Leader for today's Ramble: Linda
Authors of today’s Ramble report: Linda. Comments, edits, and suggestions for the report can be sent to Linda at Lchafin@uga.edu.
Insect
identifications: Heather Larkin and Don Hunter
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: 20
Today's emphasis: Fall Wildflowers
Reading: Don read a passage from the "Golden-rod and Aster" chapter in According to Season by Mrs. William Starr Dana (Frances Theodora Parsons) first published in 1894 (lightly edited for length):
"...The English naturalist Mr. Alfred Wallace commented upon what seemed to him the fact that nowhere in our country could be seen any such brilliant masses of flowers as are yearly displayed by the moors and meadows of Great Britain. I do not recall whether Mr. Wallace saw our fields and hillsides in their September dress, and while he alluded to the many species of golden-rods and asters to be found in the United States, it seems to me quite impossible that he could have seen our country at this season and remained unconvinced of the unusual brilliancy of its flora....When September lines the road-sides of New England with the purple of the aster, and flings its mantle of golden-rod over the hills, and fills her hollows with pink drifts of the Joe-pye-weed or with the intense red-purple of the iron-weed, and guards her brooks with tall ranks of yellow sunflowers, then I think that any moor or meadow of Great Britain might be set in her midst and yet fail to pale her glory."
Show and Tell:
As an introduction to today's ramble, Linda brought some branches of the native Rough-leaf Goldenrod. Cultivars of this species called 'Fireworks' are widely available in the native plant trade. Goldenrod is a member of the Aster family that illustrates the features that distinguish most species in this family: a central disk of many tiny fertile flowers surrounded by a whorl of several sterile ray flowers.
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| Goldenrod flower heads have 4 or
5 disk flowers surrounded by several short ray flowers. |
Announcements/Other Interesting Things
Heather mentioned that the milkweed
in the new garden behind the Ceramics Museum is now covered over with Monarch
caterpillars. She also mentioned that
the UGA Trial Garden (on campus near the Pharmacy School) has planted a ton of pipevine and the plants are covered with
Pipevine Swallowtail butterflies, as well as the caterpillars.
Don't miss this wonderful article about the coming of fall!
The Garden is holding its 11th annual native plant sale at the Mimsie Lanier Center for Native Plants, October 6,7,8 and 13,14,15, Thursdays and Fridays, 4–6 p.m. and Saturdays, 9 a.m.–noon. For a list of available plants, email Linda.
An excellent online plant guide -- Guide to Common Wetland Plants of
North Carolina, by Gianopulos, Kendig, and Pyne -- was recently published by the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality. View and download here.
Sandy and Linda represented the Nature Ramblers on Saturday at the Garden's 32nd Insectival. The Education Department set up a table for us, and equipped it with some butterfly host plants and information brochures about monarchs and Georgia butterflies (our butterfly trail brochure was not back from the printer yet). Sandy brought a laptop with a revolving display of her butterfly photos and also some dried butterfly specimens. Lots of folks, and zillions of kids, stopped by to look and talk.
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| Insectival 2022! Nature Rambler table (left) and visiting Monarch (right) |
Today's
Route: We left the arbor at the Children's Garden and headed out to the road, so as not to be distracted by the wonders of the Shade and Dunson Native Flora gardens, and down to the powerline right-of-way. We first explored the southern, wetter end of the right-of-way than headed upslope to look for Ladies'-tresses and Carolina Milkvine fruits in the Nash Prairie.
Introduction to the Aster Family
Late summer - early fall is the peak season for flowering in the Aster Family, also known as the Composite Family. The latter name refers to the flower heads that are typical of this family, each head being a composite of many flowers into a "head" that superficially resembles a single flower. The classic composite flower head has a central disk of many tiny flowers, surrounded by a showy whorl of ray flowers, the whole thing held together by a cup-shaped structure made up of many tiny (usually green) bracts that are called phyllaries.
