Ramble Report May 12 2022

Leader for today's Ramble: Linda
 

Link to Don's Facebook album for this Ramble. All the photos that appear in this report, unless otherwise credited, were taken by Don Hunter.
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.5873645862651930&type=3
 

Number of Ramblers today: 26
 

Today's emphasis:  Cool season grasses, Carolina Milkvine and anything else we saw in the ROW.
 

Announcements:
Don announced the 2022 Pollinator Fair at the Madison County Library, on May 21st, from 10:00 a.m. until 4:00 p.m.  The event is hosted by the Ladies Homestead Gathering of Madison County.  Don will be presenting on his documentation of the common roadside pollinators in south Madison County.  In addition, there will be presentations by other speakers.  Carole Knight, Madison County Extension Coordinator and Ag Agent will talk about the importance of pollinators in Georgia and author Cathy Payne will talk about how to turn your yard into a pollinator sanctuary, in particular, addressing removing invasive plants and replacing them with beneficial native flora. Directions:  Take Hwy. 29 north to Danielsville.  At the redlight north of the old courthouse roundabout, take Hwy 98 west for 1.3 miles.  The library will be on your left.

Reading: Linda read "Spring" by Gerard Manley Hopkins
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/51002/spring-56d22e75d65bd

Show and Tell:  Gary brought a handful of Eastern Cottonwood (Populus deltoides) fruits from the North Oconee River Greenway. Cottonwoods are bottomland trees that flourish in both the North Oconee and Middle Oconee river floodplains; they are distinguished by their dark, deeply furrowed bark and triangular leaves with flattened petioles. 

Cottonwood seed pods
The dark structures are the seed pods
The white fluff is the "parachute"

The pale green pointed object is a single Cottonwood seed, surrounded by its cottony hairs.

 

The source of the common name is obvious when the trees go to seed. Each oval seedpod (the dark shapes in the photo) contains thousands of tiny seeds, each equipped with a tuft of long, cottony hairs. A single cottonwood tree can produce over 25 million seeds. This species is dioecious: only female trees produce seedpods. The seeds require bare mineral soil for germination, provided naturally by the scoured soils and sediment accumulations that follow winter and early spring floods.  Here's a short and interesting article about this amazingly prolific tree: https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/metro/urban-jungle/pages/100518.html
 

Today's Route:   We left the Children's Garden pergola and headed down through the Lower Shade Garden, exiting through the gate on to the White Trail Spur and over to the Georgia Power right-of-way.  We worked our way up the ROW to the Carolina Milkvine, near the top of the hill.  We then returned to the upper parking lot, much the way we came

OBSERVATIONS:
Lower Shade Garden:

Oak Apple Galls

The paved path through the Lower Shade Garden was littered with Oak Apple Galls. These are the created when a Gall Wasp (Family Cynipidae) lays an egg inside a newly expanded leaf of a red oak. The leaf responds to the invasion by creating an enlarged mass of tissue, inside which the egg matures into a larva, suspended in the center of the gall by the radiating fibers seen in the opened gall, on the left. This helps protect the wasp larvae from parasitoids as well as providing food. Oak Apple Galls are green when newly formed; when the gall dries out and turns brown, the mature wasp escapes from holes that have formed in the exterior of the gall. 

Tulip Tree flower

The Shade Garden paths are also littered with Tulip Tree flowers, dropped by squirrels that bite off the young, tender twigs and lap up the sap that flows from the twig. Squirrels aren't the only forest animals that enjoy Tulip Trees. Most of the flowers we picked up had ants scurrying around inside the flowers, looking for the nectar produced by tiny glands in the orange patches on the petals. The nectar produced by these flowers is an important energy source for other insects, as well as birds, in early spring; according to one source, each flower produces about one-third of a teaspoon of nectar.  

Pipestem

 

Pipestem is blooming now. This tall evergreen shrub is in the Heath Family and closely resembles the shorter wetland plant Doghobble. Common in central peninsular Florida, it occurred historically in southeastern Georgia but hasn't been seen there in many decades.

Harvestman (AKA Daddylonglegs)

 

A small harvestman (aka Granddaddy Longlegs) was seen on its leaves.

