Leader for today's Ramble: Heather
Authors of today’s Ramble report: Linda and Don. Comments, edits, and suggestions for the report can be sent to Linda at Lchafin (at) 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.
Today's emphasis: Butterflies, caterpillars, and their host plants in the International, Herb & Physic, Heritage, and Flower Gardens.
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| Common Buckeye caterpillar |
Number of Ramblers today: 30
Reading: Cathy
Payne recited a poem, The Little Turtle, by Vachel Lindsay, from her first grade.
There was a little turtle.
He lived in a box.
He swam in a puddle.
He climbed on the rocks.
He snapped at a mosquito.
He snapped at a flea.
He snapped at a minnow.
And he snapped at me.
He caught the mosquito.
He caught the flea.
He caught the minnow.
But he didn't catch me.
Announcements and other interesting things:
Emily reminded us of Pie Day and Annual Meeting at Sandy Creek Nature Center, this coming Sunday, September 24, 3:00 – 5:00pm, and encouraged everyone to come. If you are not a member, you can join
during the event.
Roger Collins will present “Before there Was the Garden,” the fascinating landscape history of the last 12,000 years of what we know as the State Botanical Garden to the Friends First Friday breakfast on October 6. The registration deadline is Noon on Friday, September 29. The registration fee of $10 for Friends members, $12 for mon-members includes breakfast. Roger has spent the last year researching land use history in the 2,000 acre area around the Garden, tracking down old tax maps and aerial photos, and analyzing tree rings and land formations to interpret land use history. Register here.
Roger Nielsen announced a get-together sponsored by the Oconee River Land Trust to celebrate their 30th Anniversary on Sunday, October 8, 3:00 – 6:00 p.m., at Smith Wilson and Dianne Penney's farm. The event will be catered by Lee Epting, with music and adult beverages, and hikes and mule-drawn wagon rides.
Wonderful nature website to check out: Focus on Natives: Nature Photography and Observation Close-up. Here’s a nice example of a blog entry.
Interesting article: “The
Most Misunderstood Birds in North America.”
Show-and-Tell: Carla
brought some Sicklepod (Coffee Weed) plants with flowers
and bean pods. Sicklepod, native to the New World tropics and now widely naturalized in the U.S., is in the genus Senna, a group of plants that are larval hosts for Sulphur butterflies. Smooth, white, slender eggs
were visible on both the tops and bottoms of the leaves of Carla's specimen, apparently the eggs of
Cloudless Sulphur butterflies. The native Maryland Wild Senna flourishes in the right-of-way through the floodplain at the Garden.
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| Sicklepod plant (above) and egg of
Cloudless Sulphur butterfly (below) |
Today’s Route: We crossed the Flower Bridge into the American South Section of the International Garden, walked through the Mediterranean, Middle East, and Spanish Sections, arriving at the Herb and Physic Gardens. After spending some time in the Physic Garden, we headed to the Heritage Garden before taking the steps down into the Flower Garden. We meandered down to the lowermost areas of the Flower Garden before returning to the Visitor Center and the flower beds in the plaza.
OBSERVATIONS:
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| Don photographed this Gulf Fritillary butterfly probing the spent flower heads of Rattlesnake Master in the Children’s Garden. Most photos of this butterfly focus on the bright orange upper wings; this photo shows how lovely the coppery-silvery lower wing surfaces are. |
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Heather photographed a Genista Broom Moth caterpillar on a Baptisia stem. |
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| Appalachian Pink Turtlehead, cultivar ‘Hot Lips,’ is in flower in the Bartram section of the International Garden. |
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| Appalachian Pink Turtlehead is close kin to White Turtlehead (Chelone glabra) which is blooming now along the Orange Trail where the trail nears the beaver marsh from the north (not seen on the path we took on this ramble, this photo is from October 2022). Its flowers are white, sometimes with pink or purple “lips.” |
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| An American Toad jumped out of the duff onto one of the large rocks edging the path through the American Section of the International Garden. |
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| The caterpillars of Giant
Swallowtails look enough like bird droppings to discourage predators. Photos by Heather Larkin |
Bill made the find of the day, spotting numerous “bird dropping” caterpillars on Northern Toothache Tree (aka Northern Prickly-ash, planted along the southern edge of the Physic Garden, near the woodland). These are the caterpillars of the Giant Swallowtail Butterfly, the largest butterflies in North America, with some males’ wingspans reaching more than 7 inches. Very rare in Georgia, Toothache-tree is a member of the Citrus family (Rutaceae). Giant Swallowtails use only plants in the Citrus family as larval hosts. Other native Rutaceae species in Georgia include the fairly common coastal Southern Toothache Tree (Southern Prickly Ash or Hercules’ Club, Zanthoxylum clava-herculis) and less common but not rare Wafer-ash (Ptelea trifoliata), a shrub of calcareous soils.
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| If the bird-dropping imitation does
not discourage bird predators, Swallowtail caterpillars will raise up an osmoterium, a red, Y-shaped organ that
resembles a snake’s tongue. And if that is not scary enough, the osmoterium
will also produce foul-smelling and toxic terpene compounds. Photo by Heather Larkin |
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| Fruits are still maturing in the Tall Pawpaw patch. |
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| Beautiful, deep blue flowers caught our attention in the Heritage Garden. Blue Pea vines are growing out of a pot of marigolds and twining through holes in the brick wall. Blue Pea is native to tropical Asia, and has a long history as a dye plant, a sacred flower used in rituals, and a natural food coloring. It is also used in traditional Ayurvedic medicine for treating a variety of ills. |
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| The Gourd arbor in the Heritage Garden is covered in Loofah vines bearing large, yellow flowers and producing gourds of different sizes. |
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| Fork-tailed Bush Katydid nymph on a Lantana shrub |
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Heather spotted an Eastern Tiger Swallowtail caterpillar on a Pineapple Sage. Tiger Swallowtails also have osmeteria – the same kind of defensive scent glands that we spotted on the Giant Swallowtail. Heather regaled us with a description of exactly how horrible the smell is – multiple hand washings are not enough to remove the offensive odor. |
Bright, red-flowering Salvia species are planted in several areas of the Flower Garden, appealing to Cloudless Sulphur butterflies and other long-tongued butterflies whose tongues are long enough to reach the nectar produced at the base of the flower tube.
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| Pineapple Sage, a native of Mexico and Guatemala Photo by Gabriele Kothe-Heinrich |
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| Scarlet Sage, a native of Brazil |
Sages are in the genus Salvia, in the mint family. Pineapple Sage is native to Mexico and Guatemala, Scarlet Sage to Brazil.
There are three red-flowered mint species native to Georgia, two occurring naturally only in the Coastal Plain, the third in the mountains. Scarlet Sage (Salvia coccinea) is questionably native, and occurs in dry woodlands, flowering almost year round. A true native, Scarlet Calamint (aka Scarlet Wild Basil, Clinopodium coccineum) flowers April-May, and occurs in Longleaf Pine sandhills and pine flatwoods. Scarlet Beebalm (aka Oswego Tea, Monarda didyma) is endemic to the Southern Appalachians and blooms July-September.
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| Left to right, Georgia's red-flowering native mints: Scarlet Sage, Scarlet Calamint, and Scarlet Beebalm. Photos by Alan Cressler |
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| Ants were busy nectaring on Garlic Chives flowers |
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| Carolina Anole making its way through a tangle of Lantana stems. |
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| Moth Mullein in bloom in the Flower Garden |
A native of Europe, Asia, and North Africa, Moth Mullein has spread throughout most of North America since its introduction here in the early 1800s. Moth Mullein, like its common sister species, Woolly Mullein, is a biennial. The first year after germination, it forms a rosette of large leaves and a deep taproot with many fibrous side roots. The next year, it bolts, producing a 2-3 foot-tall stem bearing many white or pale yellow flowers. The stamens are showy, covered in purple hairs that, due to their resemblance to a moth antenna, earn the common name. The orange tips are anthers at the tip of the stamens.
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| Common Buckeye caterpillars were abundant on Angel’s Mist/Angelonia, an ornamental species native to Mexico and the West Indies. It is in the same family (Snapdragon) as Moth Mullein. |
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Don spotted a not-so-common stink bug and made this assessment: “a Dusky Stink Bug superficially looks much like the Brown Stink Bug and the Marmorated Stink Bug. Subtle differences, such as the pale yellow legs with lots of small dots as well as its almost uniform brown color, point to the Dusky Stink Bug. The Brown Stink Bug is two-toned with light olive (forward) and dark brown coloring (remaining) and the antennae color is wrong (yellow vs. orange for the Dusky)." |
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| Red-spotted Purple butterfly on Blue Mistflower |
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| Pipevine Swallowtail Photo by Sandy Shaull |
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| Leaf and flower of Dutchman’s Pipevine, a common woody vine in the Appalachian Mountains. There are two other "pipevines" in Georgia, Woolly Pipevine and Virginia Snakeroot. Photos by Richard and Teresa Ware |
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| An Eastern Fence Lizard crossed our return path to the Visitor Center and stopped for a photo op. |
The Zinnia, Mexican Sunflower, and Lantana beds in the Visitor Center plaza are reliable places to view butterflies and caterpillars at the Garden.
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| Eastern Tiger Swallowtail caterpillar Photo by Heather Larkin |
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| A tail-less Long-tailed Skipper on Lantana |
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| Monarch butterfly on Mexican Sunflower |
SUMMARY OF OBSERVED SPECIES
Gulf Fritillary butterfly Agraulis vanillae
Genista Broom Moth caterpillar Uresiphita reversalis
Appalachian Pink Turtlehead Chelone lyonii
American Toad Anaxyrus americanus
Eastern Giant Swallowtail (caterpillar) Papilio cresphontes
Northern Toothache-tree, Northern Prickly-ash Zanthoxylum americanum
Tall Pawpaw Asimina triloba
Blue Pea, Asian Pigeonwing Clitoria ternatea
Smooth Loofa Gourd Luffa aegyptiaca
Common Eastern Bumble Bee Bombus impatiens
Lantana Lantana camara
Fork-tailed Bush Katydid (late instar nymph), tentative ID Scuderia furcata
Eastern Tiger Swallowtail butterfly Papilio glaucus
Pineapple Sage Salvia elegans
Red Salvia Salvia splendens
Cloudless Sulphur butterfly Phoebis sennae
Garlic Chives Allium tuberosum
Zinnia Zinnia sp.
Carolina Anole Anolis carolinensis
Moth Mullein Verbascum blattaria
Dusky Stink Bug Eushistus tristigmus
Angel’s Mist, Angelonia Angelonia angustifolia
Common Buckeye (caterpillars) Junonia coenia
Red-spotted Purple butterfly Limenitis arthemis
Eastern Fence Lizard Sceloporus undulatus
Monarch Butterfly Danaus plexippus
Mexican Sunflower Tithonia rotundifolia
Long-tailed Skipper Urbanus proteus