Ramble Report June 15, 2023

Leader for today's Ramble: Heather Larkin

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

Insect identifications: Heather Larkin, 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. Photos may be enlarged by clicking them with a mouse or by tapping on your screen.

Number of Ramblers today: 27

Today's emphasis: Seeing the Garden through the eyes of a child, taking pleasure in the smallest of animals and flowers especially with the aid of magnification.

Heather introducing ramblers to magnifying (5x) containers that allow you to see your captive insect (or flower, rock, toad, etc.) from all sides. These nifty devices are available online by searching "beautyflier 1 small insect magnifier."

Announcements/Interesting Things to Note:

A free workshop on the ecological and cultural value of River Cane will be held at the  Botanical Garden on Thursday, June 22, at 10:30am in the Visitor Center's Gardenside Room (downstairs). For more information, contact Laurel Clark, State Botanical Garden of Georgia Communications Coordinator, 706-542-6014, laurel.clark@uga.edu

Carla mentioned the upcoming 2024 Total Solar Eclipse, April 8, 2024, passing through points on a line from the Rio Grande River up through Waco/Dallas to St. Louis to Detroit to Buffalo, NY to Burlington, VT.  Lodging in places along the path of totality is already at a premium. NASA has a webpage devoted to the eclipse, including this map that shows the path of the eclipse.

Karen Porter mentioned the recent, highly successful Greenway Day celebration, that included many of the folks that were part of the original movement to get the Greenway established. Detailed information about the Greenway along with maps is available at this website.

Halley put in a plug for the local chapter of the Georgia Native Plant Society, the Athens-East Piedmont chapter. Meeting times and places are best found on the chapter’s website.

Richard mentioned that on the season finale of "Ted Lasso" one of the characters could be seen with his feet on his desk reading the book “Finding the Mother Tree” by Suzanne Simard.

Reading: Heather read from Henry Van Dyke (1852-1933), A Child in the Garden from “The Poems of Henry Van Dyke,” 1914.

When to the garden of untroubled thought
I came of late, and saw the open door,
And wished again to enter and explore
The sweet, wild ways with stainless bloom inwrought,
And bowers of innocence with beauty fraught,
It seemed some purer voice must speak before
I dared to tread that garden loved of yore,
That Eden lost unknown and found unsought.
Then just within the gate I saw a child–
A stranger-child, yet to my heart most dear;
He held his hands to me, and softly smiled
With eyes that knew no shade of sin or fear:
"Come in," he said, "and play awhile with me;
I am the little child you used to be."

Today's Route:  We left the Children’s Garden arbor and headed to the fountain at the Visitor Center plaza. We then explored the flower beds around the Porcelain Museum and the Herb and Physic Gardens.

OBSERVATIONS:

Don arrived early and discovered a number of insects on the Rattlesnake Master plants in the Children's Garden.

Small Channeled Valgus Beetle exploring the head-like inflorescence of  a Rattlesnake Master

This is the tiny fly just barely visible beneath the Rattlesnake Master flowerhead, on the right side of the stalk.

A plant bug, Rhinocapsus rubricans, seen on the Rattlesnake Master flower head, has no common name.

American Toads rely on numbers for reproduction, with the female laying up to 12,000 eggs at a time. Tadpoles are cannibalistic, but they still survive in such huge numbers that we get what we’ve been seeing for the past few weeks: hundreds of baby toads hopping everywhere. Snakes are the biggest predator of these toads at any age. 

Heather passed around the magnifying container with a captive American Toad.

There are many beautiful plantings at the Botanical Garden, but none are more eye-catching than the Visitor Center plaza fountain. Visible in this panorama shot are several hybrid pitcher plants, floating water lilies, alligator-flag, spider-lily with white flowers, and a Bald Cypress tree. Sheldon Jones is the curator of this aquatic garden.

The Pollinator Garden that surrounds the Porcelain Museum features a variety of mints, milkweeds, and aster family plants and is always a great place to look for insects.

'Little Joe,' a dwarf cultivar of Three-nerved Joe Pye Weed, is just coming into bud.

A Large Milkweed Bug explores a 'Little Joe' leaf
These bugs feed on the stems and leaves by piercing and sucking but are considered more of a nuisance than a threat since their nymphs develop into adults within about a month.

 

Versute Sharpshooter, a member of the leafhopper family, on a ray flower of Black-eyed Susan

Leafhoppers as a family all feed on plants. Research has shown that they feed on nutritionally poor sap and have to consume vast amounts of it, the equivalent of a human drinking nearly 400 gallons of water per day. The "Sharpshooter" name has been attributed to several behavioral traits: the damage they inflict on leaves resembles bullet holes, the “rapid and forcible ejection” of excess water from their bodies, and their rapid hiding skill which reminded someone of an army sharpshooter. ("Versute" means crafty, cunning, or artful.)

Roger found a Barred Owl feather on the path

Like other owls, Barred Owl’s wings and feathers have a number of features that enable them to fly almost silently. Their wings are large relative to their body size, allowing them to glide long distances without a lot of noisy flapping. The leading edges of their wing feathers have comb-like teeth that break up the air passing over them and dampens its sound; the trailing edges have a soft fringe that further breaks up air flow. Smaller down feathers also absorb sound.

With their distinctive “who cooks for you, who cooks for you all” call, Barred Owls are the most commonly heard owl in this area. They prefer forested areas, but seem to have adapted to life in Athens's wooded neighborhoods, where their calls are heard year-round but especially during breeding season. They are formidable night hunters, taking prey as small as insects and as big as crows.

The toothed or fringed edges of a Barred Owl’s wing feather helps to reduce the sound of air passing over their wings.

The complex flower head of a Zinnia, a member of the Aster (composite) family, contains both ray and disk flowers.

There are several whorls of purplish-pink ray flowers and a single whorl of green, folded, undeveloped ray flowers surrounding the central disk in this Zinnia flower head. In the very center, red scales (called "palea") obscure the developing disk flowers above (see the bright yellow, fully developed disk flowers in the photo below). The yellow pods are the pollen-bearing anthers of the ray flowers.

Typically, composite flower heads have fertile (seed-producing) disk flowers and sterile ray flowers; in Zinnias, both types of flowers are fertile.

Linnaeus named this genus after the German botanist Johann Gottfried Zinn who first described these plants.

A bumblebee is exploring the ray flowers of a Zinnia flower head. Five-lobed, bright yellow disk flowers are open in the center of the head.

Cicada Killer Wasps are up to 2 inches long and look scary, but they are generally harmless to humans. Few stings have been recorded, and they sting only when truly harassed. They are so generally unbothered by humans that there are videos of them being handled and petted. The wasp in Don’s photo is a smaller one: females have to be big enough to do what they are named for…stinging, paralyzing, and burying adult cicadas. They lay eggs on the buried cicada, which will be eaten by the emerging young.

Clustered Mountain-mint flower heads are always covered with insects:
Common Eastern Bumble Bee (left) and Western Honey Bees (right)

With its large heads consisting entirely of fringed, elongated, ray-like disk flowers, Stokes Aster may well be the most beautiful member of the Aster family. In the wild, Stokes Aster occurs in bogs and wet pinelands, where it is almost always purplish-blue as here. Cultivars with white, pink, or violet heads are now available in the nursery trade. The flowers must be cross-pollinated in order to produce seed and are visited by a wide variety of insects, especially  butterflies and bees. This species is ranked as critically imperiled by Georgia DNR.

A large number of Swamp Milkweeds were planted in the Porcelain Museum garden to attract Monarch butterflies, but have also attracted several other insects that dine on milkweed leaves.
photo credit: R.A. Nonenmacher

Large Milkweed Bug adult (left) and nymph (right) on Swamp Milkweed foliage

Swamp Milkweed Leaf Beetles specialize in eating the leaves of Swamp Milkweed and their close relatives.

