Ramble Report July 14 2022
Leader for
today's Ramble: Holly Haworth
Author of today’s Ramble report: Holly
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.
Number of
Ramblers today: 26
Today's emphasis: Trees, Shrubs, Ferns and Wildflowers in the Lower Shade Garden and Dunson Native Flora Garden
Holly’s Introduction: My name is Holly Creswell Haworth: My mother, who studied forestry, named me Holly for the native holly tree, Ilex opaca. My middle name (my mother’s maiden name) is Creswell, which refers to a water well where the aquatic plant cress grows. My last name is Haworth. "Worth" in English, according to Oxford English Dictionary, meant a manor or homestead, while the haw preface referred to hawthorns, a tree commonly planted as a hedge. So a "Haworth" would have been a homestead with a hawthorn hedge. The hawthorn offered both mystical and physical protection: planted with the hedging technique, it would have formed a thick, impenetrable bramble with gnarly thorns, keeping out human and even many animal intruders, while in folklore the hawthorn was known as the crone of the woods, used in spells of protection.
Other introductions: Sam Watson, illustrator, joined us this morning. She is working on an illustrated guide to select trees and wildflowers of the Athens area. She presented three wonderfully done examples of what we can expect to see when the guide is finished. She is currently trying to find example of several specific plants and we will try to help her in her quest. For more on Sam's work, click here.
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| Welcome, Holly Haworth (left) and Sam Watson (right)! |
Readings: Holly provided two readings, one a quote from Carl Linnaeus: “If you have remarked errors in me, your superior wisdom must pardon them. Who errs not while perambulating the domain of nature? Who can observe everything with accuracy? Correct me as a friend, and I as a friend will requite with kindness.”
And from Thoreau, whose birthday was this Tuesday, July 12, in 1817. From his collected Summer journals: “The spring now seems far behind, yet I do not remember the interval; I feel as if some broad, invisible, Lethean gulf lay between this and spring.”
Following a long passage about the white lily, Thoreau wrote: “Men will travel to the Nile to see the lotus flower, who have never seen in their glory the lotuses of their native streams.” Thoreau put forth this idea throughout his writings, a challenge to explore one’s home ground deeply and widely.
Show and
Tell:
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| Page brought a cast-off, spiny exoskeleton of a Virginia Tiger Moth caterpillar (left) and the pupa or chrysalis that contains the developing moth (right). |
Announcements: Emily gave us an update on the next batch of Rambler t-shirts. The printers were told we want the order ready by the end of August.
Today's Route: We left the Children’s Garden arbor and headed down the right-side path into the Lower Shade Garden. We wove our way through the Lower Shade Garden, eventually making our way into the Dunson Native Flora Garden, where we walked until it was time to head back to the Visitor Center. Several Ramblers convened in the Gardenside Room for the social hour.
OBSERVATIONS:
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We were delighted to find that the Children's Garden curator had planted a small patch of Jewelweed, now in early flower, near the entrance to that garden. |
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Purple Passionflower vine emerging between |
The leaves and flowers of Passionflower are used medicinally as a mildly sedative nervine, to help with circling thoughts and depression. Passionflower is in the same genus as Passiflora edulis, the tropical fruit known as passion fruit. Our Passionflower also produces a smaller, edible fruit—once ripe, it has a lemony, semi-sweet flavor with crunchy seeds. The word for the plant in the Cherokee language is “Ocoee,” and the Ocoee River in Tennessee was a place named for all the Passionflower growing there. Another common name is “wild apricot.” Gary reminded us that it is also called the “maypop,” for the loud popping sound the fruit makes when stepped on!
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| Aggregate fruit on one of the Southern Magnolias lining the path through the Upper Shade Garden |
Southern Magnolia is in the Magnolia family, Magnoliaceae, which has 12 genera in the temperate and tropical regions of the globe, but only two genera in N. America: Liriodendron, with only a single species (Tulip Tree or Tulip Poplar), and Magnolia, which has 8 native species. All of them have large, showy flowers. At this time of year, they are setting their fruits, which also characterize the genus: cone-like aggregates of follicles. When the follicles open, the bright red seeds are suspended by long, slender threads. The seeds are currently forming inside the fruits, and the fruits will mature and release their seeds in late August/early September. The only other native North American evergreen magnolia is Sweetbay, Magnolia virginiana.
