“March 1: I went up to the wildlife preserve at Hiwassee Island to say goodbye to the geese, but I was too late. Some Mallards, tidily paired, a few Black Ducks, a Coot or two, and three Blue-winged Teal – these were all that were left of the great flocks of wintering birds… The geese were gone, but I was not sorry to have come. White-crowned and White-throated Sparrows whistled in the brush piles and pheasants cackled from the hedgerows. The day was gray and gradually the clouds lowered and thickened. When the rain began it did not come in drops, the air simply grew damper and damper and condensed on the lenses of my binoculars until, at last, it was obvious that it was useless to stay any longer. All that qualifies me as a just person is the lack of an umbrella. In truth, I like being rained on, the less than subtle reminder that, in the scheme of things, I am no more privileged than a frog. Next to life itself, water is the most astonishing phenomenon the universe has to offer, and rain is its loveliest manifestation.”
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| Ramblers gathering for the second ramble of the year. |
Page brought our attention to an Eastern Towhee, serenading us from a nearby tree. Later we heard the high screeching call of a Red-shouldered Hawk, which have nested in trees in the Shade Garden in the past.
Myrna displayed
her tee shirt, a definite winner in the T-shirt of The Year contest: “Botany Plants This Year?” We promise to get a photo sometime soon!
Richard brought
a Camellia leaf with a mysterious disease, possibly the fungal infection Camellia Leaf Spot. The damage apparently started on the lower surface of the leaf where it shows a striking raised rim, says Bill Sheehan, after looking at the leaf under magnification.
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Lower surface of diseased Camellia leaf. Photos may be enlarged by clicking them with a mouse or tapping on your screen. |
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| Upper surface of diseased Camellia leaf. |
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| Magnification of lesion on lower surface of the diseased Camellia leaf; note the prominent rim. Photo by Bill Sheehan |
Linda brought a twig from an American Beech tree that she found on the sidewalk near the Children's Garden. It had probably been nipped off by a squirrel. Beeches are monoecious, i.e. “female” and “male” flowers are held in separate locations on the same tree. The rounded heads, drooping on two-inch long stalks, are clusters of pollen-producing, male, staminate flowers that consist of many stamens. Since beeches are in the oak family, it’s fair to call these male flower clusters “catkins” as we do with the oaks even though they look quite different from oak catkins. (Catkins are a type of flower cluster adapted for wind-driven pollen dispersal.) The female, pistillate flowers we saw today consist of two tiny, rounded ovaries, each with three styles at the top; these will enlarge many times as they develop into the three-sided nuts we see in the fall. The copper-colored structures in Don’s photo are the remains of the bud scales that enveloped and protected the new growth during the winter. As Dale pointed out in his Nature Ramble report of April 5, 2018, every part of the Beech’s new growth – woody twig, flowers, and leaves – are contained in the bud and need only warmth and moisture to expand in size and take up their respective functions.
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Female Beech flowers in upper right, circled in red. Male flowers in catkins with prominent pale green anthers, in the lower half. |
From Dale’s Nature Ramble report of April 5, 2018:
“The bud scales are not just dropping off, they are actually elongating as they loosen to reveal the new growth hidden inside: the twigs, leaves and, in some cases, the flowers. Each of these structures formed over the last six or so months and they will now rapidly assume their full size over the next few weeks. Increase in the size of the bud contents is accomplished by the enlargement of the cells produced last fall and winter. Each cell in the shoot and leaf elongates by imbibing water. The cells swell and elongate and the leaf or twig lengthens accordingly. If you get a chance look at an emerging leaf. Be amazed by the origami folds that enabled it to be packed inside the bud and then unfurled into its adult form. Such packaging has been the inspiration of NASA scientists in the design of the solar panels that power many satellites – compressed in their bud, the launch rocket, and then unfurled when the payload reaches its orbit.”