These beetles are not deterred by the milky latex that drips out from the wounds they inflict. The latex contains toxic glycosides but, just like monarch caterpillars, the beetles have adapted to this poisonous diet and are rendered unpalatable or even deadly to their predators. The beetles’ bright colors are a warning: keep away or die! Although they are not harmed by the latex, the beetles minimize the amount they consume by slicing into a vein and draining off some of the latex before beginning to chow down.

Spotted Pink Lady Beetle on Swamp Milkweed foliage

The Swamp Milkweed plants in these beds are always heavily infested with Oleander Aphids, aka Milkweed Aphids.

Wingless adults and nymphs are both seen in Don's photo; if the plant becomes too crowded, winged adults are produced that fly to other plants and establish new populations. Small female wasps attack Oleander Aphids and lay eggs inside of the victims. The black, swollen aphids at the top of this image are parasitized "zombie aphids," filled with wasp eggs. When the eggs hatch, the developing larvae eat the aphid from the inside. Ah, nature red in tooth and claw. For more info on Oleander Aphids, click here.

Ramblers admire this watery bed of Horsetails, Spider-lilies, White-topped Sedge, and Indian Shot Canna

Indian Shot Canna nearly overwhelmed by Scouring Rush Horsetails

Spider-lily

White-topped Sedge

Nathan found a pair of mating Two-lined Spittle Bugs in the grass. The photo was taken of the bugs in the magnifying viewer.

Native to Europe, Common Bugloss is an important nectar-producing plant for beekeepers in its native range and was rated in the top ten species for nectar production in the United Kingdom. In this country, it is listed in Washington, Oregon, and Colorada as a noxious weed because of its invasiveness in forests, rangeland, alfalfa fields, and hay pastures. All parts of the plant, except for the petals, are covered with white, bristly hairs.

Last and definitely least, Crowdippers were seen on our way out of the Herb Garden into the Physic Garden. They are Asian plants in the same family as our native Jack-in-the-Pulpit and Green Dragon, all of which have the spathe and spadix type of inflorescence. The spathe is the slender, tube-like structure; the spadix is the long, slender, curving structure rising from inside the spathe. Flowers are produced at the base of the spadix.

 

In spite of its endearing name, Crowdippers is an invasive weed in parts of Europe and North America. Here's how the website of Scott Arboretum (Swarthmore College, Pennsylvania) describes the plant: "The volunteer who first introduced me to Pinellia described this invasive plant with a tone of loathing and detestation. If memory serves me correctly, I believe she described Pinellia as the “bane of [her] gardening existence.” At the time, I thought that was a pretty strong statement for such a small weed. But, after three months of first-hand experience with this seemingly ineradicable plant that always reappears with gusto, I now understand what the volunteer meant."

Nathan and Dale

SUMMARY OF OBSERVED SPECIES:
American Toad     Anaxyrus americanus
Three-nerved Joe Pye Weed     Eutrochium dubium cultivar ‘Little Joe’
Large Milkweed Bug, adult and nymphs     Oncopeltus fasciatus
Black-eyed Susan     Rudbeckia hirta
Versute Sharpshooter leafhopper     Graphocephala versuta
Barred Owl     Strix varia
Elegant Zinnias     Zinnia elegans
Cicada Killer wasp     Sphecius speciosus
Clustered Mountain Mint     Pycnanthemum muticum
Western Honey Bee     Apis mellifera
Common Eastern Bumble Bee     Bombus impatiens
Swamp Milkweed     Asclepias incarnata
Stokes Aster     Stokesia laevis
Swamp Milkweed Leaf Beetle     Labidomera clivicollis
Oleander Aphids     Apis nerii
Two-lined Spittle Bug     Prosapia bicincta
Scouring Rush Horsetail     Equisetum hyemale
White-topped Sedge     Rhynchospora (Dichromena) colorata
Spider-lily     Hymenocallis sp.
Indian Shot Canna     Canna indica
Common Bugloss     Anchusa officinalis
Crow-dipper     Pinellia ternata