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| Bigleaf Magnolia leaves |
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| Bigleaf Magnolia leaves with cone-like aggregate fruit that is rounder than the fruit of Southern Magnolia |
Several Bigleaf Magnolias are planted in the Shade Garden. Unfortunately, one is mis-labeled as Fraser Magnolia—which is NOT in the garden at all. That deciduous magnolia was named for the Scottish botanist John Fraser, who collected extensively in the Southern Appalachian mountains, where Fraser Magnolia grows. It’s also called the “mountain magnolia.” Like Bigleaf, its leaves have a pair of auricles, or “ear-lobes,” at the base, just above the leaf stalks. But Bigleaf has 20-30 inch leaves, while Fraser’s leaves are only 10-18 inches long. Bigleaf leaves are also “pubescent,” or fuzzy, underneath, while Fraser’s aren’t. The buds at the end of a Fraser Magnolia twig—terminal buds that you’ll see before the trees leaf out in spring—are purplish and glabrous (hairless and shiny) and are nearly identical to those of the Umbrella Magnolia. So during the winter and early spring, look on the ground for last year's fallen leaves. Bigleaf's old leaves are whitened and slightly fuzzy on the lower surface; Fraser's are not. Big Leaf Magnolia has the LARGEST simple leaf of any tree native to North America—and the largest flower! It is worth a special trip to the Garden to see and smell the huge, fragrant flower in late April.
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| Mariana Island Fern planted and spreading along the Shade Garden path |
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| Sori containing thousands of spores on the lower surface of Mariana Island Fern fronds |
Mariana Island Fern is a native of Asian and African tropics but has been planted widely in the southern U.S. It is escaping and invading natural areas, especially moist shady forests where it can outcompete our native ferns. While there are at least 300,000 species of flowering plants worldwide, there are only around 10,000 species of ferns. Like all ferns, Mariana Island Ferns reproduce by spores. Spores project themselves onto wind currents that travel all the way to the atmosphere! A small percentage of the atmosphere is made of fern spores. Spores are viable for many years and impervious to extreme climactic conditions. A species of Asplenium (the spleenworts) was found in the Rockies that wasn’t native to this continent, and research showed that it had most likely traveled from Asia to the Rockies on substratospheric air currents, aka the jet stream, which moves at around 400 mph. In the "Field Guide to the Ferns and other Pteridophytes of Georgia," by Lloyd H. Snyder and James G. Bruce, you can read that many fern spores “look for” a specific type of rock or soil in which to germinate; ferns can be very specific to soil type. Some ferns have separate spore-bearing fronds called fertile fronds which look different from sterile fronds. Others produce spore cases or sori on all of their fronds. The shapes of the sori can be kidney-shaped, globular, egg-shaped, oblong, etc. and can help you classify a fern by genus. In the Peterson Field Guide, there is a good basic chart of sori shapes.
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| Christmas Fern |
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| Close-up of Christmas Fern frond showing the stocking-shaped pinnae |
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| All of the Christmas Fern fronds are fertile, but the fertile pinnae with their brown sori are concentrated on the terminal third or so of the frond. |
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| Cucumber Tree leaves |
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| Cucumber Tree bark |
Cucumber Tree is another deciduous native magnolia, found mostly in the Southern Appalachians in moist forests. Unlike Bigleaf and Fraser Magnolias, its leaves don't have "ear lobes" at the base, but instead taper to the leaf stalk. One way to separate Cucumber from Fraser when exploring in the mountains is to remember that Fraser (a man) has ears while cucumbers (a vegetable) do not. Another way is to notice the bark: Cucumber has rough, scaly bark (somewhat like a Winged Elm) while Fraser has smooth, gray bark.
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| Branch of Eastern Hemlock |
We spent a good bit of time at a beautiful Eastern Hemlock, a native of the Southern Appalachians. Historically, Hemlocks were majestic, stunning trees in the forest. The tallest on record was 165 feet tall. Another on record had a 7-foot wide trunk. Unlike the firs and spruces that they often share a habitat with, they are described as soft and feathery, airy and delicate. The spruces and firs hold snow firmly up on their branches, but hemlock's more flexible branches shake it off. Robert Frost wrote: “The way a crow/ Shook down on me/ A weight of snow/ From a hemlock tree/ Has given my heart/ A change of moon; And saved some part/ Of a day I rued.”