Phyllaries are important for identifying members of this family. Are they solid green in color or marked with white diamonds or red edging? Are they hairy or smooth? Do they have long, tapering points or blunt, triangular points or no points at all? Do they cling tightly to the base of the head or spread outwards? These phyllary features are important for separating the many look-alike members of this family.
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| Sunflower phyllaries are usually sharply tapered and spreading |
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| Blazing Stars have tightly clasping phyllaries that often have red margins |
The eponymous members of this family are plants in the genus Aster. In our part of the world this includes plants commonly known as Georgia Aster, New England Aster, Heath Aster, and many(!) more. But the scientific name of Aster has essentially disappeared from North America. Based on DNA research as well as traditional botanical studies, the Aster genus was split up into many different genera. All but one of the Aster species in the New World were assigned to different genera. Acceptance of this new system was slow but, as of now, we have seven genera of plants in Georgia that were once lumped together in the genus Aster. The seven new genera (with the number of species in Georgia) are: Ampelaster (1 species), Doellingeria (3 species), Eurybia (10 species), Ionactis (1 species), Oclemena (2 species), Sericocarpus (3 species), and Symphyotrichum (27 species).
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| Georgia
Aster, with white and purple disk flowers and purple ray flowers,
blooms in late October and early November. It is now in the genus
Symphyotrichum. I know that name looks unpronounceable, but try this: sim-fee-AH-trick-um. |
Some of the most common and conspicuous of the late summer composites are sunflowers, in the genus Helianthus. They are typical composites, with flower heads composed of a central disk of maroon or yellow flowers and an outer whorl of golden ray flowers.
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| Woodland Sunflower heads have golden-yellow disk and ray flowers |
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| White Crownbeard, aka
Frostflower, with Ailanthus Webworm Moth. This species has white rays and white disk flowers. |
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| Maryland Golden-aster has dense, cobwebby hairs on leaves and stems. |
Most Aster Family flower heads include both the central disk flowers and the outer whorl of ray flowers, but there are two groups within the family that don't fit this pattern. One group lacks ray flowers and the other one lacks disk flowers. We saw examples of all three flower head types today.
Disk-only flower heads are especially common among late summer- and fall- blooming species. Think of the ironweeds, thistles, bonesets, blazing stars, and Joe-Pye-weeds. Their showy flower heads lack ray flowers and instead have relatively large disk flowers with long, colorful style branches. These bright colors and showy features play the role that ray flowers typically do: they attract pollinators.
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| Tall Thistle's flower heads have no ray flowers but their long style branches and rich colors attract pollinators. |
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Tall Ironweed flowerheads are a spectacular shade of purple. |
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|
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| Late Boneset disk-only flower heads are brilliant white. |
Ray-only flowers seem to predominate in the spring and early summer (think dandelions), but Carolina Desert-chicory starts flowering in June and persists into the fall.
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| Carolina Desert-chicory flower heads have no disk flowers; instead the ray flowers in the center of the head are fertile and produce seeds. |
All three types of flower head are the result of the same evolutionary pressure: to make available to
pollinators large numbers of flowers in a small space. In a single visit, a
pollinator is able to probe and pollinate several (or many, depending on
the species) flowers. This pollination efficiency has allowed the
composite family to diversify into the highest number of species
(32,000+) of all the plant families and to spread across all the
continents but Antarctica.
Don noticed this patch of Fireweed in the woods near the arbor. Each puffy, white seed head releases up to 50 plumed seeds, making it one of the most aggressively spreading members of the Aster Family. It pops up wherever there is sun, even a small opening in an otherwise closed-canopy forest. In his Flora of the Southeastern U.S., Alan Weakley writes about Fireweed: “Perhaps the only other species [besides Pokeweed] in our area as adept at appearing (seemingly from nowhere) at small soil disturbances in forests...”
Although Aster family species dominate in September, two other families are also busily reproducing: mints and beans.