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| Chattahoochee Trillium Its flower color ranges from bronze, as shown here, to a deep maroon. Note the prominent silvery, pale green stripe along the leaf midvein. |
Trilliums in the Dunson Garden are both a delight and a nightmare: it's a delight to see such a diversity of species in a small area, and a nightmare to sort out the hybrids that have been produced by interplanting species that would not normally occur together in the wild. Trilliums from the Coastal Plain were planted here cheek-by-jowl with trilliums found naturally only in the mountains and Piedmont. This hybridization seems to be especially the case with the Coastal Plain species, Chattahoochee Trillium (T. decipiens), whose genes show up in a number of different forms in Dunson, most often crossed with the north Georgia species, Purple Trillium/Sweet Betsy (T. cuneatum).
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| Decumbent Trillium is a toad-shade type of trillium. Its leaves are mottled with several shades of green, and its flower sits directly atop the leaves, without a stalk. |
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| Georgia Dwarf Trillium is a wake-robin type of trillium. Its leaves are solid green in color, and its flower is held at the end of a stalk. This is one of the rarest plant species in Georgia. |
(Photos may be enlarged by
clicking them with a mouse or tapping on your screen.)
Trilliums come in two growth forms: The toad-shades, with mottled leaves and stalkless flowers that sit directly atop the leaves, and the wake-robins, with solid green leaves and flowers on stalks. Toad-shade trilliums usually have maroon, yellow, or bronzey-green flowers, while wake-robin trillium flowers are usually white, pink, or dark red.
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| Chattahoochee Trillium flower with the six anthers exposed |
Chattahoochee Trillium is easily recognized by its tall stem (2-3 times longer than the leaves), mottled leaves with a distinctive silver-green strip, and flower resting directly atop the leaves. It also has distinctive anthers -- the pollen sacs at the top of each of its six very short stamens. Chattahoochee Trillium anthers open to the side – in Don's photo, you can see this as a yellow stripe along the edges of the anthers, the yellow being the pollen. Some trillium species have anthers that open on the inner surface, others on the outer surface. Chattahoochee Trillium (aka Mimic Trillium) is uncommon in Georgia and tracked by Georgia DNR.
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| Spotted Trillium, a toad-shade trillium, is a Coastal Plain species, as is the Chattahoochee Trillium. Its petals narrow abruptly toward the base. |
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| Lance-leaf Trillium, another toad-shade trillium, has narrower leaves and petals than the other toad-shade trilliums in the Dunson Garden. |
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| American Trout Lily with fully opened flowers |
Two species of Trout Lily are native to Georgia: American Trout Lily, found infrequently in moist forests in a few north Georgia counties, often in calcium-rich soils; and Dimpled Trout Lily, found in moist forests, bottomlands, and seepy areas around granite outcrops in many counties in north and southwest Georgia. Both species were planted in the Dunson Garden but don't appear to have hybridized. Here’s how to tell the two species apart.
During fruiting: The fruit of
American Trout Lilies are rounded or pointed at the tip and are typically held
erect or at least well off the ground. The fruit of Dimpled Trout Lily has a
depression or dimple on its flat top and is usually resting on the ground at
the tip of a drooping or fallen stalk. The resemblance of the dimple to a belly
button is reflected in its scientific name, Erythronium umbilicatum, as shown in the photos here.
Vegetatively: All trout lilies have elongated bulbs, often with bead-like segments attached. American Trout Lily also produces 1-3 stolons (called “droppers”) on each bulb that spread at or near the ground surface; the droppers look like strands of spaghetti and are tipped with new bulbs. This method of vegetative reproduction produces dense colonies of genetically identical plants. Dimpled Trout Lily bulbs have no droppers or sometimes just one.