“Hemlock,” the same name as the poisonous hemlock plant, was a name given to the tree by (mostly Scottish) settlers, who loosely called all short-needled conifers "firs." To distinguish this tree from the true fir, which was a timber tree, they called it “hemlock fir”— a cursed fir, whose wood when they tried to mill it was "rough-textured, splintery, and tended to warp." Eventually settlers learned to appreciate Hemlocks since they could use the bark for tannins to tan leather. You can learn more about this history in a piece by Chris Marshall (Hawk and Handsaw: Journal of Creative Sustainability: https://hawkandhandsaw.unity.edu/hemlock/)
Unfortunately, Hemlock populations throughout its wide range in eastern North American have been decimated by the hemlock woolly adelgid, an aphid-like insect. When they infest a tree, you can see evidence of them by the white froth they produce as they chew on the needles. We’re fortunate to have a pristine example of this species to enjoy, and hope that the adelgid does not make the leap to cultivated trees in the Piedmont.
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| Red Maple with a gracefully curved trunk |
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| Florida Anise |
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| Immature fruits of Florida Anise |
Florida Anise is an evergreen shrub native to the Coastal Plain, from northeast Florida west to eastern Louisiana. (Plants reported from southwest Georgia are cultivated.) It is a close relative, in the same genus, as the Star Anise used in Chinese Five Spice Powder. The fruits of the two species are nearly identical and both have the same distinctive anise-like aroma; however, Wikipedia warns against using Florida Anise in cooking.
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| Fragile Dapperling, one of the most delicate of the larger, gilled, cap mushrooms, with yellow-centered, pleated, nearly transparent caps atop slender stems. |
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Black Cohosh in fruit |
We encountered Black Cohosh in fruit in the Dunson Native Flora Garden. In the spring and early summer, when the plant has just leafed out, and when it is flowering—with white flowers on its more-than-foot-tall racemes, quite a sight!—the leaves are highly fragrant. They’re one of the most pungent leaves I know, and I always stop to scratch and sniff them; it’s not an entirely pleasant smell, but there is really nothing like it. However, I’ve observed at this time of the summer, when they have set their fruit, the leaves have no smell. The compounds that create pungent odors in leaves are often a chemical defense against insect predation, so perhaps once Black Cohosh has set fruit, it stops using its energy to protect its leaves from getting munched.
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| Devil's Walking Stick has the largest compound leaf in North America |
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| Devil's Walking Stick, a member of the Ginseng Family (Araliaceae), is a small understory tree or shrub. Look for its exceptionally spiny branches and trunk—a great walking stick for the devil! |
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| Sycamore trees have flaky bark at eye level. Further up the trunk (see photo below), the flakes have fallen off and the smooth inner bark is revealed. |
Annie Dillard’s Pilgrim at Tinker Creek contains several long poetic passages in the chapter “The Present” about a Sycamore she sits under. One line that caught my eye in regards to the natural history of Sycamores was that, “Because a sycamore’s primitive bark is not elastic but frangible, it sheds continuously as it grows.” I’m not sure what Dillard meant by primitive bark, so this requires some further exploration!
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| Greenbriar leaf covered with white scales created by a gall midge. |
SUMMARY OF OBSERVED SPECIES
Jewelweed Impatiens capensis
Hinoki False Cypress Chamaecyparis obtusa
Purple Passionflower Passiflora incarnata
Southern Magnolia Magnolia grandiflora
Bigleaf Magnolia Magnolia macrophylla
Mariana Island Maiden Fern Macrothelypteris torresiana
Christmas Fern Polystichum acrostichoides
Cucumber Tree Magnolia acuminata
Eastern Hemlock Tsuga canadensis
Red Maple Acer rubrum
Florida Anise Illicium floridanum
Fragile Dapperling Leucocoprinus fragilissimus
Black Cohosh Actaea racemosa
Dog Vomit slime mold Fuligo septica
Devil’s Walking Stick Aralia spinosa
American Sycamore Platanus occidentalis
Leatherwood Dirca palustris
Greenbriar Smilax bona-nox