Sweetshrub 'Athens'

The yellow-flowered cultivar of Sweetshrub, named 'Athens' by Michael Dirr, UGA horticulturist and former Garden director, is in flower. The pale greenish-yellow color is due to a mutation that leads to a lack of anthocyanin, the plant pigment responsible for reds and purples in plants. Though pale, the flowers are extra fragrant, something like a very ripe strawberry.

White Trail Spur:

Smooth Spiderwort will be flowering for months

Cool-season grasses are flowering and going to seed now. These are grass species that grow rapidly in the early spring, then flower and fruit while temperatures are still moderate; they cease growing during the summer and begin again when temperatures cool down in the fall. Many species overwinter as low leaf rosettes, continuing to photosynthesize and preparing for the spring growth spurt. Given Georgia's brutal summers, it's no surprise that most of our grass species are warm-season grasses that flourish in late summer and early fall; but even so there are plenty of interesting grasses to admire in May and June.

Eastern Needlegrass seeds + awns

My personal favorite is Eastern Needle Grass, a perennial grass with a finely tuned seed dispersal system. In Don's photo, you can see each dark seed partially enclosed by flower parts. Each seed comes equipped with a long spirally twisted bristle it into the ground. A patch of tiny upwardly pointing hairs at the seed's tip helps to hold the seed in place; barbs lining the sides of the seed serve the same purpose.

Needlegrass hairs at tip of seed

Needlegrass barbs (magnified)
photo courtesy of Bill Sheehan

The bristles, barbs, and hairs also ensure that a variety of animals carry the seeds long distances. As Don wrote in his Facebook album, "The more you walk with these in your socks, the deeper they bore into them, until they reach your skin, at which point, you are driven mad until you stop and pull your shoes and socks off to systematically remove every one of the bristles. I would imagine the sensation is something akin to standing on a fire ant hill, letting them attack you, unabated."

Needlegrass: The Joy of Socks

Little Barley
photo by Matt Lavin from Bozeman, Montana,
https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=25124158

Little Barley is a native grass species; it is an annual that thrives in sunny, dry, gravelly soils. Like all grasses, it is wind-pollinated. Little Barley was domesticated by Native Americans before the arrival of maize; its seeds have been found in archaeological sites along with other domesticated plants such as squash. The grains are high in protein. Little Barley is easier to recognize than many grasses: it is short (less than 1.5 feet tall) with erect seed heads tightly packed with bristle-tipped spikelets (grass talk for flower clusters).

Two-flowered Melic Grass

 

Two-flowered Melic Grass is another common native cool-season grass that is relatively easy to identify. The spikelets have only two florets and are widely spaced and drooping along a delicate, erect stem. It usually occurs in forests and woodlands in dappled sunlight.

Deer Tongue Witch Grass has the open, sparsely flowered seedhead typical of species in the genus Dichanthelium. The wavy branches are usually tipped with a single spikelet  which, though small, bears two florets.

Deer Tongue Witch Grass

In this photo, the maroon style branches can be seen peeking out of the tips of the spikelets and will soon be sweeping pollen out of the air.

 

Deer Tongue Witch Grass stem + leaf

The stems are usually softly hairy as are the leaf sheaths. Perhaps someone familiar with deer can tell us if the pointed, hairy leaf blades resemble a deer's tongue. 

Several non-native and invasive grass species are also in flower in the right-of-way.

Brome Grass

So-called Rescue Grass, one of many introduced Brome Grasses, is a common, highly invasive plant that is native to South America. Introduced as a forage crop, it's found throughout much of North America in disturbed openings, roadsides, pastures, etc. The spikelets, held at the tips of slender branches, are strongly flattened. Don's closeup photo captures the stamens dangling from the florets, waiting for a breeze to scatter pollen.

Meadow Fescue

Meadow Fescue (or Meadow Ryegrass), a native of Eurasia, is abundant in fields, pastures, rights-of-way, and other disturbed areas. It was introduced as a forage grass and is also widely planted for erosion control. In this photo, both stamens and brushy-tipped styles are visible. The styles, which comb pollen from the air, typically mature after the stamens to prevent self-pollination.

Annual Ryegrass

Annual Ryegrass
Photo by Harry Ross
https://www.flickr.com/photos/macleaygrassman/6773226750/in/photostream/

Annual Ryegrass, another grass introduced as forage, is easy to identify even at 60 miles per hour. The flattened spikelets are held more or less in one plane and alternate up the tall erect stem. In Don's photo, a small mite is exploring a newly expanding spikelet.

