Ramble Report November 10, 2022

Leader for today's Ramble: Linda

Author of today’s Ramble report: Linda. Comments, edits, and suggestions for the report can be sent to Linda at Lchafin@uga.edu.

Insect and fungi identifications: Don Hunter, Bill Sheehan, Heather Larkin.

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. Photos may be enlarged by clicking them with a mouse or tapping on your screen.

Number of Ramblers today: 30

Today's emphasis: Seeking what we find in the Middle Oconee River floodplain

Reading: Kathy read “Morning Poem” by Mary Oliver, from Dream Work

Every morning

the world

is created.

 

Under the orange

sticks of the sun

the heaped

ashes of the night

turn into leaves again

 

and fasten themselves to the high branches–

and the ponds appear

like black cloth

on which are painted islands

 

of summer lilies.

If it is your nature

to be happy

you will swim away along the soft trails

 

for hours, your imagination

alighting everywhere.

And if your spirit

carries within it

 

the thorn

that is heavier than lead–

if it’s all you can do

to keep on trudging–

 

there is still

somewhere deep within you

a beast shouting that the earth

is exactly what it wanted–

 

each pond with its blazing lilies

is a prayer heard and answered

lavishly,

every morning,

 

whether or not

you have ever dared to be happy,

whether or not

you have ever dared to pray.

Announcements/Interesting Things to Note:

Lecture by Janisse Ray: “The Art of a Place Called Longleaf.” Where: Georgia Museum of Art, 90 Carlton Street, University of Georgia. When: November 17, 2022, 5:30 PM to 6:30 PM. For more info, call (706) 542-1817 or open this link. Price: Free. No pre-registration required.

Winter Walks: beginning the Thursday after Thanksgiving, December 1 and continuing every week until the last Thursday in February, Linda and other Nature Ramblers will lead a series of walks/hikes in parks and natural areas within an hour's drive of downtown Athens. These will be hikes of 2-5 miles at locations such as Victoria Bryant State Park, Sandy Creek Park, and the Garden's own White Trail/Orange Trail loop. Early each week, Dale will send out an email announcing the location or meeting place for that week's walk, with info about length and difficulty of the trail. All the trails are rated easy or moderate. We will not hike on rainy days. Please let Linda know if you have a favorite trail you'd like to visit or, even better, lead.

Today's Route: We left the Children’s Garden arbor and headed down through the Lower Shade Garden, taking the White Trail downhill through the woods and out into the power line ROW. We turned left toward the river, where we picked up the Orange Trail and headed downstream to the board walk across the beaver pond, then retraced our steps back to the Purple Trail, and took that back to the Heritage Garden and then to the parking lots.

OBSERVATIONS:

Wrinkle-leaf Goldenrod is still blooming in the Children's Garden

Pavement near the arbor was littered with Ginkgo leaves
and the empty husks of Beech nuts.

If you do an internet search on “empty beech nut husks,” you may be as surprised as I was that you can buy 100 for $6. 

Each husk contains two, sharply three-angled, nuts.
The nuts are three times higher in protein than acorns.

Beech leaves changing color
These leaves will remain on the tree, becoming papery and ever paler until finally released from the twigs next spring. This phenomenon of trees hanging onto their leaves throughout the winter is called "marcescence."

More fall fruits, now in the floodplain right-of-way....

Tall Goldenrod in fruit
Each tiny goldenrod fruit is crowned with fluffy, white bristles that catch the wind, dispersing the seed. Goldfinches, sparrows, and other birds eat the dry, seed-like fruits, called achenes.

Crownbeard and Wingstem flower heads appear nearly identical (above),
but their fruiting heads (below) look quite different.

Fruit of Eastern Anglepod
The wind-dispersed seeds are tipped with silky, white hairs.

 The seeds have already dispersed from this Eastern Anglepod fruit,
and a Tiger Moth caterpillar has found a refuge in the empty pod.

The Middle Oconee River at a low level

When I see the river at a low level, I am reminded of Hugh Nourse, a dear friend and original Nature Rambler leader now living in St. Louis, who described the river in terms of the number of abandoned tires exposed in the riverbed: one exposed tire meant a dry month, two tires indicated a drought. We all miss Hugh and Carol a lot. And look forward to a rainy winter.

Although Hurricane Nicole brought us some rain on Friday, the Middle Oconee River on Thursday testified to what a dry year we've had. Every month this year, except March and July, our rainfall has fallen below the 30-year average.

Box Elder saplings removed from the River Cane patch
(photo by Gary Crider)

River Cane needs full sun to thrive. Using a narrow-bladed reciprocating saw that allowed him to carefully maneuver between the tightly packed cane stems, Gary removed more than 100 box elder sapling that were threatening to overtop the cane in the cane thicket at the intersection of the ADA Trail and the Orange Trail.

Gary's reciprocating saw at work on a Box Elder trunk
(photo by Gary Crider)

Ramblers checking out River Cane growing on the levee. These heavily shaded plants are much less robust than those growing in the sunny right-of-way.

Jackson-brier is abundant in the treetops in the floodplain,
a fact easy to miss when the canopy is fully leafed out.

Jackson-brier is an evergreen, more or less thornless, species of Smilax that was traditionally grown around porches in Athens for summer shade and Christmas greenery. It's an under-appreciated native vine whose flowers provide nectar for bees and flies, larval food for moth caterpillars, and winter fruits for birds, bears, foxes, squirrels and opossums.

