What you miss once, you will hit upon next time. The happenings are at intervals and are irregular. The play of Nature has no fixed program. If she is not at home to-day, or is in a non-committal mood, call tomorrow, or next week."
Richard read from Rachel Carson, 1962: "Humankind is challenged, as it has never been challenged before, to prove its maturity and mastery, not of Nature but of itself."
Our goal for today's ramble was to visit some of the changes to the Garden's trails that happened over the last year so we headed to the floodplain to view the new Americans with Disabilities trail to the river. Along the way we wound our way through the Shade Garden and the Dunson Native Flora Garden.
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| Nathan pointed out an Asian multi-colored lady beetle on the handrails at the entrance to the Shade Garden. |
We stopped to inspect a Witch Hazel planting in the Shade Garden. The curious name always makes people wonder and, a few years ago, one of our frequent ramblers, Catherine Chastain found the origin of the "Witch" in a book by Mary Durant:always
makes us wonder how it got its name. Five years ago fellow Rambler Catherine Chastain
read a passage from Mary Durant's Who Named the Daisy? Who Named the Rose?,
p. 210, 1976, Dodd, Mead & Co., that explained it all: “WITCH
HAZEL has nothing whatsoever to do with witches, despite the plant's mystic
knack as a divining rod for water and precious ores. The old name is quite
prosaic, no magical spells here. Witch comes from wych, a variant of the Anglo- Saxon wican, to bend. (This is also the root word for wicker, which
is woven from bendable or pliable branches.)
The name witch-hazel was given to the shrub because the leaves resembled
those of the English elm tree with long, drooping branches that was known as
the wych-elm; that is, "the bending elm." And the wych-elm was also
called wych-hazel, because its leaves resembled those of the hazel tree.
(The origins of elm and hazel, both Old English, are uncertain.) Over the
years, "wych" was transformed into "witch." (The other kind
of witch comes from the early English wicca,
a wizard.) "
Witch Hazel bark is high in tannins and has long been used to manufacture an astringent solution, still available over-the-counter in drug stores.
Many of the leaves bear strange, conical growths that resemble the traditional Halloween witches hat. The interior of these hats is not empty; each one houses 50 or more aphids. The galls form when a witch-hazel cone gall aphid (Hormaphis hamamelidis) crawls into a leaf bud in the spring. As the leaf grows, the aphid injects a substance that acts as a plant hormone that causes the gall to form around her. She produces 50 - 70 offspring without benefit of a male. The aphid population increases dramatically in a relatively short period of time. At certain times of the year they produce winged males and females (parthenogenetically!) that mate and the females fly to an alternate host plant, a Birch tree. (In Athens this would be a River Birch.) There they lay eggs that overwinter and in the spring the young aphids again produce a winged generation that flies to the Witch Hazel to begin the cycle again.  |
A Witch-hazel conical gall (the red structure)
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That's not the only thing that is "special" about the Witch Hazel. It doesn't flower until late fall into winter, when there are no traditional pollinators around. But there are winter moths that are able to fly if the air temperature is not too low. They are the most likely to be the pollinators of the Witch Hazel.
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| Indian Heliotrope in the Shade Garden. |
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| Winter Hazel is an Asian species in the same family as Witch Hazel and is related to the plants that produce hazelnuts. |
Oak-leaf Hydrangea is in full bloom now at the Garden. One of the first native plants to be brought into widespread commercial cultivation, Oak-leaf Hydrangea occurs naturally in Georgia west of Atlanta and usually only in circumneutral or high pH soils. Like all hydrangeas, Oak-leaf produces sterile flowers that visually attract pollinators and, hidden beneath them, many small fertile flowers that actually provide pollen for the pollinators and seed for the next generation. Plant breeders have exploited this arrangement by developing cultivars that have mostly showy sterile flowers, such as the Southern garden stalwart with mop-head flower clusters that change color from blue to pink, depending on soil pH. Although it has been in the horticultural trade for decades, Oak-leaf Hydrangea flower clusters still bear many, wonderfully fragrant fertile flowers.
Late spring in the Piedmont is a lull time for native woodland wildflowers. Trees are fully leafed out now and photosynthesizing at full capacity, casting the dense shade that spells the end of flowering and growth for spring ephemerals - even their fruits are mostly dispersed by now. In Dunson Native Flora Garden, we saw only Black Cohosh in bud, Thimbleweed and Sweet Betsy Trillium in fruit, and Ohio Spiderwort in flower.
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| Sweetshrub
cultivar, 'Athena,' developed by Michael Dirr, retired UGA
horticulturist. Its pale yellow-green flowers are more fragrant than the
typical, maroon-flowered Sweetshrub found in the wild. |
Silky Dogwood is one of two wetland species of dogwood in the Georgia Piedmont; the other is Swamp Dogwood (Cornus foemina). There are five species of dogwood native to Georgia, all with flat-topped clusters of small white flowers; only Flowering Dogwood has the showy white sterile bracts surrounding the central cluster of fertile flowers. |
| Devil's Walking
Stick has the largest leaf of any tree or shrub in the U.S. (not
counting tropical Florida). Each leaf consists of dozens of small
leaflets. |
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Nathan found a Bess Beetle and shared it with the group.
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| The new paved trail from the improved parking lot to the river was funded by a Trails Grant from Georgia DNR. |
Ramblers fervently hope that the lush native vegetation and animal life found along the old trail returns to replace the exotic grasses planted to prevent erosion during construction. Further down the Orange Trail, the grant funded the construction of a boardwalk that crosses the old beaver pond and lead visitors away from the crumbling river bank and eroded heath bluff.
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| Gary pointed out
the abundant fruits developing on a large Poison Ivy vine growing in a
Loblolly Pine beside the walkway; high in fat, these fruits are some of
the best winter-time food for birds |
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Elderberry is in bloom in sunny patches along the river. Its fruits make a nice jelly and a nicer wine.
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| Wood Nettle grows along the Orange Trail by the river and also forms large patches in the floodplain. |
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Wood Nettle. Its
stems and leaves are usually covered with stinging hairs (often shed by
the end of summer). The hairs are very brittle and, when brushed, break
open and release a stinging compound that can irritate skin for hours or
even days. Sufferers can console themselves with the fact that nettles
are larval hosts for Red Admiral, Eastern Comma, and Question Mark
butterflies.
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SUMMARY OF OBSERVED SPECIES:
Asian Multi-color Lady Beetle Harmonia axyridis
American Witch Hazel Hamamelis virginiana
Ozark Witch Hazel Hamamelis vernalis
(Indian) Heliotrope Heliotropium indicum
Winter Hazel Corylopsis sinensis
Oak-leaf Hydrangea Hydrangea quercifolia
River Birch Betula nigra
Black Cohosh Actaea racemosa syn. Cimicifuga racemosa
Tall Thimbleweed Anemone virginiana
Ohio Spiderwort Tradescantia ohiensis
Sweet Betsy Trillium Trillium cuneatum
Sweetshrub 'Athena' Calycanthus floridus
Bess Beetle Odontotaenius disjunctus
Silky Dogwood Cornus amomum
Devil's Walking Stick Aralia spinosa
Poison Ivy Toxicodendron radicans
Common Elderberry Sambucus canadensis
Wood Nettle Laportea canadensis