A Vetch seed pod
(called a legume)

A non-native vetch with long, open seedpods remaining. As a member of the bean family, Fabaceae, this fruit type -- dry, several-seeded, and opening along both seams -- is properly called a legume 

ROW:

Small's Ragwort

Small's Ragwort, with tufts of woolly hairs in the leaf axils.  These are described in irresistible terms as "persistent floccose tomentum" in Weakley's Flora of the Southeastern United States. 

Nodding Thistle

Nodding Thistle (also called Musk Thistle) is one of the most destructive plants in the U.S.  The developing head shown here (and the fully flowered heads soon to come) are attractive, but don't be fooled: these plants can ruin a pasture and degrade a native prairie in a few brief years. When the head matures, it begins to droop, hence the common name. The whole plant is spiny, from the bristly flower head to the winged stems and lobed leaves down to the leaf rosette. If you can't dig it up, at least break off the stem and flower head. Since they are biennials that bloom then die in their second year, you may have disarmed that particular plant by beheading it. However, the plants are capable of resprouting from dormant buds held in the stem below ground level. To really kill the plant, cut the stem 2-4 inches below the ground surface with a shovel. The plants are also susceptible to a variety of herbicides, a much easier and more assured way to kill them.  Our native Tall Thistle has broadly oval leaves that are densely white-hairy on the lower surface. Nodding Thistle leaves are narrower and green on both surfaces.

Sheep's Sorrel seeds

Sheep's Sorrel plant

Sheep's Sorrel, a European native, is found in disturbed areas throughout most of North America. In early spring, the red flowers are a common sight along roadsides and pastures in Georgia. Now, the female plants have gone to seed, giving the plants a pale appearance. The three-sided seeds have three showy wings, typical of many plants in the Buckwheat Family. 

 

Green & Gold

Green-and-Gold, still in flower, is scattered along the low bank of the road through the Nash Prairie.

Southern Beardtongue

Southern Beardtongue is also thriving in the Nash Prairie. The flowers, buds and stems are covered with glandular hairs and the flowers are white and pink, with "tongues" covered with golden yellow hairs. 

 

Foamy mass concealing a Spittlebug nymph.

The Spittlebug nymph revealed.

Foamy spittlebug masses are commonly found on a variety of grasses and other plants in the ROW.  Dale selected one, from an unidentified aster or daisy, and removed the foam to reveal a leafhopper nymph inside.  The foam is a froth created as the larva agitates the excreted plant sap upon elimination.  

 

Bracken Fern

Bracken Fern is one of the few Georgia ferns that thrives in full sun.

Wild Onion

The native Wild Onion, with both bulblets and pretty pink flowers. Unlike the weedy onion that pops up in lawns, which also has aerial bulblets, Wild Onion leaves are grass-like and flat not round. Wild Onion can reproduce asexually by both the aerial bulblets and an underground bulb.

Summer Bluet is getting an early start in the right-of-way.

Carolina Milkvine flowers and leaf

Carolina Milkvine flowers closeup

Carolina Milkvine thrives in the right-of-way in an area that is underlain by amphibolite, a type of bedrock that is high in calcium and magnesium. It is a close relative of the milkweeds and produces milky latex that discourages herbivores. There are reports that monarch butterflies use milkvine leaves as a larval host as they do with milkweeds

Blackberry fruits developing

Sue pointed out how pretty the young blackberries are.

Sparkleberry tree in flower

Sparkleberry bark

Ants climbing Sparkleberry tree trunk

Sparkleberry branches covered with silk of Fall Webworm caterpillars.

Fall Webworm caterpillars inside their silken tent.

A large heavily flowering Sparkleberry tree overlooks the patch of Carolina Milkvine. Sparkleberry bark is shaggy, peeling and flaking away to reveal rusty-red inner bark.  A parade of red ants were seen making their way up and down along a defined path between bark plates -- headed to the flowers for a bit of nectar?  Fall Webworms have spun a web on the tip of one of the limbs, with many tiny, slender new caterpillars. Fall webworms are often mistaken for Eastern Tent Caterpillars that build tents in the crotch of a Cherry tree. They never extend their tent to include the leaves they eat. Fall Webworms have three generations in our area; Eastern Tent caterpillars only one generation per year.

Nettle-leaf Sage

A small population of Nettle-leaf Sage has been hanging on for many years near the edge of the woods. A calciphile, it testifies to the presence of amphibolite beneath the right-of-way soils. Its square stems, opposite leaves, and two-lipped flowers testify to its membership in the mint family. The cobalt blue flowers are diminutive but gorgeous. 

Phylloxeran gall on hickory leaf.

Bill collected several examples of a hickory leaf gall on Mockernut Hickory.  The galls are caused by the Hickory Phylloxeran (Phylloxera caryaecaulis), a small aphid-like insect.  The phylloxeran survived the winter as an egg deposited on the bark of the tree or near an old gall from a previous year.  About the time when leaf buds are breaking, these eggs hatch into tiny nymphs destined to become breeders called fundatrices.  Each fundatrix hunkers down on the rapidly expanding leaf blade or its petiole and inserts its needle-like mouthparts into the leaf tissue.  This feeding brings about remarkable transformations as the leaf develops.  Chemicals secreted by the phylloxeran cause the hickory's cells to differentiate and create a strange globular gall. Within the hollow gall, the fundatrix develops into a fully mature female that lays hundreds to more than a thousand eggs parthenogenetically, that is, without the assistance of a male.

Opened Phylloxeran gall with eggs and 1st instar nymphs inside.

Opened Phylloxeran galls with winged adult and possible parasites in gall.

After hatching, legions of tiny nymphs feed within the gall and eventually develop into winged forms. By late May, galls split open and the winged phylloxerans exit and move to the undersurface of leaves where they lay hundreds of eggs. These eggs hatch and produce nymphs destined to become males and females that will ultimately mate and lay eggs to endure the next winter. Talk about a complicated lifestyle, phylloxerans certainly have one.
Visit this link for more detais: https://bugoftheweek.com/blog/2013/1/27/gall-darn-it-gall-insects-on-hickory-oak-and-elm-iphylloxera-caryaecaulis-andricus-palustris-colopha-ulmicolai
 

Let Aldo Leopold have the last word on this week's ramble: "No matter how intently one studies the hundred little dramas of the woods and meadows, one can never learn all the salient facts about any one of them."

OBSERVED SPECIES:

Oak Apple Gall Wasp   Amphibolips quercusinanis (synonym A. inanis)
Bigleaf Magnolia     Magnolia macrophylla
Oak-leaved Hydrangea     Hydrangea quercifolia
Pipestem, Florida Fetterbush     Agarista populifolia
Harvestman     Order Opiliones
Black Cohosh     Actea racemosa
'Athens' Sweetshrub     Calycanthus floridus 'Athens' cultivar
Tulip Tree     Liriodendron tulipifera
Smooth Spiderwort     Tradescantia ohiensis
Red-shouldered Hawk     Buteo lineatus
Black-seeded Needle Grass     Piptochaetium avenaceum
Little Barley     Hordeum pusillum
Deer Tongue Grass     Dichanthelium clandestinum
Two-flowered Melic Grass     Melica mutica
River Oats     Chasmanthium latifolium
Rescue Grass     Bromus catharticus var. catharticus
Meadow Fescue     Festuca pratensis, synonym: Lolium pratense
Annual Rye     Festuca perennis
Unidentified non-native vetch     Vicia sp.
Small's Ragwort     Packera anonyma
Nodding Thistle     Carduus nutans
Sheep's Sorrel     Rumex acetosella
Green-and-Gold     Chrysogonum virginianum
Southern Beardtongue     Penstemon australis
Spittlebug     Order Hemiptera
Mountain Mint     Pcynanthemum sp.
Bracken Fern     Pteridium aquilinum
Wild onion     Allium canadense
Summer Bluet     Houstonia purpurea
Blackberry     Rubus sp.
Carolina Milkvine     Matelea carolinensis
Sparkleberry     Vaccinium arboreum
Red ant     Family Formicidae
Fall Webworm Moth caterpillars     Hyphantria cunea
Nettle-leaf Sage     Salvia urticifolia
Mockernut Hickory     Carya tomentosa
Hickory Phylloxeran     Phylloxera caryaecaulis