Leader for today’s
Ramble: Dr.
Kelly Carruthers, Academic Professional Associate and
Undergraduate Program Coordinator for UGA's Entomology Department, was our
guest Ramble leader today. Kelly has a Ph.D. in Entomology from the University
of Florida. At UGA she hopes “to bring together my love of education with my
love of insects."
 |
| Kelly assembling a sweep net in preparation for the day’s ramble |
Authors of today’s Ramble
report: Linda and
Don. Comments, edits, and suggestions for the report can be sent to Linda at Lchafin@uga.edu.
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:
31
Today’s Emphasis: Insects in various
areas of the Garden
 |
| Fiery Skipper probing a Lantana flower |
Show-and-Tell:
Roger Collins visited
the Kenney Ridge area off of Tallassee Road after last Thursday’s severe storm
and collected a large limb from a toppled Beech. He measured the fallen trunk
and also did a ring count on a cross-section of the limb, estimating the age of
the tree to be approximately 250 years old. This agrees fairly closely with the
age of the largest Beech trees on the slopes below the Children’s Garden, as he
discussed on the Ramble on July13.
 |
| Roger passed around
a section of the limb showing the very narrow annual rings, indicating the slow
growth that is typical of Beech trees. |
Reading: Avis brought a poem
by Mary Oliver that Hugh Nourse, one of the original Ramble leaders, read on July 5, 2015.
The Summer Day
Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean —
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down—
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
Announcements/Interesting things:
Don mentioned that GPTV (Channel 8) showed a Georgia
Outdoors episode about the Georgia Plant Conservation Alliance this past weekend. It will be
re-broadcast again soon. The Botanical Garden of Georgia is
prominently mentioned, with a few familiar faces in the episode.
The US Geological
Survey is asking people to mail in already dead butterflies to help establish a
Research Scientific Collection. The collection will enable scientists
to have specimens from various regions in the US, allowing them to identify
contaminants and environmental factors which could be contributing to the
decline of butterfly populations. More info here.
Peter Wohlleben, author
of The Hidden Life of Trees, has a new book out: The Power of Trees:
How Ancient Forests Can Save Us If We Let Them. Here’s a review.
Today’s Route: We headed over to the Discovery and Inspiration garden
behind the Porcelain Arts Museum by way of the Visitor Center Plaza, then moved
down into the Herb and Physic Garden and through the Heritage Garden to the
Flower Garden. We returned to the Visitor Center via the rose garden path.
OBSERVATIONS:
The colorful
flower beds around the Visitor Center Plaza are always a great place to see
insects during the summer.
Sleepy Common Eastern Bumble Bee (above and below) visiting the unopened flower heads and branches of ‘Little
Joe,’ a dwarf cultivar of the native Three-nerved Joe-pye Weed.
Zinnia’s brilliant flower heads (below) are popular with skippers and
butterflies that are attracted to reds and yellows. Surprisingly, bees also
love Zinnias even though they don’t see colors in the red end of the spectrum –
there are ultra- violet patterns on Zinnia’s ray flowers that are invisible to human eyes but call in
the bees.
 |
Silver-spotted Skipper probing the disk flowers of a Zinnia flower head
|
Porcelain Museum garden
There are seven native
Magnolias in Georgia, two of them evergreen: Sweet Bay and Southern. Both are
more or less naturally restricted to the Coastal Plain, though Sweet Bay does occur
in a few Piedmont and Mountain wetlands. Both species are widely planted in the
Piedmont, especially the large, showy Southern Magnolias, which have become
invasive in forests near neighborhoods. Like all Georgia's magnolias, Sweet Bay has
beautiful, fragrant flowers, but unlike the others, its leaves are also
aromatic and reminiscent of those of the culinary herb, Bay Laurel. Magnolias
are an ancient flowering plant family – belonging to a group of plant families
called “basal angiosperms”– that appeared on the scene before other flowering
plants evolved. Like other ancient plants, such as Sweet Shrub (Calycanthus
floridus), their flowers are pollinated mainly by beetles, which were an early evolving group of insects.
All magnolias produce distinctive cone-like aggregate fruits – many small
fruits called follicles are fused together, each follicle opening in late summer
to release seeds that have bright red seed coats.
 |
| Sweet Bay’s flower (left) resembles those of its more famous cousin, Southern
Magnolia, but on a smaller scale. In the close-up of its pistil (right), you
can see the small green fruits, each tipped with a yellowing style, fused into a
single “cone.” The stamens, recently shed, had been attached to the stalk of
the cone. |
 |
| Sweet Bay’s aggregate fruit (left) composed of many fused, maturing follicles.
In the right-hand photo of an old fruit, still remaining on the tree since 2022,
the follicles have opened and the red-coated seeds have burst out. |
 |
| Swamp Milkweed in the Porcelain Museum’s garden hosting dozens of Oleander
Aphids. Oddly, there were no ants in attendance on these aphids. |
 |
|
Large Milkweed Bug on
Swamp Milkweed.
These true bugs are a
lesson in aposematic coloration – bright orange or red colors that warn
potential predators that an insect is poisonous. Their eggs are bright orange,
juveniles are mostly red with a few black spots, and adults are patterned with
black and reddish-orange markings. |
 |
| Wild Bergamot flowers are popular with Eastern Carpenter Bees and Common Eastern
Bumble Bee (left) and an uncommon Black-and-Gold Bumble Bee (right). |
The pond and surrounding wet area on the north side of the Discovery and Inspiration Garden support several interesting native wetland species, including
White-topped Sedge and Horsetails (above) and the ‘Lone Star’ white-flowered
cultivar of the Scarlet Swamp Mallow (below).
 |
| Close-up of the reproductive parts of the Mallow’s flower. Five stout styles
tipped with rounded stigmas (upper left) emerge from a white tube formed by the fused
filaments (stalks) of the stamens. The anthers jutting from the sides of the
tube are conspicuously tipped with bright yellow pollen grains. |
 |
Ramblers gathered around Heather’s dead male Red Velvet Ant, below.
Photo by Chuck
Murphy |
 |
| Heather found a dead male Red Velvet Ant, tangled in a Joro web. The presence
of wings indicated it was a male (females lack wings). |
 |
| A live, winged female Red Velvet Ant captured by Kelly later in the Ramble displaying
brilliant aposematic coloration. Also known as “cow killers,” female Red Velvet
Ants defend themselves with extremely painful stings that leave long-lasting scars
(just ask Dale!). These are not pleasant creatures: the females don’t make nests but
instead search for the nests of other wasps and deposit their eggs onto the
larvae within. When an egg hatches, the grub eats the body of its host larva. |
Plants in the Herb and Physic Garden, especially the Black-eyed Susans,
were busy with a large number of insects, including wasps, bees, butterflies, and skippers. |
| Fiery Skipper |
 |
| Furrow or Halictid Bee |
 |
| Common Eastern Bumble Bee |
 |
| American Lady |
 |
Thread-waisted Wasp
Photo by Heather Larkin
|
 |
| Horace’s Duskywing |
 |
| Carpenter-mimic Leaf Cutter Bee |
 |
| ...and there's always an Anole! |
 |
Chuck Murphy captured Heather and Don in characteristic
insect-photography
mode |
Zinnias and Lantanas in the Flower Garden also hosted a lot of insects…and
another reptile, this one exploring a rambler elbow. |
| Five-lined Skink |
 |
| Kelly netted an Eastern Tiger Swallowtail and showed us the patches of
blue and reddish-orange scales on the hind wings (above and below) that identify this individual
as female. |
 |
Silver-spotted skipper
photo by Heather Larkin |
 |
| Ocala Skipper |
 |
| Thread-waisted Wasp |
 |
Honey Bee with pollen baskets loaded with red pollen
photo by Heather Larkin
|
 |
| Ramblers seeking what we could find....in the shade! Just another mid-90s day in the Flower Garden... |
 |
|
Gaura (aka Beeblossom) is a wonderful, showy native species for gardens.
In the close-up photo below of the flowers, you can see their flowers' eight stamens and
four-parted stigma.
|
 |
Woodland Spiderlily somehow thriving in the full sun and high temps in the Flower Garden. Its flowers open at night, when they are visited by moths, and close the next morning. One flower (right) has already withered.
|
 |
|
This species of Rain Lily typically flowers in late September
through early October but it seemed to be successfully braving mid-summer heat
and humidity.
|
Another practitioner of aposematic coloration, a Red Admiral
butterfly was resting on the red-graveled path next to the Rose Garden.
SUMMARY OF OBSERVED SPECIES
Common Eastern Bumble Bee Bombus impatiens
Three-nerved Joe Pye Weed Eutrochium dubium cv. ‘Little Joe’
Silver-spotted Skipper Epargyreus clarus
Carolina Anole Anolis caroliniensis
Swamp Milkweed Asclepias incarnata
Large Milkweed Bug Oncopeltus fasciatus
Sweet Bay Magnolia Magnolia virginiana
Oleander aphid Aphis nerii
Bee Balm/Wild Bergamot Monarda fistulosa
Eastern Carpenter Bee Xylocopa virginica
Black-and-Gold Bumble Bee Bombus auricomus
Rough Horsetail Equisetum hyemale
White-topped Sedge Rhynchospora colorata
Scarlet Swamp Mallow, white-flowered cultivar Hibiscus coccineus cv. ‘Lone Star’
Red Velvet Ant Dasymutilla occidentalis occidentalis
Thread-waisted Wasp Sphex nudus
Furrow bee Halictus sp.
Black-eyed Susan Rudbeckia hirta
Horace’s Duskywing skipper Erynnis horatius
Fiery Skipper Hylephila phyleus
American Lady butterfly Vanessa virginiensis
Carpenter-mimic Leaf Cutter Bee Megachile xylocopoides
Common Five-lined Skink Plestiodon fasciatus
Eastern Tiger Swallowtail butterfly Papilio glaucus
Ocola Skipper Panoquina ocola
Rain Lily Zephyranthes candida
Woodland Spider Lily Hymenocallis occidentalis
Gaura/Beeblossom Oenothera lindheimeri (probably)
Red Admiral butterfly Vanessa atalanta
