Ramble Report September 7, 2023

Leader for today's Ramble: Emily

Author of today’s Ramble report: Linda. Comments, edits, and suggestions for the report can be sent to Linda at Lchafin (at) uga.edu.

Insect and fungi identifications: Don Hunter, Heather Larkin, Bill Sheehan

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: 27

Today's emphasis: Purple Passionflower vines, butterflies,and other late summer flowering plants and animals in the Middle Oconee River floodplain.

A Gulf Fritillary visiting the seed heads of a Rattlesnake Master in the Children’s Garden.

Reading: Susie read from a poem by the Sami (indigenous Norwegian) poet, Nils-Aslak Valkeapää:

the land

is different

when you have lived there

wandered

sweated

frozen

seen the sun

set rise

disappear return

the land is different

when you know

here are

roots

ancestors

Announcements/Interesting Things to Note: Roger announced that he will be the guest speaker at the First Friday Friends meeting in four weeks (October 6, 2023). He will present his historical research on the Garden property in a talk titled “Before There Was the Garden,” starting 12,000 years ago. You must register online for tickets. There are a limited number of tickets so do not procrastinate if you would like to attend. Breakfast is included with the event.

Tonight (September 7), the Oconee Rivers Audubon Society will have its season kick-off meeting in the University of Georgia Ecology auditorium. There will be a silent auction and free drinks at 6:00 p.m., with the lecture following at 7:00 p.m. A representative from Georgia DNR will be talking about the comeback of the state’s Bald Eagles. The first bird walk of the season will be Saturday morning, at 8:00 a.m. at Sandy Creek Nature Center.

Susie mentioned that the Kiwanis’ Birchmore Walk/Run 5K race will be Sunday, September 9, at 2:00 p.m. at Sandy Creek Nature Center.

Emily recognized Cathy Payne for spearheading the name tag project at last week’s Nature Ramble and three people remembered to wear their tags this morning!

Show and Tell: Emily brought in some immature White Oak acorns which the trees in her yard and elsewhere in Athens are dropping in large numbers, which seems early. Oaks will drop their acorns early if the trees are stressed by extreme heat, such as we experienced this summer. Also, they may have been blown from trees by the high winds and storms that hit Athens in the last few weeks.

Today's Route:  We left the Children’s Garden and headed down the entrance road to the Purple Passionflower vines on the deer fence next to the Dunson Native Flora Garden. From there, we then took the paved ADA path to the banks of the Middle Oconee River, exploring the late summer wildflower and insect bounty in the floodplain.

OBSERVATIONS:

The entrance road, as it passes alongside the Shade Garden and Dunson Garden Native Flora Garden, is lined with plants reaching through the deer fence to the sunny road.

Devil’s Walking-stick

Southern Mountain-mint

American Beautyberry

The Purple Passionflower vines on the deer fence between the Dunson Garden and the entrance road are in late flower and early fruit. This is a great time of year to view these plants: they are usually busy with Gulf Fritillary activity; this year Variegated Fritillary caterpillars were also present. Fritillary butterflies appear later in the summer than our other common butterflies; they are migratory and spend the winter in Florida and don’t show up in north Georgia till mid- or late summer. While fritillaries use nectar from a variety of plants, females lay their eggs only on the leaves, stems, and tendrils of species in the genus Passiflora. In the Piedmont of Georgia, that means Purple Passionflower and Yellow Passionflower plants (other passionflower species are hosts for fritillaries in Florida and Central and South America). Once the eggs hatch, caterpillars (the larval stage) will eat passionflower leaves, stems, and fruits before entering the chrysalis (pupa) stage. Several generations will be produced and die before shorter days prompts the final round of adults to migrate back to their wintering grounds in Florida.

Gulf Fritillary caterpillar on a Purple Passionflower leaf
Although the black spines look scary they are actually soft to the touch and are not venomous. The orange and black coloring is a warning to predators that the caterpillar has absorbed toxins from its host plants.

The larger caterpillar is a Variegated Fritillary, the smaller a Gulf Fritillary caterpillar.

This Gulf Fritillary butterfly has just emerged from its chrysalis, a process called eclosing.

Eastern Leaf-footed Bug on Purple Passionflower vine looking for a place to insert its piercing-sucking mouthparts

Golden Tortoise Beetle on Passionflower leaf. Their bodies come in myriad shades -- rust, orange, and metallic gold, green, and blue -- that change depending on stress and age.

Golden Tortoise Beetles camouflage themselves by stacking their frass and castoff exoskeletons on their backs.

A Three-lobed Morning-glory vine, in full flower, is also twining through the deer fence. Don spotted a tiny fruit fly resting on the edge of the flower (at 11 o'clock on the lower flower and in the close-up below).

Two-lined Spittle Bug on a Morning-glory leaf

Close-up look at Morning-glory Rust, a fungus, infecting the lower surface of Morning-glory leaves. There are about 8,000 known species of rust fungi and probably about that same number not yet described in the tropics. Tiny, root-like structures extend from the fungus into the leaf tissue to extract nutrients.

From late August until late September, the floodplain right-of-way comes into its own with a profusion of wildflowers, most in the Composite, or Aster, family. This plant family is characterized by flower heads composed of many flowers: a colorful whorl of ray flowers (resembling petals) surround a central disk (or cone) of many tiny yellow, green, or black-brown flowers, supported beneath by a cup- or cylinder-shaped set of small, usually green bracts. While there are variations on this theme, some of which we saw today, most composite family plants are easily recognized as such when in flower based on the presence of their unique type of flower heads.

The most common Composite species in the floodplain are three species in the genus Verbesina, known as Wingstems and Crownbeards. All three species are robust plants with narrow "wings" of green tissue that run vertically along their stems, mostly at mid-stem. They differ in ways that make it easy to distinguish them.

Common Wingstem has yellow flower heads and alternate leaves and branches.

Yellow Crownbeard also has yellow flower heads but its leaves are opposite.

White Crownbeard has white flowerheads and alternate leaves. It is also known as Frostweed--at the first hard frost in late fall, water is extruded from the lower stems and freezes into strange and sometimes beautiful shapes called "frost flowers." Click on the link for photos and details.

Sunflowers are abundant throughout the Georgia Piedmont in late summer and early fall.

Rough-leaved Sunflower plants are tall with long, opposite, lance-shaped leaves that are rough and sandpapery to the touch. The leaves have conspicuous leaf stalks. A similar species not seen today, Woodland Sunflower (Helianthus divaricatus), has no or very short leaf stalks.

Eastern Calligrapher Flower Fly resting on the tip of a Rough-leaved Sunflower leaf

Up to 10 feet tall, Tall Ironweed with its large clusters of magenta flowerheads is the glory of the floodplain in September and a favorite of butterflies. Its heads lack ray flowers and consist entirely of showy disk flowers with conspicuous styles.

Late-flowering Boneset flowerheads also lack ray flowers but the snowy white disk flowers with bristly styles make a showy display popular with small butterflies.

Late-flowering Boneset surrounded by the feathery stems of Dog Fennel

Jagged Ambush Bugs in the Boneset's flower clusters

Boneset Stem Gall, created by a gall midge

Climbing Hemp-vine is a Composite family species found sprawling over other vegetation in floodplains and wetlands throughout Georgia. Its white (occasionally pale pink) flowerheads resemble those of Boneset and are sweetly fragrant.

Many species in the Bean (or Legume) Family are also in flower this time of year. A rambler favorite, Maryland Senna, is a host plant for several Sulphur butterflies.

Maryland Senna flowers (left) with a caterpillar crawling over the central flower. Fruits (right) are typical Bean family pods.

Smartweed, Lady's Thumb, Tearthumb, Knotweed, and Buckwheat: all common names applied to plants in a family of largely wetland species, the Polygonaceae.

The long narrow flower clusters of Dotted Smartweed are conspicuous in the right-of-way floodplain. The flowers lack petals but have six white or pale pink sepals. The "dots" are tiny depressions on the sepals visible only in good light and with a hand lens. A Leaf-footed Bug nymph is visiting this flower spike.

Climbing Buckwheat is a high-climbing vine sprawling over the River Cane and nearby plants near the river. Its sepals bear frilled wings that persist on the mature fruits.

A Golden Garden Spider has stretched her web across vegetation near the river. The heavy zigzag line down the middle of the web is called a stabilimentum. Its function is the subject of much speculation: it may warn birds not to fly through the web thus preventing web-destroying crashes; it may provide camouflage for the spider waiting at the heart of the web; and, it may scare away predators -- spiders have been seen shaking the stabilimentum at intruders.

Don's return trip to the Visitor Center yielded some nice observations.....

Carolina Anole sporting fall colors

Tiger Swallowtail nectaring on a Mexican Sunflower head

Close-banded Yellowhorn Moth caterpillar

SUMMARY OF OBSERVED SPECIES:
Purple Passionflower     Passiflora incarnata
Gulf Fritillary (adult and caterpillar)  Agraulis vanillae, synonym Dione incarnata
Rattlesnake Master     Eryngium yuccifolium
American Beautyberry     Callicarpa americana
Southern Mountain-mint     Pycnanthemum pycnanthemoides
Devil’s Walking-stick     Aralia spinosa
Variegated Fritillary (caterpillar)     Euptoieta claudia
Two-lined Spittlebug     Prosapia bicincta
Fruit Fly     Drosophila sp.
Golden Tortoise Beetle (adult and nymph)     Charidotella sexpunctata
Three-lobed Morning Glory     Ipomoea triloba
Morning Glory Rust     Coleosporium ipomoeae
Eastern-leaf Footed Bug (adult and nymph)     Leptoglossus phyllopus
Common Wingstem     Verbesina alternifolia
Yellow Crownbeard     Verbesina occidentalis
White Crownbeard/Frostweed     Verbesina virginica
Rough-leaved Sunflower     Helianthus strumosus
Eastern Calligrapher Flower Fly     Toxomerus geminatus
Dotted Smartweed     Persicaria punctata
Tall Ironweed     Vernonia gigantea
Late-flowering Boneset     Eupatorium serotinum
Dogfennel     Eupatorium capillifolium
Eastern Redbud     Cercis canadensis
Versute Sharpshooter     Graphocephala versuta
Small White Morning Glory     Ipomoea lacunosa
Maryland Senna     Senna marilandica
Sulphur butterfly caterpillar  
Jagged Ambush Bug     Phymata fasciata
Boneset Stem Gall Midge     Neolasioptera perfoliata
Climbing Hempvine     Mikania scandens
Common Climbing Buckwheat     Fallopia scandens
Golden Garden Spider     Agriope aurantia
Close-banded Yellowhorn Moth (caterpillar)     Colocasia propinquilinea
Carolina Anole     Anolis carolinensis
Long-tailed Skipper    Urbanus proteus
Eastern Tiger Swallowtail     Papilio glaucus
Mexican Sunflower     Tithonia rotundifolia