Atlanta Nature Examiner Articles – Page 2

Capture the Essence of Earth Day: Help a Child Connect with Nature (Sunday at the Archives #17)

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Apr 202014

Take some children on a nature outing this Earth Day! You know that environmentalism has become trendy when “green” starts being used as a verb. Green is the color that the pigment chlorophyll imparts to plant leaves, enabling them to make their own food through an almost magical synergy of air, water, and sunlight. As such, it evokes the presence of living things, of nature all around us. It is not a verb that refers to switching one kind of light bulb for another one, or wrapping the hot water heater.

This is not to say that those actions are not beneficial, or important. Conserving energy by turning down the thermostat or using compact fluorescent light bulbs will not only save money, it will also reduce the burning of fossil fuels that in turn produce greenhouse gases, smog, and even acid rain. These are important actions in our capacity as environmental stewards, a role we acknowledge and celebrate every year on Earth Day. But just as “green” has its origins in nature, so too does caring for the Earth begin with being in nature.

Fairs, contests, and appearances by Captain Planet are common ways to commemorate Earth Day. These events and activities raise human awareness about environmental challenges and how each of us might address them by recycling more and driving less. But to connect with the heart of what Earth Day is about — the quest to build a long-term, sustainable relationship between human beings and the natural world — the best way to celebrate it is also the simplest. Provide a child that you know with the opportunity to spend some unstructured time in nature.

Children are the future caretakers of the natural world. And now, more than ever before, children are not getting the opportunities they need to bond with nature — opportunities that some researchers suspect may be crucial for healthy child development. They are growing up in sterile suburban developments where doctrines and covenants forbid tree forts and sometimes even look askance at a few branches strewn about the yard. And they are living highly programmed lives, punctuated by sport practices and away games, music and ballet lessons. There is so little time and so little opportunity to do what comes naturally to every child — to romp in the woods.

So take your young son or daughter or nephew or niece and lead them on a nature outing. The children you know will probably will go eagerly, though they may try to bring along a computerized gadget of some sort, depending upon their age and access to those things. (Resist all such requests.) For your own part, don’t bring along with you any agendas or lesson plans. Maybe show the child a place you visited often when you were a child, or just go looking for an oak tree to climb or a stream to follow. Let the child be Explorer Number One (as this author once referred to himself on outings with his dad, Explorer Number Two). Have adventures together. Splash in a stream, turn over rocks, and then return home late for dinner, muddy and scratched.

It will be the most exhilarating, joyful, and beneficial Earth Day you can ever have — at least, until next year.

This article was originally published on April 21, 2010.

Eating a Bull Thistle: The Pleasures and Pains of Wild Edibles (Sunday at the Archives #16)

Atlanta Nature Examiner Articles, Backyard Nature 2 Responses »

Apr 132014

Field guides to edible wild plants leave the reader imagining that the supermarket might be largely unnecessary. Could it be possible, in fact, to meet one’s dietary needs through foraging in the backyard and in nearby wild areas? There are, in fact, many plants with edible, and even tasty, parts: fruits, nuts and seeds, stalks and leaves, and even roots and tubers. But there are a lot of obstacles to moving to a wild foods diet.

One obstacle that should be of concern right away is the matter of safe and legal access to such plants. Most parks and nature centers frown on anything more than an occasional snack on wild blackberries, particularly if an entire plant must be uprooted in the process. While roadsides can offer many tempting plants, one should avoid eating anything growing within a few dozen feet of a highway, as the plants may be contaminated by vehicle emissions or other substances carried in runoff.

Another obstacle is correct plant identification. This one also cannot be overstated, since some poisonous plants look very similar to edible ones, and the similarities can be even greater (along with the hazards) for those considering foraging for mushrooms as well. For this reason, at least one (and preferably several) reliable field guides to edible plants are strongly recommended. The author will review several options in a later article.

Another obstacle is seasonality. Most fruits have to be ripe in order to be eaten. Many greens, on the other hand, are best consumed early in the year, as they become more bitter once the plant has begun flowering. Finally, nuts and seeds tend to be available only in the autumn. Some of the best options for the novice forager are plants such as the common cattail (Typha latifolia) that have multiple edible plant parts that can be consumed over the course of a growing season.

The fourth, and perhaps ultimately most daunting, obstacle is food preparation. Greens from a garden usually require washing, chopping, and perhaps a light steaming. Wild greens, on the other hand, can take a lot more work, and usually for a much smaller yield. One of the author’s favorites to tell would-be foragers about is the stinging nettle (Urtica dioica), a fairly common plant in parts of the United States and Europe, though found in only two counties here in Georgia. The stinging nettle gets its name from the formic acid in hairs that cover the leaves. Touching those hairs causes a stinging sensation that can last for hours or even longer. Anyone crazy enough to try to eat one of the leaves would risk having their throat seize up, leading to death. But, if the formic acid is neutralized by cooking the leaves briefly, they can be eaten with impunity, and even delight.

An obvious place to begin foraging efforts is the backyard, providing it has not been treated recently with pesticides or herbicides (whose considerable harm to local flora and fauna as well as nearby streams and rivers could be the topic of many an essay). The author has already harvested a couple of wild foods from his year, but just conventional ones: muscadines (wild grapes) and blackberries. But he is a novice at foraging for local greens and roots.

A prominent bull thistle (Cirsium vulgare), a common roadside weed from Europe, seemed like a good place for this author to begin. It was accessible, easily identifiable, and its consumption (should the venture prove a success) would not be an ecological tragedy (though it should be noted that thistle flowers do make excellent nectar sources for butterflies, while goldfinches eat the seeds). Root vegetables should be harvested between late summer and early spring, so the roots were out. Since the thistles were already flowering, it was not the ideal time for eating the leaves either, but the author decided to persevere anyway. He also sampled a stalk of a flower that had not yet come into bloom, for the sake of variety.

That said, preparation was not a simple task. The leaf had many sharp thorns, all of which had to be peeled away. The result, after about four minutes of work, was a slender midrib perhaps three inches in length. It tasted fairly good, with a slightly salty edge and a crisp crunchiness, and with no bitterness at all. About fifty of them would make a substantial salad, provided one has the three hours or so necessary for the task. Peeling the flower stalk was much faster and easier, taking under a minute. It was slightly more substantial and a bit longer (perhaps four inches), with a crisp, lettuce-like flavor. Again, forty or fifty of them would suffice for a side dish to a meal; however, the two thistle plants in the immediate backyard had one young flower stalk apiece, which suggests that another 38 plants would have to be located.

Why, then, bother with foraging for wild edible greens at all? Partly there is the temptation, as a naturalist, to experience plants with all the senses, rather than merely viewing them and occasionally smelling a flower in bloom. There is also the fact that wild plants tend to have a much greater content of vitamins and minerals than their domesticated counterparts, and could be an advantageous addition to the diet. They are also organic, free of pesticides and herbicides. Then there is the fact that the wild plants are free (if one neglects the processing time, that is), which can be a further temptation in our present economic situation. But mostly, from this author’s point of view, it is tempting to search for new wild edibles because of the stories that can be told about the quest. After all, how many people can claim to have eaten a thistle?

This article was originally published on May 2nd, 2010.

The author prepares to dine on a backyard bull thistle in Chattahoochee Hills, Georgia.

Tall Tales of a Tall Vine: Wisteria Myths Debunked (Sunday at the Archives #15)

Atlanta Nature Examiner Articles, Backyard Nature, Natural History 6 Responses »

Apr 062014

Wisteria Myths

There is no question that the Southeastern United States has been plagued by invasive wisteria. A walk down a country road in Georgia this time of year will likely lead to encounters with curtains of blue-violet and white blossoms, suspended from vines in the treetops overhead. But is the invader Japanse wisteria (Wisteria floribunda) or Chinese wisteria (Wisteria sinense)? At the root of this question lies an explanation for why invasive plants succeed in taking over large areas in the wild, choking out other vegetation and reducing biodiversity to nearly nil. And the frightening answer is this: neither, and both.

Scientists roaming the Southeast recently made twenty-five collections of invasive wisteria for genetic analysis. In their report, available here, twenty-four out of twenty-five of their collections turned out to be hybrids, blends of both Japanese and Chinese species. As hybrids, the plants are able to be more successful than either species alone would be, because they have the traits of both parent species. With greater genetic variability, they can tolerate a wider range of ecological conditions, such as degree of shading, soil type, etc. Hybrids also tend to be more hardy, and more resistant to insect pests and diseases. These wisteria hybrids are, effectively, “super plants” — more able to spread and more difficult to erradicate.

What, then, to make of a second myth about wisteria, concerning how to tell the Japanese and Chinese varieties apart? According to several online sources, including an article on controlling wisteria with herbicides located here, the two wisterias actually twine in different directions. The Chinese wisteria supposedly twines counterclockwise up a tree trunk, while the Japanese wisteria wends its way up a trunk clockwise. Furthermore, several sources add, the reason for the difference is that vines in the Northern Hemisphere all bend counterclockwise (the same direction water supposedly empties out of a bathtub), while vines in the Southern Hemisphere bend in the opposite direction. The Japanese species behaves the way it does, according to this explanation, because it evolved in the Southern Hemisphere, before plate tectonic forces brought Japan to its present position in the Northern Hemisphere.

Another scientific study recently debunked this myth, by showing that counterclockwise vine growth is much more common than was previously thought. In a multi-year survey of vines all around the world (and on both sides of the Equator), abstracted here, ninety-two percent of the vines were found to twine counter-clockwise, and only eight percent grew in the opposite direction. What is more, vines in the Southern Hemisphere were no more likely to twine clockwise than vines in the Northern Hemisphere. Alas, too, the geological explanation behind the twining behavior of Japanese Wisteria, while fascinating, is wrong. Most flowering plants evolved after the dinosaurs went extinct 65 million years ago. By that time, Japan was north of the Equator, as can be seen here.

Questions on vine twining certainly remain, though. Why do most vines twine counterclockwise? Geographical location has been ruled out. What is left? One possibility is that plant vine behavior has something to do with the internal structure of plant cells — specifically, with how microtubules, hollow cylinders in each plant cell, are oriented. But this hypothesis has not yet been tested. It is amazing, really, that something so commonplace as the question of why vines twine about a tree in the directions that they do has remained so mysterious for so long.

This article was originally published on April 14, 2010. A new photograph from Piney Woods Church Road accompanies the text.

The Great Blue Heron as Dinosaur / The Great Blue Heron as Poetry (Sunday at the Archives #14)

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Mar 302014

I saw a marvelous image posted on Facebook the other day — a Venn diagram composed of two overlapping circles, one labeled “Science” and the other one “Art”. The intersection region of the two was labeled “Wonder”. Today’s offering from the Examiner archives is a pair of articles about the great blue heron, one from a scientific viewpoint and the other from an artistic one. Both pieces were originally published on June 15, 2010. The left-hand photograph was taken at Sweetwater Creek State Park, Georgia. The right-hand one was taken in White House Beach, a mobile home community on Indian River Bay in Delaware, where my dad was living at the time. He loved watching sunrises and birds from his deck looking out over the open water, I have always share his delight in exploring nature, a trait he encouraged in me from my earliest memories. Gordon F. Blizard, Jr. passed away in December of 2011; this selection from the archives is dedicated to him.

1-Sweetwater Creek 078

1-Delaware 053

THE GREAT BLUE HERON AS DINOSAUR

From as far back as this writer can recall into his childhood, he has always been entranced by great blue herons. This fascination is due partly, no doubt, to the fact that the great blue heron (Ardea herodias) is an immense bird, standing nearly four feet tall, and with a wingspan of about six feet. As such, it would dwarf all of the songbirds he might see at the backyard feeder though the kitchen window of his Pennsylvania home. But down the street from his home there were ponds and a creek, and from time to time he would glimpse a great blue heron there. It was nearly always in flight over the treetops or along the stream, body long and streamlined, legs tucked behind, wings flapping loudly. Once or twice, it even uttered a call sounding like “FRAWNK”, in a harsh and gutteral voice that seemed to emerge from evolutionary prehistory. For reasons he did not have the words to capture then, but will venture to do so now, the great blue heron has always seemed to belong to the time of the dinosaurs.

One explanation for this image of great blue heron as dinosaur is that, in fact, birds are descended from dinosaurs. The split appears to have taken place about 160 million years ago, when small, two-legged dinosaurs like Velociraptor began to develop feathers. Oddly enough, paleontologists have identified feathered, ground-dwelling dinosaurs, indicating that feathers likely evolved from modified scales before they could be used for flight, perhaps as a means of regulating body temperature or displaying during courtship. The oldest bird fossil is that of Archaeopterix, dating back about 155 million years, an odd mix of avian and reptilian attributes. This early bird may have gotten the worm, but it did so using a mouth containing teeth. It also possessed three separately-clawed fingers and a bony tail. Like later birds, however, Archaeopterix had wings, fused clavicles, and feathers.

So in a sense, perhaps our recognition of great blue herons as being like dinosaurs is an instinctive recognition of their actual kinship. Surely, then, great blue herons must be among the most primitive birds alive today, and therefore closest in relation to dinosaurs? Amazingly enough, scientists doing protein sequencing analysis have concluded that the closest living relative of the dinosaurs, and therefore our closest point of contact with the Mesozoic, is actually a chicken! “Kentucky Fried Dinosaur” jokes aside, then, why does the chicken fail to evoke more than vague thoughts of farm life and possibly soup, while the majestic heron transports this author to the geologic past?

The answer lies, quite possibly, in the great blue heron’s resemblance to a pterosaur. Pterosaurs were an order of reptiles separate from the dinosaurs, which lived throughout the mid to late Mesozoic era (from 220 to 65 million years ago). The first reptiles to take to the air, pterosaurs had hollow bones like birds, and both soared and actively flew on immense membranous wings. Images of a pterodactyl in flight do resemble flying great blue herons. Since pterosaurs evolved about 80 million years before birds split off from the dinosaurs, however, herons and pterosaurs are only distantly related. So the mystery behind the similarity of appearance has to do with the process of convergent evolution, in which two unrelated organisms both evolve similar body forms and structures in order to meet similar environmental requirements. Both have large wingspans and streamlined bodies because those attributes are beneficial for flight.

On the ground, though, any resemblance between pterosaurs and great blue herons quickly vanishes. Tracks of pterosaurs reveal that they were actually quadrupeds, walking on both their hind feet and their wings in a somewhat ungainly manner, possibly as depicted here. While standing in a stream or along the edge of a pond or bay, however, a great blue heron evokes quite different feelings and images for this writer, ones that tend less toward prehistory and more toward poetry. They will be the topic of another article on herons, soon to be written.

THE GREAT BLUE HERON AS POETRY

The great blue heron stands,

Waiting at the water’s edge;

Avian haiku.

There is something about a great blue heron, poised motionless in the shallow waters of a pond, river, or bay, that is profoundly poetic. It gazes outward, waiting for the slightest ripple to betray the presence of a fish. It stands silent, almost blending into the landscape, its long body connecting water and sky. In particular, it evokes haiku, the lean and elemental seventeen syllables of Japanese verse that contains at once both a single instant and the entire universe. Not surprisingly, there is even an online haiku publication called The Heron’s Nest.

The great blue heron’s pose while waiting for a meal has much to teach Westerners. It embodies patience and being in the present moment, waiting for an opportunity to arise rather than trying to make it happen. Just as it awaits the silvery flash of a fish in the shallows, so the poet sits, waiting for words to form themselves into a poem to surface in her consciousness.

The great blue heron also embodies silence and solitude, standing alone against the elements, aloof in the shallows. It may stand in one place for hours, as the sun makes its way across the sky and sets in the west. Approach too closely and it will abruptly take off with a flapping of wings, searching for a place to fish without disruption, further down the coast of the bay or up the river.

The great blue heron is not always a bird of stillness, though. Indeed, despite the haiku publication title, the heron’s nest can be quite a raucus place. Herons build their nests of sticks lined with reeds, mosses, and grasses high in the trees in wet, forested areas. They nest in dense colonies called rookeries, which can be both smelly (from the abundant bird droppings) and loud (from many squawking birds). As herons return to a rookery year after year, eventually their tree stand is killed off, forcing the birds outward, leaving a bulls-eye pattern with a central core of dead trees and an outer ring of nest trees that are slowly dying. In these nest areas, great blue herons take on a nearly opposite personality to that of the quiet fishers that they appear to be at other times in the year. At the rookeries, herons are loud, argumentative, and destructive. But perhaps the aspects of great blue heron behavior encountered in a rookery might be viewed as a necessity. Maybe their nesting behavior is required in order to balance out their other, more poetic, solitary and silent selves.

Signs of Spring at Newman Wetlands Center (Sunday at the Archives #13)

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Mar 232014

Last Saturday (the first day of Spring), a search for signs of spring took the author to Newman Wetlands Center in Hampton, Georgia. Operated by Clayton Water Authority, the wetlands is part of the county’s innovative wastewater treatment process. It features a lovely half-mile trail, mostly boardwalk, crossing expanses of open water with cattails, as well as through several forested wetland areas.

In North with the Spring, Edwin Way Teale observes that “Spring begins in a swamp…. All along the line of its advance the most sudden changes, the swiftest growth, the most exuberant outpourings of life occur in swamps.” And indeed, a Saturday afternoon saunter through Newman Wetlands afforded abundant evidence of spring’s arrival.

In a small patch of weeds and grass by the trailhead could be seen the familiar ruderal, hairy bittercress (Cardamine hirsuta), introduced in an earlier Examiner article. It was accompanied by a few early purple blooms of henbit (Lamium amplexicaule), a member of the mint family, and some blooms of a forget-me-not (Myostotis sp.), light blue with yellow centers.

Along the wetland’s edges, maples were in bloom. The red maple (Acer rubrum), a denizen of woodland swamps, was alight with clusters of tiny red blossoms on short stalks. At the edge of a hillside lined with stately beech trees stood a sapling of silver maple (Acer saccharinum), covered in greenish-yellow blossoms that clung tightly to the delicate branches.

The wetland was full of life. Overhead was the insistant call of an eastern wood-pewee, interpersed with the cheery sounds of black-capped chickadees. Minnows swam in the shallows, and a muskrat was briefly glimpsed swimming across a channel. Insects were few, though, so early in the year. A lone black-and-yellow mud dauber paused on a wooden bench just long enough to be photographed.

Turtles were everywhere. Yellow-bellied sliders and painted turtles sunned themselves lazily on logs, while a feisty stinkpot musk turtle trudged across the pond bottom beneath a couple inches of water, busily feeding. The result was the opportunity to take several photos of the “how many turtles do you see here?” variety.

A pair of Canada geese wandered the wetland, one feeding while the other stood guard. They offered a narrative thread for the author’s journey, reappearing at different locations along the trail loop at almost regular intervals. The first animals to appear at the beginning of the walk, they could also be seen at trail’s end, paddling away through the cattails.

This article was originally published on March 21, 2010.

The Frog Patrol (Sunday at the Archives #12)

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Mar 162014

Spring peeper calling to attract a mate. Spring peepers produce their calls using vocal chords just like people do. They also have throat sacs that they can inflate, which act as resonance chambers to amplify the sound of their calls. Photograph by Valerie Hayes.

It is half an hour after sunset in early spring in Georgia, and the grass is still wet from a downpour earlier in the day. My ears are filled with the shrill calls of spring peepers, hiding in the bushes near the invisible pond, calling out plaintively to attract mates. My wife has her clipboard at the ready, holding a red flashlight so that she can see the page in front of her. We are pulled off to the side of the road, just beyond the entrance to a local Baptist children’s home. A light breeze blows out of the west, and the stars shine brightly in the moonless sky. I listen for other voices among the spring peepers, mostly to confirm my wife’s own observations. Officially, she is the frog monitor, and, I tell friends, I drive the getaway car – plus I have the job of counting cars while my wife documents frog calls. The more cars passing over her five minutes of work, the more difficult it is to get an accurate tally of how many frogs are present, and what kinds. And sometimes, if the pond is close to the road, a passing car or truck will leave a pond full of raucous frogs silent for a time afterward. I stand on the pavement beside the car, debating whether to trudge into the tall, wet, tick-infested grass to where my wife stands. While I consider the pros and cons, a car pulls up beside me. A policeman looks me over, asking if I need any help. “No thank you,” I explain. “I’m fine. My wife and I are just listening for frogs, doing a research project for the Georgia Department of Natural Resources.” I figure no policeman will ever question that story, because it is too odd to make up. “Oh,” he replies. “OK. Goodnight, then.” His car speeds off into the darkness. It is just another night on the Frog Patrol. And this is only the first stop of ten for the evening. Nine to go.

Three nights each year – once in early spring, once again in late spring, and finally in early summer – my wife and I drive a regular beat of perhaps twenty-five miles, stopping at ponds, stream crossings, and roadside wetlands, listening for the calls of frogs. Our frog monitoring route starts just a few miles from home, in Palmetto, Georgia, and ends many miles south, somewhere in the rural hinterlands outside the crossroads community of Sargent. We have been working as volunteers for the Georgia Department of Natural Resources, participant in the North American Amphibian Monitoring Program, for six or seven years now. We do it because we are really worried about the future of frogs – in Georgia, across the United States, and around the world. Frog populations have been in decline around the world, for a lot of reasons, from habitat destruction to water pollution from herbicides and pesticides, and global warming to the chytrid fungus (a disease that has wiped out frogs in the tropical Americas and western US). In many cases, more than one problem, or stressor, is involved. Frogs might get stressed due to unseasonably warm or dry conditions, and that might make them more susceptible to water contamination like the herbicide atrazine. A quick look at the numbers: there are 5,645 known frog species around the world, of which 1,656 are considered vulnerable, endangered, or worse, and another 1,400 are so little-known that scientists aren’t sure of their endangerment status. Georgia is home to 30 different species of frogs and toads, making it the second most diverse state for frogs in the country, after Texas.

A few stops later, my wife and I stand on a highway bridge across a swamp. Here, the spring peepers seem to be absent, replaced by the occasional “jug-a-rum” call of a bullfrog, the loose banjo twang of a green frog, and sounds like metallic marbles being banged against each other, coming from the northern cricket frog. In the distance, dogs bark, and I think I hear a whippoorwill calling. Are those yips coming from a coyote pack? Meanwhile, just off the road along the water’s edge, I hear a snuffling and rustling. It is probably an armadillo – maybe even a mother with babies. Somewhere through the trees, a great horned owl calls – “Who cooks for you?” It is a loud and busy night for Georiga wildlife. Fortunately, this road gets few cars at this hour – mostly pickups that race by us, high beams compelling us to close our eyes. This is one of our wildest stops, and one of my favorites, too. I can’t see house lights anywhere. Now that the quarter moon has risen, I can just make out the silhouettes of trees, and the sparkle of moonlight off the water.

“Why bother with frogs?” one might ask. After all, they don’t have the charisma of bald eagles, grizzly bears, or wolves. Unless you visit a pond, or walk a woodland trail soon after a rain, you may not see frogs very often. They are mostly active at night, because that is when it is more difficult for them to be seen, by both their predators (like most snakes) and their prey (typically insects). Frogs also need to keep their skin moist, and evaporation is much lower at night than during the daytime. Given that we rarely even notice them, are they really that important? It turns out that keeping a healthy and diverse frog population may be extremely important for maintaining vibrant ecosystems. Frogs play vital roles in food webs, both as predators and as prey. They control many insect pests, like mosquitoes. They are celebrated in many cultures, in folk tales and television programs (Kermit the Frog, anyone?). They are sometimes beautiful and always fascinating. Scientists also have found them to be useful indicators of the health of an ecosystem as a whole. Asbioindicators, they tell us about the conditions of our environment. When their numbers decline, there is cause for concern that their habitat has been compromised – perhaps by development in the area, or chemicals in the water. Rachel Carson, the renowned author of Silent Spring, imagined a world without the calls of birds, a world in which toxic pesticides like DDT had wiped out songbird populations. I monitor frogs because I am concerned about another silent spring – a season without frog calls in it.

It is getting late – well past eleven now, and two stops still to go. If the earlier stop was my favorite one for the night, this one is easily my least favorite. Our car sits at the end of a well-lit driveway, in front of an elaborate wrought-iron gate, beside a call box to notify the residents (or possibly their servants) of one’s arrival. I suspect there are hidden cameras installed somewhere, watching us. Lights shine on the brick walls that flank that gate on either side and illuminate the name plate atop the closed gate. Somewhere down the driveway, beside the manicured lawn and in front of the mansion, a pond lies silent. Each year, I wonder anew what this particular stop is for. Yes, there is water there, but never any frogs. My wife and I both suspect that the reason is because of all the lawn chemicals applied to the grass leading up to the water’s edge. Or maybe the homeowners find frog calls annoying and have poisoned the water to kill them all. Stopping here, in the face of such opulence and disregard for wildlife, it is difficult not to feel discouraged. I keep myself occupied by watching for passing vehicles. I don’t even bother getting out of the car.

I live for the other nine stops, the ones where frogs are still present. Every year my wife and I return, and every year we are greeted by a frog chorus – in some cases during all three frog runs, in other cases just on one or two of them. The blend of voices changes year to year and outing to outing. Some frogs – like spring peepers – are active early in the spring, while other ones, such as green tree frogs, start calling later in the spring or even early in the summer. Last year was a severe drought in Georgia, so the calls were fewer and more muted. This year has been much wetter so far, and I have been hearing some northern cricket frogs calling even during some of my daytime walks. I sat sipping coffee in a local market the other day, and was certain I heard the harsh quick trill of a Cope’s gray tree frog coming from the branches of a tree across the street. Over the years of the Frog Patrol, their voices have grown more and more familiar, nowadays, I am more likely to be able to identify correctly a frog’s call than one made by a songbird.

Stop ten at last. Bleary-eyed, I take a last swig of unsweetened peach iced tea (room temperature by now) from my stainless steel water bottle, waiting for the requisite five minutes of frog monitoring to end. By this point in the night, each minute seems to last half an hour. It is after midnight, and the spring peepers’ shrill calls drone on and on, like an all-night frat party. I have come full circle – this early in the season, spring peepers are the only tenants of this roadside pond, though green tree frogs and Cope’s gray tree frogs will likely arrive by early summer. And we will be back to listen for them.

If you are interested in becoming a volunteer frog monitor, there are two national programs that you should consider checking out. The one covered in this article is the North American Amphibian Monitoring Program; you can learn about it at http://www.pwrc.usgs.gov/naamp/ Another one is Frogwatch USA, administered by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums; information about this program may be found at http://www.aza.org/frogwatch/ If you are concerned about the fate of the world’s frogs, visit www.savethefrogs.com to learn more about what you can do to help. If you would like to read more about frogs, a great book is Frogs: The Animal Answer Guide, by Mike Dorcas and Whit Gibbons, available here and at other online booksellers and neighborhood bookstores. And if you would like to listen to the calls of Georgia’s frogs and toads, click here to access MP3 audio files.

This article was originally published on May 25, 2013.

Surprised by the Gall of Nature (Sunday at the Archives #11)

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Mar 092014

cedar gall Sometimes nature really surprises us. We naturalists fill our shelves with field guides, and their minds with Latin names for local species of animals and plants. We venture into the woods looking for the first spring ephemeral wildflower in bloom, and listening for the first call of a red-wing blackbird at a nearby marsh. After a bout of rain, we take pleasure in the more unusual pastime of identification and, for the more daring, consumption of various fungi.

But sometimes we chance upon something so foreign, so peculiar, that it truly humbles us. All we can do is fall back on Shakespeare’s famous remark that “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” The cedar apple rust gall definitely fits into that category.

For all the field guides out there, precious few are devoted to plant galls. These strange constructions of living plant tissue, formed in response to invading parasites such as insects and fungi, somehow fall between the cracks. They are neither healthy plant specimens nor parasites themselves, but instead a product of the two, in which a parasitic organism somehow takes control of the plant’s growth and warps it to its own ends. Often, the gall serves as home for a developing insect, and protection from predators as well. In the case of the cedar apple rust gall, th gall is part of the bizarre fungal life cycle.

The cedar apple rust gall receives its name from the fact that the fungus responsible, Gymnosporangium juniperi-virginianae, lives alternately on cedars and apple trees. Fungal spores invade a eastern red cedar (Juniperus virginiana) and live within the host plant’s tissues for up to two years. During that time, they cause brown galls to develop on the tree. These galls grow to a couple of inches in diameter and then, after a series of spring rains, they burst open, releasing gelatinous orange tendrils. The tendrils, in turn, form and release spores to be carried up to three miles by the wind.

But these spores do not re-infect red cedar trees. Instead, they invade apple trees, where they produce yellow and orange lesions on leaves and fruit. Black pimple-like bodies form in these lesions and release a sticky substance that attracts insects. In a peculiar parallel to pollination, the insects carry fungal reproductive cells from one rust spot to another, fertilizing the fungus. The fungus then grows through the infected apple leaf, forming reproductive structures that release new spores that invade red cedars, continuing the cycle.
The cedar oak gall is a serious disease of apples. As such, I suspect it is quite familar to most orchardists. But to this naturalist, the sight of its bright orange tendrils was most unexpected — alien, even. It was a pleasant surprise, warding off any incipient complacency. There is still a lot out there left to discover. A 2007 field guide to galls of California and the Western US (available here), which appears to be the only gall guide in print for anywhere in this country, included thirty-five galls “new to science”. That figure represented more than ten percent of the galls covered in that book. Amazing.

This article was originally published on April 6, 2010.

Spring Comes to Georgia’s Roadsides (Sunday at the Archives #10)

Atlanta Nature Examiner Articles, Backyard Nature, Natural History No Responses »

Mar 022014

It is mid-March, and ruderals, Spring’s harbingers, can be seen blooming along the roadsides. Ruderals are plants that inhabit “disturbed ground” such as garden beds, lawns, and roadsides. They live a hardscrabble life on the margin, surviving despite passing feet, lawnmowers, and even herbicides. The most common ruderal (nearly always in bloom) is the dandelion. But there are many others, far less conspicuous.

Just beyond the road’s edge can be seen tiny four-petaled bluish-purple blooms with bright yellow centers. In places a few flower heads that barely rise above the grass while elsewhere, clusters turn the verge almost blue. They are bluets (Houstonia caerulea), natives that are common across most of the United States. They have a vibrant color and delicate form, but no scent or folk use, except for bluet root tea, supposedly used by the Cherokee to treat bedwetting.

Nearby are slender stalks of hoary bittercress (Cardamine hirsuta). A Eurasian winter annual, this hardy immigrant goes by many names, including lamb’s cress, land cress, shotweed, and snapweed. It keeps its leaves close to the ground, sending up wiry stems topped by minute white flowers. How the “bitter” got into its name is not clear, unless it refers to gardeners’ attitudes about it. Although considered a “noxious weed” for taking over lawns and gardens, it is a tasty salad green, slightly peppery in flavor.

A short distance away lies a roadbank that was doused with herbicides late last summer. Already it is covered with new growth: slender green vines with small oval leaves, topped by white flowers. Each flower appears at first glance to have ten petals, but actually has only five, each cleft deeply in two. This Eurasian ruderal may be the world‘s most abundant weed. Sometimes called common chickweed (Stellaria media), it has many other names like starweed, starwort, winterweed, stichwort, and chickwhirtles. It blooms nearly year-round, pollinated by bees and moths. Chickens and small mammals eat the young leaves, while sparrows and finches devour the seeds. Like hairy bittercress, it can be added to salads, and can also be used to treat obesity.

Spring is coming, and the woodland paths will soon be edged with native wildflowers such as round-lobed hepatica (Hepatica americana) and bloodroot (Sanguinaria canadensis). But for now, while the forest rests in the quiet of late winter, the change of seasons can be found instead along Georgia’s roadsides, during this Ruderal Spring.

This article was originally published on March 18, 2010.

The Ecological Wonders of Hutcheson Ferry Park, Chattahoochee Hills, GA (Sunday at the Archives #9)

Atlanta Nature Examiner Articles, Day Hikes, Sense of Place No Responses »

Feb 232014

A view of the granite outcrop landscape, Chattahoochee Hills, Georgia..

As a resident of Chattahoochee Hills now for nearly five years, the author has grown to appreciate more and more all of the open space that has been preserved as parkland in our community. While he still takes long day trips in search of new trails to hike or wildflowers to photograph, he also enjoys the pleasure of being able to drive only a few minutes from home and set out onto the trail. One such place he has come to treasure is Hutcheson Ferry Park, a 103-acre park on Hutcheson Ferry Rd near the intersection with Hearn Rd. in Chattahoochee Hills. The park will officially open to the public in a ceremony on Saturday, June 18^th, 2011.

At a glance, the park seems unimpressive, more of a venue for a concert or fair than a stunning natural area. Much of the main entrance area of the park is mowed, with isolated trees scattered in the lawn. But go off the beaten path a bit — over a berm or beyond a fence, and wonders await.

The park includes a rock outcrop habitat with mosses, lichens, and aged eastern red cedars. It also has an extensive swathe of former pastureland that has an open, almost prairie-like feel to it. While Cochran Mill Park, a larger park with woods and streams a few miles away, has a few outcrop areas of its own, they do not quite achieve the species variety and beauty of the one at Hutcheson Ferry Park. And the hillside meadows of Hutcheson Ferry Park are not like any other spot this author has seen in other parks in the region.

The first treasure lies just over the hill, literally. From the open entrance area, set off across the grass (avoiding the fire ant nests) headed east, go up a short slope, and find a path through the tangled growth to a space where the land opens out, and the ground is nearly bare rock, with a layer of lichens and mosses. If you are particularly fortunate, you will arrive after a rain, when the rock moss that is usually dry and purplish-black has turned emerald green, and the resurrection fern growing on the side of an old red cedar is brilliant green and thriving rather than appearing brown and dead.

For most of the year, tough, the rock outcrop environment is a harsh place. During the summer, daytime air temperatures just above the granite surface can climb to 120 degrees or more, and the only water is a memory of a thunderstorm many weeks previous. Without soil, the thirsty lichens and mosses take what water they can after a rain, make food and grow for a short time, then go dormant again, waiting for another storm.

Life has specialized to survive under such conditions. Take lichens, for example. They are an odd partnership of a fungus and an alga. Algae usually live in water, but the fungi provide them with “space suits” so that they can dry out and still survive. Fungi, on the other hand, usually have to live on rotting vegetation in order to make their food. But as part of the lichen partnership, they have “taken up farming” by recruiting algae to make food for them. Fungi are one of the few life forms able to occupy bare granite. Another plant well-adapted to almost no soil or water is the prickly pear cactus, which can be found scattered about the outcrop.

Although the plants may be tough in the face of climatic extremes, the granite rock outcrops here in Georgia are actually very fragile places. Too many feet tramping across the outcrop can kill lichens and mosses, leaving scars that won’t fully heal for decades. Historically, granite outcrops were treated like waste places; often rubbish would be dumped or even burned on them. Fortunately, the outcrop at Hutcheson Ferry has been left alone for the most part, although one area was quarried many years ago. After the park opens, will we all be able to visit and appreciate this marvelous spot without harming it?

To get to the meadows at the park, your path leads back down the hillside and south along the mowed roadway. Soon, you arrive at a newly constructed fence, evidently planned to keep visitors far away from Palmetto Reservoir until reservoir access arrangements can be made with the City of Palmetto. Until then, the open landscapes will be off limits. Or they will be, that is, once a gate is constructed and a sign put up. Meanwhile….

Beyond the fence, the path leads briefly upward onto a hilltop, and then down the other side, eventually arriving at a stand of pines and sweet gums and, beyond that, the reservoir. The lake water is lovely, but I find greater appreciation in the open space between. On sunny days, you are liable to find dragonflies, damselflies, and grasshoppers on your walk. The various grasses mostly grow in only a thin mantle of soil. In one spot, the rock beneath is exposed at the surface over an area of several feet. This may be why the forest has been taking so long to reclaim areas that are no longer mowed, or mowed only very infrequently. So far, persimmons have been almost the only tree species to occupy former pasture ground. There is also a stand of mature red oaks beside the path, about halfway between the fence and the reservoir. Beneath the oaks is a ground cover of periwinkle, a non-native plant with dark-green, oval leaves and purple flowers that would have been planted there by someone. Although this writer has not been able to find evidence of a building foundation, he is convinced that the oak grove was once the site of someone’s house. It would have been a lovely place to call home.

This article was originally published on June 3, 2011. Since that time, the path beyond the fence has no longer been maintained.

Celebrating Weeds (Sunday at the Archives #8)

Atlanta Nature Examiner Articles, Backyard Nature, Native Plants No Responses »

Feb 162014

This article is written in celebration of weeds. Growing right under our noses (and sometimes overtopping our heads), weeds flourish in plain sight without garnering much attention. Perhaps we have learned to identify a few of them, and maybe we have attempted to uproot some from our garden beds, but often that is as far as our knowledge goes. Yet weeds are often among the most fascinating, and complex, plants that one could find anywhere. Many have a dozen or more common names, reflecting generations of identification and use. Quite a few have medicinal properties (or are believed to have them), and many can be eaten (though elaborate preparation is sometimes necessary). And, rather like superheroes from the pages of comic books, many weeds have evolved special powers that enable them to triumph over other plants, maintaining their status as the dominant vegetation on a patch of ground from one year to the next.

In the coming paragraphs, we will examine three weeds that the author encountered during a couple of late summer strolls in Georgia. They have quite a bit in common, actually. All of them have “weed” in their common name. All of them were written about back in the mid-1800s by the natural philosopher of Walden Pond, Henry David Thoreau. And each of them was used by the author at some point – one for a skin salve, and two for food (though neither one has become a mainstay of his diet). And they can all be found growing wild across much of the eastern half of the United States, perhaps even in your own backyard.

Jewelweed blooms at the edge of a wooded creek in Georgia.

The first one, jewelweed (Impatiens capensis), has translucent stems, serrated oval leaves, and yellow-orange trumpet-shaped flowers. An inhabitant of moist, shady places, it goes by a wide variety of common names which lend themselves to haiku composition: spotted touch-me-not / lady’s earrings, silverleaf / orange jewelweed. Most of the plant’s names relate to one of two properties (except lady’s earrings, which likely refers to the shape of its flowers). The first stems from how water behaves on its leaves; microscopic hairs on the leaf surface trap air there, causing water to form droplets on the leaf surface, like jewels (jewelweed), giving the leaf a silvery appearance (silverleaf). The name “jewelweed” may also originate from a curious property of the plant, called guttation. This is a process in which the leaves expel excess water during the night, causing the leaf edges to sparkle with regularly-spaced small beads of water, like a string of jewels in the morning sun. (You can view a photo of this phenomenon here.) The other property is the unusual behavior of its seed capsules. When ready to disperse their ripened seeds, the coiled capsules burst open in the wind or upon contact by an animal. As Henry David Thoreau described, in his posthumously published Faith in a Seed, “Touch-me-not seed vessels, as we all know, go off like pistols on the slightest touch, and so suddenly and energetically that they always startle you, though you are expecting it…. They even explode in my hat as I am bringing them home.”

What Thoreau did not mention about jewelweed is that it produces two kinds of seed pods, formed from different kinds of flowers. The orange-yellow flowers reproduce sexually, through pollination by bees, wasps, and ruby-throated hummingbirds. As a result, the seeds that form have high genetic diversity, and can thrive under a range of conditions. The pods of these flowers spring open explosively, transporting the seeds a fair distance from the plant, to new locations that may be different from the ones of the original one (less moist soil, more shade, etc.). There are also much smaller, green flowers that bud but never open. These are self-pollinated, and therefore are identical to the parent plant. They have smaller pods that burst open with much less vigor, releasing seeds nearby, in conditions that are usually similar to that of the parent plant. As a result of this “special power”, jewelweed is able to dominate a moist spot of ground even though it is only an annual (the plants die completely each year).

In the author’s childhood memory, a patch of jewelweed grew in a mucky area at the edge of the family property, and one of the author’s older brothers showed him how the stem could be uprooted and sliced open lengthwise with a pocketknife. The translucent gel inside could then be applied to the skin as a salve for poison ivy and insect bites; if used immediately after contact with poison ivy, it could even neutralize the oil in the leaves (urushiol), and thereby prevent a rash from developing. On walks in the woods behind the house, the author would often carry a bit of it along in case of touching poison ivy (which seemed to thrive everywhere on the trails). Jewelweed has served a variety of purposes: native peoples drank jewelweed to treat cramps; the young shoots could be boiled and drained a couple of times, then eaten as a semi-palatable green; and the plant juice could even be boiled and used as a dye for clothing.

Pokeweed berries ripen along the edge of a suburban trail near Atlanta, Georgia.

The second weed of the trio is pokeweed (Phytolacca Americana), also known as American nightshade, American spinach, bear’s grape, Indian greens, poke sallet weed, inkberry, pigeonberry, redweed, and skoke. (“Pokeweed” likely comes from the Algonquin “pokon”, meaning “bloody plant”, in reference to the color of the berry’s stain.) Fully mature, pokeweed looms over most other herbaceous plants, reaching heights of four to ten feet and stalk diameters of up to four inches. Its large spikes of white flowers in July give way to round purple berries by summer’s end. Because flowers can self-fertilize if insect pollinators are not available to do the job, nearly every flower bears fruit.

Even without the explosive seed capsules of jewelweed, pokeweed is still able to disperse itself considerable distance, thanks to the appetites of many animals. Once an important food source for the extinct passenger pigeon, pokeweed provides fruit for the mourning dove, bluebird, mockingbird, cedar waxwing, and many others, plus squirrels, mice, mice, raccoons, and opossums. It is often found in locations where a bird would perch, and can become quite abundant in disturbed areas such as roadsides and vacant lots. All parts of the adult plant are poisonous to humans – children have even died from eating the berries. The plant is such a stockpile of toxic chemicals that even getting the plant juice on one’s skin can cause a rash. Its toxins include oxalic acid, saponins, and an alkaloid (phytolaccin).

In addition to having lots of fruit-loving animals to aid in dispersing the seeds, pokeweed has another “special power” to help it take its place as a dominant plant: allelopathy, or chemical warfare. Pokeweed produces growth-inhibiting chemicals that prevent other plants from getting too close, enabling pokeweed to form large stands, as Thoreau observed in his posthumously published manuscript, Wild Fruits: “I find [poke] oftenest and most abundant on rather elevated and rocky ground, as sides of hills in sproutlands, where they grow in a community. In such places the large, bending, tree-like plants stand close together, and their drooping racemes almost crush one another, hanging around the bright purple…stems…. Their sour juice makes a better red or purple ink than I have bought.”

Nonetheless, as the names “American spinach” and “Indian greens” suggest, pokeweed can still be eaten. The edible parts are the young leaves, which can be eaten when less than six inches in color (before the veins turn red), and preferably only after boiling. The youngest green shoots can also be consumed raw; the author has done this, though he would have to say that they did not have much of a flavor to them.

Milkweed seeds ripen on a plant in the author's yard in Chattahoochee Hills, Georgia.

The last member of the weed trio is milkweed (Asclepias syriaca), which grows from three to five feet in height with thick oblong leaves that are shiny on top and downy underneath. It bears sweet-smelling, reddish-purple flowers, only two to four percent of which yield seeds. The seeds are attached to floss, cottony parachutes, and contained within a large seed pod. This floss is the origin of some of milkweed’s other names, including silkweed, wild cotton, and cottonweed. Native Americans used the floss for blankets and clothing, and New Englanders in the 19th century used it for mattress stuffing. Commercial production briefly boomed in Michigan during World War II, when patriotic citizens (particularly children) gathered the floss for use as lifejacket padding.

Milkweed gets its name from a milky latex that flows throughout the plant. The plant also contains toxic chemicals in the form of cardiac glycosides. Monarch butterfly caterpillars feed on the milkweed leaves, ingesting the glycosides and making them toxic, in turn, to would-be predators. Despite the fact that the monarch caterpillars specialize on milkweed, they still fall victim to the latex, which gums up their mandibles while they are chewing the leaves, and also pools near a cut in the leaf, trapping young larvae. About a third of all monarch caterpillars succumb to the latex, while many others (despite their growing toxicity) fall victim to predators. Only between three and eleven percent of monarch caterpillars survive to become butterflies and embark on their epic journey south to Mexico.

Like jewelweed and pokeweed, milkweed is edible – provided the toxins have been removed first. The flower buds can be gathered, boiled and drained three times, and eaten with no ill effects. Unlike the other two weeds, milkweed is buds are actually quite tasty (reminiscent of overcooked asparagus), though the triple-boiling requirement makes them rather labor- and energy-intensive to prepare on a regular basis.

In the late summer, the milkweed seed pods turn brown and crack open, releasing all of their seeds to the wind. Most do not travel far, though this did not keep Thoreau, in Faith in a Seed, from imagining great journeys: “I do not see but the seeds which are ripened in New England may plant themselves in Pennsylvania. At any rate, I am interested in the fate or success of every such venture which the autumn sends forth. And for this end these silken streamers have been perfecting themselves all summer, snugly packed in this light chest, a perfect adaptation to this end – a prophecy not only of the fall, but of future springs. Who can believe in prophecies…that the world would end this summer, while one milkweed with faith matured its seeds?”

But in case all of those wind-borne seeds are not sufficient, milkweed has a “special power” to enable it to spread rapidly, overtaking roadsides and even cultivated fields and gardens. In addition to reproducing by seed (which takes two to three years to form a new flowering plant), milkweed can also reproduce by means of lateral roots, generating clones of itself that can quickly overwhelm an area. (Ironically, these clones are the reason the flowers produce so few seeds; most of the pollen reaching the flower comes from genetically identical plants, and therefore does not fertilize the flower successfully.) Indeed, milkweed is on the march; once found predominantly in the northeastern and north central parts of the country, milkweed is now establishing itself in Georgia and the Gulf States.

Here, this author offers a closing confession: the milkweed on his property was all sown from seed dispersed not by the wind, but by monarch butterfly enthusiasts, handing out seed packets along with bumper stickers reading “Got milkweed?” The idea behind the seed-planting campaign is that the more milkweed plants are available to host monarch butterfly caterpillars, the better the monarch’s chances for survival over the long haul. When the first plants emerged in a patch of his garden, the author admits to having felt that sense of having done something good for the environment. Now that they are beginning to multiply throughout the garden and droop over the front walk, he is no longer as certain. Something similar happened with pokeweed a few years ago. Succumbing to advice to “just let it be” for the sake of the songbirds, he found within a couple of years that a single pokeweed had given way to dozens of plants, appearing everywhere birds could perch.

Ultimately, this writer mostly feels awe for weeds such as these. They have the capacity not only to grow in the most traumatized landscapes (such as roadside ditches), but to thrive there. Equipped with “special powers” to insure that they will continue to hold the beachhead they have claimed, they will survive while more timid and delicate plants are reduced to a few isolated conservation sanctuaries. They do not require faith to mature their seeds, despite Thoreau’s eloquent prose. They already have all the confidence they will ever need.

This article was originally published on September 12, 2012.

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