Ramble Report August 24, 2023

 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.

Photos in this report were taken by Jan Coyne, Bill Sheehan, and Don Hunter. Don was out sick but photos taken by him on earlier rambles are included and credited. Photos may be enlarged by clicking them with a mouse or tapping on your screen.

Number of Ramblers today: 35 

Today's emphasis: Flowers, fruits, butterflies, moths

Ramblers entering the Flower Garden
photo by Bill Sheehan

Reading: "Jurassic Dreams and Katydids" by Bob Ambrose

There is always a week in early August 
stuck in a musty fold of time,
when the world spins in place 

and the season teeters on the brink
as every August that ever was
seeps in the marrow of a single day.

I rise in darkness.
Damp air caresses my skin
as I amble down empty streets listening to crickets.

Furtive songbirds molt in silence.
A doe slips through the shadows of a streetlamp.
The moon dissolves in a bank of haze.

Morning dawns, gray-laden and soft,
tucked with mushrooms, mold and rot,
laced with dew-spun webs.

The sodden hours slip by, dripping,
yet in the dripping, never dry. But mist
burns off by noon, and midday glares.

As sun beats down on bare pavement,
profane hawks shriek obscenities.
A gang of crows loiters in the treetops.

Oblivious gnats hurl their bodies
at unguarded eyes. The world thrums
with the jet-beat of cicada days.

On a primal August such as this
Griffin flies stretched their foot-long wings
to hunt Carboniferous swamps.

Red-eyed raptors stalked Jurassic plains,
and monster crocs lay in wait for Cretaceous prey.
They ruled their own unchanging days.

The western sky blackens. Cool
downdrafts shake the canopy. Limbs crack.
A pack of storms sweeps through.

Out my open bedroom window
a sultry evening settles in. Soon,
I think. Soon enough the season turns.

Soon enough it all moves on. I sleep
with the distant night-song of dilophosaurus
enveloped by ancient tree-tip strumming –

she did – she didn’t 

            she did – she didn’t 

                         she did – she did – she did

Announcements

Trail Guides are needed at Sandy Creek Nature Center! No experience required! If you love nature and are looking for a way to get involved in your community, being a Trail Guide at Sandy Creek Nature Center is the way to do it. Trail Guides are trained to take small groups of school-age children on walks along the Nature Center trails as a part of their field trip experience. As long as you enjoy being outdoors and sharing nature with others, you'll be a great fit! The kids love it and you’ll love it, too. Sign up for a training session today. Dates are August 29, 30, or 31, from 9am-noon. You only need to register for one day. Register online here. 

Today's Route:

We left the Children’s Garden arbor and headed for the Flower Garden, with stops along the way in the Visitor Center Plaza, the Herb & Physic Garden, and the Heritage Garden. We returned via the paths beside the Rose Garden and Freedom Plaza.

OBSERVATIONS:

Bent Alligator-flag
photo by Jan Coyne

The fountain in the Visitor Center plaza is crowned by a large and vigourously flowering Bent Alligator-flag. From its ruby red stems topped with towering flowering stalks to its large lime-green leaves, this plant is a sight to behold.

Bent Alligator-flag's three-petaled flowers are held on drooping, zig-zag stalks.
Photo by Don Hunter

The lower lip of a Bent Alligator-flag flower provides a perfect landing platform for pollinators.
Photo by Don Hunter

Bent Alligator-flag is a striking member of the tropical family Marantaceae, aka the Arrowroot family; its genus Thalia is the only member of the family found in temperate North America. Bent Alligator-flag’s native range is Central and South America and extending north throughout Florida and into southern Georgia and Alabama.

The Zinnia and Mexican Sunflower beds in the Plaza are a favorite haunt of butterflies.

Monarch nectaring on the disk flowers of a Mexican Sunflower
We also saw Tiger Swallowtails and Skippers visiting the zinnias.
Photo by Don Hunter

Mugwort, planted in the Herb & Physic Garden, has been used medicinally for centuries and is also the main ingredient in absinthe.
Photo by MichielSt

Aubrey shared this information about a medicinal use of Mugwort: “Mugwort, also called Wormwood, has been used throughout Asia medically in a process called moxibustion, in conjuction with Traditional Chinese Medicine. In moxibustion, acupunture points on the body are heated with the burning herb as a way to treat arthritis and a host of other ailments. It is very popular and still used in clinics to this day.”

Spikenard flowering near the Herb and Physic Garden
Photo by Jan Coyne

Spikenard flower clusters
Photo by Jan Coyne

Like most medicinal and edible plants, Spikenard has a lot of common names: Indian-root, Spice-berry, Spignet, Life-of-man, Hungry-root. Leaves and stems have an anise-like taste and were cooked in stews; its root was used to make root beer; and the small round fruits make a spicy jelly. Various parts were used in tonics, poultices, cough medicines, and other medicinals. Although shrubby in appearance, it is an herb that dies back completely to the ground in winter. It grows throughout eastern and central North America, reaching as far west as South Dakota; its southern extent is in north Georgia and adjacent states. It is in the genus Aralia, along with Devil’s Walking-stick, and in the same family as Ginseng.

Spotted Orbweaver was weaving its web in the Spikenard inflorescence while a Long-tailed Skipper was visiting its flowers.
Photo by Bill Sheehan

Hop vines growing on one of the small arbors in the Herb & Physic Garden.
Photo by Jan Coyne

Hops have long been used to flavor beer, but were first used as a preservative to prevent spoilage of beer during long sea voyages. Female and male flowers are produced on separate Hops plants; it is the flowers on female plants that bear the glands that produce the flavorful compounds.

The gold-colored "dust" at the base of the bracts in a female Hops inflorescence are the glands that produce "hoppy" flavors in beer. These compounds also act as a preservative and promote a good head on a glass of beer.
Photo by Jan Coyne

Pawpaw fruit and leaf photos by Don Hunter

We stopped to look for Pawpaw fruits on the trees shading the path to the Heritage Garden. We found one nice cluster and a few single fruits, prompting a discussion of flowering, fruiting, and dispersal in this species. Large fruits such as Pawpaw’s are thought to be relicts of a time when now extinct “megafauna” –  large animals such as Giant Ground Sloths, American Camels, and American Mastodons – inhabited North America and gulped down large fruits from plants such as Pawpaw, Osage Orange, and Honey Locust. The loss of their megafauna seed dispersers and widespread habitat destruction across eastern North America has created a problem for wild Pawpaw populations. Pawpaw flowers require cross-pollination in order to set fruit. When you see a large thicket of plants in the wild, you are probably looking at a single genetic individual, its many trunks connected by underground stems. Visiting flies (the main pollinator, also beetles) may travel from flower to flower and never reach a truly different plant. Since the populations are now so widely scattered across the landscape, a fly may never visit a genetically different Pawpaw and therefore its efforts may never result in fertilization and fruit development. In their article “Pollinator limitation, fruit production, and floral display in pawpaw (Asimina triloba),” Mary Willson and Douglas Schemske state that less than one percent of flowers they looked at produced fruit. Because Pawpaw pollinators are attracted to dead and fermenting things, commercial Pawpaw growers (yes, there are such things!) hang dead animals or buckets of animal parts in their pawpaw groves to encourage pollinators to move around among genetically different plants and patches.

Butterfly Ginger flowers
Photo by Jan Coyne

Butterfly Ginger, also known as White Ginger-lily, is thought to be native to the Himalayas but it has been so widely cultivated throughout Asia for so long that it’s hard to be certain of its original range. In Hawaii, Butterfly Ginger flowers are used to make leis. Not surprisingly, this species is in the same plant family (Zingiberaceae) as the spice ginger (Zingiber officinale) that we cook with but Butterfly Ginger rhizomes do not have the aromatic qualities as the spice.

A trip through the Heritage Garden is always an opportunity to discuss the complex roles that plants play in human culture and history.

Seminole Pumpkin (Chassahowitzka Squash) growing in the Heritage Garden
Photo by Jan Coyne

Kathy Stege has been growing this cucurbit in her garden for years and shared some seeds from her plants with Gareth, the curator of the Heritage Garden. And voila! Here’s a whole bed of these amazing squashes called Chassahowitzka Squash or Seminole Gourd. Kathy reports that they are delicious! This article from the Naples (Florida) Botanical Garden recounts the plant's history: "These pumpkins are deeply intertwined in Florida’s history. The Seminole, Calusa, Creek, and Miccosukee people cultivated this pumpkin by planting it at the base of dead trees where the vines could climb up their trunks and the pumpkins would hang. The Seminole word 'chassahowitzka' loosely translates to 'hanging pumpkin.' These pumpkins, with their numerous uses, were a staple for locals. When Europeans first settled in Florida, they took note of the pumpkin plants’ large yields and the vertical growing practice that allowed hundreds of acres to be cultivated."

Seminole Pumpkin
Photo by Naples Botanical Garden

Cotton has been a major part of Georgia's culture and economy since the late 18th century.
Photo by Jan Coyne

Indigo plant in flower
Photo by Jan Coyne

During the American colonial period, the British government subsidized the growing and production of Indigo in the colonies, a support that disappeared with the beginning of the Revolutionary War. No longer profitable in North America, indigo production in the New World shifted to Central America. The Indigo plant, whose scientific name Indigofera tinctoria, literally means “indigo-bearing dye plant,” has been in cultivation for so long – at least six millenia – that its original native habitat is unknown. Its rich, vivid blues can now be had from synthetics but indigo is still marketed as a natural dye all over the world. Wikipedia has a long, in-depth article on indigo, as does the New Georgia Encyclopedia.

Sweet Autumn Clematis leaflets have no marginal teeth (left, photo credit);
Virgin’s Bower Clematis leaflets have toothed margins (right, photo by Don Hunter.)

Sweet Autumn Clematis, an Asian invasive plant, looks enough like our native Virgin’s Bower Clematis that it has gone unnoticed here in the Heritage Garden. Although their flowers are very similar, and both have compound leaves, you can tell the two species apart by looking at their leaflets: Sweet Autumn Clematis leaflets are smooth along their margins--no teeth; Virgin’s Bower leaflets have toothed margins. One rambler shared this mnemonic:  No notches, no grow. (The leaflet teeth are notches – without notches, the plant is a no-no.)

'Thomasville' – a cold-hardy hybrid citrus plant
Photo by Bill Sheehan

An interesting hybrid citrus was planted along the steps leading down to the Flower Garden from the Heritage Garden. It’s something called Citrangequat × 'Thomasville' – a complicated mix of Sweet Orange, Trifoliate Orange, and Kumquat. This particular cultivar is named for Thomasville, Georgia and is the tastiest of the cultivars of this three-way hybrid. 'Thomasville' is a very cold-hardy citrus, able to tolerate temperatures down to 5°F.

Jan captured a Carolina Anole hiding amongst the citrus leaves: a lime lizard?
Photo by Jan Coyne

So many butterflies in the Flower Garden plus one amazing caterpillar! A shout-out to the Flower Garden curators, Gareth Crosby and Jim Moneyhun, for creating such a butterfly-rich habitat.

Red-spotted Purple
photo by Sandy Shaull

Sleepy Orange visiting a Mexican Sunflower
photo by Sandy Shaull

Long-tailed Skipper nectaring on Lantana flowers
Photo by Don hunter

Fiery Skipper on Lantana flowers
photo by Don hunter

Painted Lady
photo by Don Hunter

Io Moth caterpillar on its host plant, Wild Indigo
photo by Bill Sheehan

Not seen today but worth a look: adult female Io Moth
photo by Andy Reago & Chrissy McClarren

Gulf Fritillary
photo by Don Hunter

Cloudless Sulphur
photo by Sandy Shaull

Dale Hoyt wrote about two of these butterflies in the ramble report of September 26,2019, asking questions about the movements of Cloudless Sulphurs and Gulf Fritilllaries: 

"Most of the butterflies seen today are visitors because they lack the adaptations that enable them to survive our winters. Are the visitors migrants?

When food is scarce or population density high animals tend to leave their current location and seek better places with more food or fewer competitors. This tendency will automatically lead to the dispersion of individuals from areas with high population density to places with fewer competitors and/or more available food for themselves and their offspring. This process will lead to the spread of a species over larger and larger areas. You can imagine butterflies slowly dispersing north from overwintering locations in peninsular Florida and gradually working their way through Georgia into the Carolinas and Virginia and, in a year with good weather, as far as New York.

Two butterflies, the Gulf Fritillary and the Cloudless Sulphur, are suspected to be migrants, not simple dispersers. Each year the northern populations of both species are eliminated by cold weather. Neither species can survive over winter. Each year both species reappear in the landscape, having flown north from sources in Florida that have warmer climates. What makes them migrants rather than simple dispersers?

Much of what we know about the Gulf Fritillary comes from the work of T. J. Walker and his associates at the University of Florida. Walker noticed that in the spring Gulf Fritillaries flew across his property low to the ground and when they encountered an obstacle they flew up and over it, rather than around it. Their flight seemed intent on moving in one direction. To gather information on flight behavior he built a trap that separated butterflies flying in different directions. Butterflies flying into the trap from the south were diverted into a holding cage so that he could record the number of each species before releasing them. Similarly, for butterflies coming from the north. He operated the trap during the fall and spring months for 6 years. The results for the Gulf Fritillary were unequivocal. In the spring he recorded a total of 135 Gulf Fritillarys, of which 98% were traveling north. In the fall a much larger number were captured, 1355, and 99% were traveling south.

Walker also collected data on Cloudless Sulphurs. In the spring 84% of 106 captured were flying north. In the fall 93% of 493 captured were flying south. These results also suggest that the Cloudless Sulphur may be a true migrant.” Thanks, Dale!

This Cloudless Sulphur may have been flying south but it's taking a time out on Dale's nose in September 2019. Photo by Don Hunter

Heading up and out of the Flower Garden on the stairs next to the roses, some ramblers spotted an Eastern Garter Snake similar to the one pictured above. It quickly disappeared under the brick wall before anyone could get a photo.
Photo credit

SUMMARY OF OBSERVED SPECIES

Bent Alligator-flag       Thalia geniculata

Zinnia                          Zinnia sp.

Mexican Sunflower     Tithonia rotundifolia

Monarch butterfly       Danaus plexippus

Tiger Swallowtail        Papilio glaucus

Mugwort, Wormwood            Artemisia absinthia

Spikenard                   Aralia racemosa

Spotted Orbweaver     Neoscona crucifera
Long-tailed Skipper     Urbanus proteus

Hops                            Humulus lupulus

Tall Pawpaw                Asimina triloba

Butterfly Ginger, White Ginger-lily      Hedychium coronarium

Seminole Pumpkin, Chassahowitzka Squash cultivar of Cucurbita moschata

Cotton                         Gossypium hirsutum

Indigo                          Indigofera tinctoria

Sweet Autumn Clematis         Clematis terniflora

Virgin’s Bower Clematis          Clematis virginiana

'Thomasville' cultivar of Citrangequat hybrid

Carolina Anole             Anolis carolinensis

Lantana                        Lantana camara

Red-spotted Purple     Limenitis arthemis astyanax

Sleepy Orange             Abaeis nicippe

Fiery Skipper               Hylephila phyleus

Painted Lady               Vanessa cardui

Io Moth caterpillar       Automeris io

Wild Indigo                  Baptisia sp.

Cloudless Sulphur      Phoebis sennae

Gulf Fritillary               Agraulis vanillae

Eastern Garter Snake Thamnophis sirtalis