As every rambler surely knows by now, the Mint Family is distinguished by opposite, often strongly aromatic leaves,
stems that are square in cross-section, and a two-lipped flower. The
most abundant flowering mints at the Garden in late summer and fall are bee-balms (Monarda) and mountain-mints (Pycnanthemum).
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| Southern Mountain-mint in
August (left) and September (right). The flowers are past now but the distinguishing feature for this genus – whitened bracts surrounding the flower cluster – is still evident. |
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| Unfortunately, Perilla Mint
or Beefsteak Plant, native to southeast Asia, is becoming common at the Garden and in disturbed areas throughout the south. |
The Bean family is also huge, with 20,000 species worldwide. Bean family plants fall into one of three sub-families. The most abundant are the species with classic "pea-like" flowers: there is a prominent, often erect banner petal; two wing petals spreading or folded over the middle of the flower; and a keel petal held between the wings that consists of two petals that are fused into a canoe-shaped single petal.
The second sub-family, with many fewer native species, is the Mimosa-type group. Its flowers are tiny and grouped into a head made conspicuous by many long colorful stamens that rise from the nearly invisible flowers.
The third sub-family has flowers that are sort of ordinary in appearance--they have five nearly identical petals and prominent stamens.
The three subfamilies are held together by their similar fruit: all produce seeds in pods, called legumes. Some pods have many seeds, such as Senna and Redbud; others, such as Lespedeza, have one-seeded pods.
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| Lespedeza legume |
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| Maryland Senna's many-seeded legumes |
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| Beggar-lice legumes break apart at the joints between seeds |
Many other plant families were on display today in the southern end of the right-of-way.
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| The Smartweed Family
(Polygonaceae) is in full glory in the early Fall. Here, Climbing Buckwheat is using Southern Crownbeard as a trellis. |
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Climbing Buckwheat fruits are three-angled, each angle |
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| Dotted Smartweed flowers are loosely arranged along the stem. The flowers have microscopically small, clear dots on their white sepals. There are no petals. |
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| Pennsylvania Smartweed flowers are in dense spikes. |
making them a welcome partner in wetland restoration efforts.
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| Tearthumb, a sprawling smartweed,
has arrowhead-shaped leaves and stems that are lined with skin-ripping spines (below). |
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Red-morning Glory, aka Scarlet Creeper, is pollinated by hummingbirds and long-tongued butterflies. |
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| Our native Virgin’s Bower vine, in the Buttercup Family, climbs to 15-20 feet. Each vine bears all female flowers, or all male flowers, or sometimes both. This vine has hundreds of fruiting heads, each with a cluster of green fruits in the center. Each tiny fruit bears a long, white beak that facilitates seed dispersal. |
Passionflower vines, in the Passifloraceae family, are still in flower and also bearing dozens of unripe fruits (below). Gulf Fritillary caterpillars (right) are still hard at work on the leaves.
False Nettle is a member of the Nettle Family (Urticaceae), despite its name. It lacks the stinging hairs that characterize many species in the
Nettle Family. The leaves (but not the flower spikes) on the False Nettle (right) have been eaten by
caterpillars of the Red Admiral butterfly (below left, adult, below right
caterpillar). The caterpillars also eat the leaves of Stinging Nettles without
ill effects.
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| Gray Hairstreak butterfly caterpillar on White Crownbeard flower heads |
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| Fall Webworm moths on Red Mulberry leaves |
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| Canadian Melanolophia
caterpillar on Virgin's Bower vine Photo by Heather Larkin |
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| Camouflaged Looper caterpillar on White Crownbeard flower head |
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| White Crownbeard-specific aphids, Uroleucon verbesinae |
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| Photo by Stefan Bloodworth |
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| Nodding Ladies-tresses |
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| Yellow Garden Spider |
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| Carolina Praying Mantis on White Crownbeard |
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| Western Honeybee on Yellow Crownbeard |
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| Giant Strong-nosed Stink Bugs |
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| Ailanthus Webworm Moth on
White Crownbeard flower heads |
OBSERVED SPECIES:
