Ramble Report November 16, 2023

Leader for today's Ramble: Linda

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.

Insect and fungi identifications: Don

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: 39

Today's emphasis:  Seeking what we find in the forests along the Green and Blue Trails.

Announcements:

Rambler Kathy Stege invites all ramblers to join her for a moderate stroll on Thanksgiving Day (2:00pm, Thursday, 11/23) at Heritage Park in Oconee County, on the west side of Hwy 441 in Farmington – look for the big, old, white school house and white fence along Hwy 441. The full walk is 1.5-2.0 hours, but there are plenty of short cuts along the trail to return earlier. A fast group might split off in a brave effort to work off their Thanksgiving feast calories. Bring your dog(s), friends, and family. RSVP to Kathy by Wednesday 11/22 5:00pm: 478-955-34222 or kjstegosaurus@fastmail.com

Sandy reminded us that the Nature Rambler book group will meet on Thursday, November 30, 10-11:30 a.m. in the Adult Classroom in the Garden's Visitor Center to discuss dates and times of future meetings and to select a list of books for 2024. Bring a book (or a description of a book) that you'd like the group to read.

Linda reminded us about the upcoming series of Winter Walks, beginning the Thursday following Thanksgiving, December 7. Walks will begin at 10:00am at state parks or natural areas within an hour's drive (more or less) of Athens. Dale will announce by email the location and a description of each walk on the Monday prior. The list of destinations is not finalized: please submit suggestions for places you'd like to visit.

Firefly art!  “This series of images is the result of photographing a kind of magic only found in nature, a phenomenon with countless iterations that is often unseen – fireflies. The primary subject is a synchronous firefly population recorded in spring of 2023, deep inside an Athens, Georgia forest during the peak of their mating season.”

Tim told us of a recent trip to George L. Smith State Park, near Twin City, GA, in Emanuel County. He recommends paddling its 400-acre black water cypress swamp that has several different kayak/canoe trails. 

Reading: Kathy Stege read Mary Oliver's poem, “In our woods, sometimes a rare music.”

Every spring
I hear the thrush singing
in the glowing woods
he is only passing through.
His voice is deep,
then he lifts it until it seems
to fall from the sky.
I am thrilled.
I am grateful.
Then, by the end of morning,
he's gone, nothing but silence
out of the tree
where he rested for a night.
And this I find acceptable.
Not enough is a poor life.
But too much is, well, too much.
Imagine Verdi or Mahler
every day, all day.
It would exhaust anyone.

Today’s Route: We walked through the Dunson Garden, crossed the right-of-way, and entered the woods where the White, Green, and Blue trails intersect. We walked uphill along the Green Trail, turned west on the old service road, and then returned to the right-of-way on the Blue Trail, where we took the White Trail back to the parking lot.

Common Eastern Bumble Bee searching late-blooming goldenrod flowers in the Children’s Garden

Leaving the Children’s Garden plaza, we paused to admire the bright colors of Beech leaves near the beginning of the Shade Garden path. It's interesting to think that these bright pigments – carotenoids – are present in the leaf all summer and appear only when the chlorophyll that masks them breaks down in the fall.

American Sycamore is a bottomland species often found in floodplains in wet areas as well as on the drier levees. It also seems to thrive on the upland slopes of the Shade Garden. Their “seed balls” are actually round clusters of tightly packed fruits, each fruit with a tuft of tawny hairs to catch the breeze as the seed balls disintegrate (below). Some people collect the balls and hang them on trees near their houses to attract seed-eating birds such as chickadees, goldfinches, and juncoes.

 

These rosettes of Golden Ragwort leaves will persist through the winter and respond quickly to next spring’s warm weather by putting up a flower stalk. Many of the leaves have been thoroughly mined by leaf miners. “Leaf miner” is a general term applied to the caterpillars (larvae) of moths, wasps, and flies that are so tiny they live between the upper and lower surfaces of leaves, eating their way through the leaves. You can spot the point on the leaf where the initial egg was laid – the mining trail is very fine – and follow the progress of the caterpillar as it eats and grows – the trail becomes wider as the caterpillar does – until it finally exits the leaf at a brown spot. The number of brown spots on this leaf suggests that five different caterpillars lived here.

Dried fertile frond of Sensitive Fern, so named because its fronds are very cold-sensitive and have withered while most of the other ferns in Dunson are still green. Each of the small, dark "balls" on this frond are sori that produced spores during the summer.

This Cucumber Magnolia was planted at the threshold of the large foot bridge spanning the rock wash in the Dunson Garden. It's always a pleasure to examine the patterns and colors of the many crustose lichens (below) that use its bark as a substrate.

Crossing the right-of-way on the White Trail, we stopped to compare the late season appearance of two common species of bluestem grasses (Andropon): Split-beard Bluestem and Broomsedge. 

Splitbeard is so named for the two diverging branches that make up its inflorescence; the bases of the two branches are still visible in the topmost inflorescence in this photo. The seed-bearing spikelets are already dispersed and only tufts of hair remain. Note that the Splitbeard inflorescence is held at the tip of a long naked (no leaves, no spathes) stalk. Below, Broomsedge spikelets are partially enfolded by leaf-like spathes all along the stalk. You can still see some fruits, with long hairs attached, escaping from the spathe.

Into the woods...

Roger estimates the trees in the oak-hickory forest west of the right-of-way are 150 years old.

The Green Trail is locally (very locally) famous because it runs through an area that supports the only Shagbark Hickories known at the Garden. Several years ago, Dan Williams, forester/geologist and last week’s ramble leader, mapped the location of amphibolite bedrock in the Garden in this area. On the map below, the amphibolite zone is outlined in red and overlaps the area where the Shagbark Hickories grow.

Amphibolite is high in calcium and magnesium, two minerals that “sweeten” (raise the pH) the soils that develop above amphibolite bedrock. Many plant species, Shagbark Hickory among them, are calciphiles – “calcium lovers” – found almost always where the soils are sweeter. The northwestern corner of Georgia is underlain by layers of sandstone and limestone and, where the limestone is the near the surface, the forests there are often filled with Shagbarks and other calciphile plants. Closer to Athens, Shagbark and other calciphiles can be seen on War Hill at Kettle Creek Battlefield in Wilkes County.

Shagbark Hickory bark is broken into long and narrow plate that are loose at the top and bottom and attached to the trunk in the middle.

Even though loose, the plates still have the braided look that characterize hickory bark.

White Oak bark sometimes has a shaggy look too but never looks braided and the plates tend to be loose on one long side and attached on the other side.

While looking through the leaf litter for Shagbark Hickory nuts, Page found a beautiful Green Stink Bug.

Winged Elm is a reliable member of the Piedmont Oak-Hickory forest, easily recognized by its “tongue depressor” bark.

Mockernut Hickory has the most distinctly braided bark of all the hickories. There are five hickory species at the Garden: Mockernut, Shagbark, Sand, Pignut, and Red.

Pignut Hickory is so named because its nuts were eaten by wild pigs and reportedly made for excellent pork. Conveniently for our ID purposes, the husk enclosing the nut has a “pig snout” on one end. Pignut has tough, durable wood that was used for ax handles and wagon wheel hubs. The husk splits at the fat end but opens only about a third of the way down.

Shortleaf Pine bark with resin pits (aka pitch pockets) on the bark plates
Resin is an important defense against invasion by insects and fungi, and resin canals or ducts are found throughout the body of many tree species. Shortleaf Pine is unique among southern pines in having the canals reach the surface of the bark, where they look like tiny moon craters.

This Black Cherry tree beside the Blue Trail has developed a large burl, probably as a result of invasion by a pathogen.

Black Cherry trees have distinctive, dark bark that is broken into many small plates that some people liken to burnt, smashed potato chips. Up close (below), you can see that some of the plates are crossed by lines of lenticels, patches of loose cells that allowed the young, rapidly growing tree to take up carbon dioxide and release oxygen through its bark. These horizontal lines are quite obvious on young Black Cherry bark.

A lot of people dislike Black Cherry trees because they pop up in gardens and shrubbery and, if left in fence rows, their poisonous leaves can be eaten by livestock. But Doug Tallamy has a different take on Black Cherry, and ranks it as  #2 on the list of plants that are the best larval host for lepidoptera (White Oak is #1). This short and sweet video of Doug explains all.

There is growing concern that Lenten Rose (Hellebore) may be escaping from gardens and becoming invasive. In the woods along the Blue Trail, we saw Lenten Rose that probably escaped from plantings at the Garden’s old horticulture headquarters that occupied the space now home to the Mimsie Lanier Center for Native Plant Studies.

Late in the year as it is, Don is still finding insects along the trail; in this case, he flipped over a Beech leaf and found a winged Tulip Tree aphid and, at a fraction of the size, a leafhopper nymph (below).

Don spotted a dried leaf with thirty or so Chalcidoid wasp larval cases attached to it. Chalcidoid wasps are members of a large wasp family most of which lay their eggs on the larvae, pupae, or eggs of other insects. Chalcidoid wasps are widely used as biological control agents to kill agricultural pest insects.

Last ramble of the year

 

Thanks to everyone who came out to ramble in 2023, with special thanks to the folks who led rambles, brought readings, shared show-and-tells, told funny stories, made hickory milk and yogurt, recommended books, made banners, asked hard questions, shared insights, and spotted cool stuff in the woods and gardens. It was a fun year, and we look forward to seeing everyone the first Thursday of March in 2024! Linda, Don, and Dale

SUMMARY OF OBSERVED SPECIES:
Common Eastern Bumble Bee     Bombus impatiens
American Beech     Fagus grandifolia
Sycamore     Platanus occidentalis
Sourwood     Oxydendron arboreum
Golden Ragwort     Packera aurea
Cucumber Magnolia/Cucumbertree     Magnolia acuminata
Sensitive Fern     Onoclea sensibilis
Ashe’s Magnolia     Magnolia ashei
River Oats     Chasmanthium latifolum
Splitbeard Bluestem     Andropogon ternarius
Broomsedge     Andropogon virginicus
Burnweed     Erechtites hieraciifolius
Dogfennel     Eupatorium capillifolium
Silver Plume Grass     Saccharum alopecuroides
Yellow Anise     Illicium parviflorum
White Oak     Quercus alba
Shagbark Hickory     Carya ovata
Green Stink Bug     Chinavia halaris
Winged Elm     Ulmus alata
Mockernut Hickory     Carya tomentosa
Northern Red Oak     Quercus rubra
Pignut Hickory     Carya glabra
Shortleaf Pine     Pinus echinata
Black Cherry     Prunus serotina
Lenten Rose     Helleborus orientalis
Leafhopper (nymph)     Edwardsiana sp.
Tulip Tree aphid     Illinoia liriodendri
Chalcitoid Wasp (larva)     Elophus sp.