This burrow in the floodplain is probably the work of a Nine-banded Armadillo, whose burrows can be up to 15 feet long. We rarely see the animal itself since they are largely nocturnal.

Both the native Virgin's Bower Clematis, above, and the exotic invasive, Sweet Autumn Clematis (below), occupy the same habitats and have compound leaves with 3 or more leaflets. The native species' leaflets are toothed, the exotic species' leaflets have smooth margins.

Woody vines use different strategies for reaching the canopy. Poison Ivy, left, climbs a tree (in this case, a Winged Elm) using a dense growth of aerial rootlets that cling to bark. Wild grapes, right, wrap tendrils around the branches of a tree sapling and grow up with the tree into the sunlight. Both Poison Ivy and wild grapes are important food sources for wildlife.

The trunk of a Flowering Dogwood tree killed by a canker fungus
in the genus Biscogniauxia.

Most often found on oaks, this fungus also infects Maple, Hickory, Pecan, Sycamore, and other hardwoods. The fungus may live for years under the bark of a healthy tree, kept in check by the tree’s natural defenses. But if stressed by drought, injury, or another pathogen, the tree can no longer fight off the canker, which expands under the bark, eventually causing the bark to slough from the trunk, exposing the black fungus. Growing along a riverside foot trail, this tree may have been injured by beavers or humans or have been infected by Dogwood Anthracnose, an exotic fungal pathogen that has decimated Dogwoods throughout the southeast.

 

Unusually spiraled bark of a Hop Hornbeam tree
growing on the levee of the Middle Oconee River.

In some trees, the grain spirals around the trunk rather than growing straight up and down. There are several hypotheses about the Why (function) and the How (mechanism) of spiraling grain. Tree trunks and branches are enclosed by a cylinder of cells (the cambium layer) just under the bark that divides inwardly to produce wood and outwardly to produce bark. How these newly produced cells are induced to grow off the vertical is the big question, and the answer seems to boil down to stress, such as wind and snow-loading, being applied to the cells as they mature.

Perhaps frequent flood disturbance and the instability of floodplain soils are the stressors here along the river. Spiraled trunks are less likely to be torn apart by mechanical stresses such wind storms or floods. Many spiral-grain trees change directions over time, reversing the spiral from left-hand to right-hand and back again. This may make the tree even stronger over time and able to withstand stress from all directions. Spiraled grain also occurs when a tree is growing in an environment where water and nutrients are hard to obtain, such as a sandy river levee where nutrients are quickly leeched away and water rapidly percolates through the coarse sand particles.

Round Bullet Galls on an oak twig (left), sliced open to reveal the "bullet" (center) that enclosed the developing female wasp (right), alive and active.

You may be wondering: how can you sex a wasp? There is no real skill involved at this time of year. Round Bullet Gall wasps have a two-stage life cycle. In the spring, both female and male wasps emerge from galls; in the fall, only females. Here is a really good explanation of the fascinating life cycle of this insect.

Bushy Aster is still hard at work providing nectar to a Streaktail Hover Fly (above)
and Eastern Bumble Bee (below).

(Remember to click or tap on a photo to enlarge it.)

Giant Leopard Moth Caterpillar

Giant Leopard Moth caterpillars overwinter in the leaf litter then pupate and emerge as strikingly beautiful adults (below) in the spring.

Giant Leopard Moth
(Photo by Jeremy Johnson)

 

As we made our way up the Purple Trail, we came across a trail of feathers that Heather followed to its source, concluding that a Red-shouldered Hawk had been attacked by an owl.

Postscript: Plant-Soil Interactions - The Cycle of Life. A TED talk and, for those who lack the patience to sit through a video, its transcript.

Postscript:  A Notorious Invasive Plant, Kudzu Shows Promise in Green Construction

SUMMARY OF OBSERVATIONS:

American Beech     Fagus grandifolia
Ginkgo     Ginkgo biloba
Tall Goldenrod     Solidago altissima
Common Wingstem     Verbesina alternifolia
Yellow Crownbeard     Verbesina occidentalis
Eastern Anglepod     Gonolobus suberosus
Tiger Moth     Haploa sp.
Ground Ivy/Gill-over-the-Ground     Glechoma hederacea
Box Elder     Acer negundo
River Cane     Arundinaria gigantea
Mariana Island fern    Macrothelypteris torresiana
Jackson-briar     Smilax smallii
Marbled Orbweaver    Araneus marmoreus
Sweet Autumn Clematis     Clematis terniflora
Virgin’s Bower     Clematis virginiana
Green Ash     Fraxinus pennsylvanica
Winged Elm     Ulmus alata
Poison Ivy     Toxicodendron radicans
Summer or Fox Grape     Vitis sp.
A canker fungus    Biscogniauxia sp.
Florida Maple     Acer floridanum
American Hop Hornbeam     Ostrya virginiana
Exotic Streaktail hover fly     Allograpta exotica
Common Eastern Bumble Bee     Bombus impatiens
Dogwood (dead w/black fungus)     Cornus florida
Joro Spider     Trichonephila clavata
Round Bullet Gall Wasp     Disholcaspis quercusglobulus
Giant Leopard Moth (caterpillar)     Hypercompe scribonia
Bushy Aster     Symphyotrhichum dumosum