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| Trout Lily flowers close at night, and open the next day when warmth and sunlight bring out the pollinators. At 9:30 on this cloudy morning, these flowers were closed, protecting their pollen from rain. |
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| When we returned later in the morning, after the sun had emerged from behind the clouds, the tepals were beginning to reflex (open and fold backwards), exposing their pollen-laden anthers. |
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| Like Trout Lily, Spring Beauty flowers close up at night and remain closed on cold or cloudy days. These Carolina Spring Beauty flowers were closed at 9:30am and fully opened by 11am. |
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| Golden Ragwort is the most abundant wildflower in the Dunson Garden. |
Allegheny Spurge is a peculiar spring-blooming wildflower. In fact, as an evergreen groundcover in the same family as Boxwood, it may not even qualify as a wildflower in some books. Its mottled leaves are crowded at the tips of stems that lie along the ground beneath the leaf litter, and the flowers are located at the base of the stem, quite a distance from the cluster of leaves. There is a short spike of fragrant male flowers, each flower with four white, fleshy stamens. Look closely at the base of this spike and find the pale, pinkish-tan female flowers, each with 2-4 spreading lobes. Allegheny Spurge is listed as Rare in Georgia, with fewer than 10 wild populations known, though the species is common further north.
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| Allegheny Spurge flowers The three-lobed female flowers are fully open. Male flowers, in a dense spike, are still tightly closed. They will open after the female flowers wither, thus preventing self-pollination. |
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| Rue-anemone |
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| Bloodroot |
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| Dwarf Crested Iris |
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| Virginia Bluebells |
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| Columbine |
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| Shooting Star |
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| Perfoliate Bellwort |
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| Green-and-Gold |
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| Atamasco Lily |
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| Flowers of Heartleaf aka Wild Ginger. They were completely covered with leaves, perhaps accounting for their lack of color. |
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| Seersucker Sedge in flower The plump green structures are female flowers; the dark spike at the tip of the stem contains the not yet mature male flowers. |
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| Seersucker Sedge leaves appear to be pleated. |
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| Celandine or Wood Poppy |
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| Early Meadow Rue is dioecious: its female and male flowers are on separate plants. These flowers, with their dangling stamens, are male flowers. |
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| Long-spurred Violet |
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| Cut-leaf Toothwort |
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| Foamflower |
Two shrubs are in flower today in Dunson Garden, Wild Olive (aka Devilwood) and Dwarf Pawpaw.
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| Dwarf Pawpaw flowers are miniature versions of the flowers of Tall Pawpaw. Both are pollinated by flies that are attracted by the flower's pungent smell and carrion-colored petals. |
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| Wild Olive really is in the Olive Family; its ripe fruits are black and oval and reported to be edible by humans. It occurs naturally only in the Coastal Plain. |
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| Don captured water droplets beaded up on the waxy leaves of Leatherwood, each droplet topped with a speck of pollen. Dale and Catherine performed an impromptu experiment, holding the leaf perpendicular to the ground. The droplets did not roll off! Clearly something was holding the droplets in place. It turns out that young leaves of Leatherwood are covered with tiny hairs that hold dew or rain drops, increasing humidity at the leaf surface and reducing water loss from the interior of the leaf. The hairs are sloughed off later in the growing season. |
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| Large Green Stinkbug |
Many ramblers were dismayed by the early bloom and leaf-out we witnessed today. It seems that a month or more of spring botanical events are all happening at once. Two recently published essays on this topic are worth a read:
Raggedy Spring in Paint Rock - Paint Rock Forest Research Center
The Beautiful and Terrifying Arrival of an Early Spring - New York TimesIf
you enjoy learning about the ecology and life histories of our spring-blooming
wildflowers, I highly recommend “Spring Wildflowers of the Northeast: A Natural
History,” by Carol Gracie (Princeton University Press, 2012). Of the 30 species
(or groups of species) that she discusses in depth, 28 occur in Georgia, so
don’t be put off by the title. Sadly,
Carol Gracie died in 2021. Here's a link to videos and an essay by her:
Videos: Great Native Groundcovers, Jack-in-the-Pulpit, and Marvelous Mayapple, and “Remembering a Great Naturalist: A Toast to Carol Gracie.”
Essay: “From Jack-in-the-pulpit to Featherfoil: An
appreciation of wildflower names.”
SUMMARY OF TODAY'S OBSERVED SPECIES:
