Atlanta Nature Examiner Articles – Page 3

Admiring the Dandelion (Sunday at the Archives #7)

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Feb 092014

There is perhaps no more commonly recognized reminder of spring in a Georgia backyard than the appearance of the first dandelion bloom. For some, the first common dandelion (Taraxacum officinale) is a bright yellow promise of warm days to come and wildflowers soon to bloom. For others, it marks the beginning of another round of the battle between human and weed, waged on lawns across the country.

In its commonness, it is a plant easily ignored by adults. Children know better. They pluck bouquets of dandelions to give to parents and friends, not minding temporary skin discoloration from the sticky, milky sap in the flowers’ hollow stems. Even more enthusiastically, they pluck up the seed heads, blowing them apart and helping to disperse the seeds to a neighbor’s picture-perfect weed-free yard. This writer recalls doing these things, and especially watching the seed heads parachuting away on a spring breeze, to parts unknown.

In its commonness, it is a reminder of how little we know about, and appreciate, mundane nature — the myriad living things all around us that we take for granted as the years go by. The dandelion is worth a second look. There is more going on than meets the eye at a single glance. Take, for example, the leaves of a dandelion. They form a basal rosette, a swirl of leaves close to the ground. Each leaf has a central vein with a groove down the center, and when it rains, this groove channels the rainfall directly to the center of the plant. Besides appreciating the leaves for their structure, one can also appreciate their edibility. They make a tasty addition to salads, while being higher in Vitamin A than carrots, and also containing large amounts of Vitamin C, potassium, iron, and calcium.

The dandelion also possesses an impressive taproot, reaching into the ground a foot or more. In some plants, the taproot may constitute as much as half of the plant by mass. Roasted, the root provides a coffee-substitute with a number of purported health benefits. The root also offers an excellent upper-arm workout for weeders.

Finally, there is the dandelion bloom itself, with its complex life-cycle. The flower head contains up to 200 tiny overlapping flowers. Their pollen attracts hungry ladybugs, serving to reduce the number of aphids that would otherwise feed on garden plants. The flowerheads open at about nine in the morning, and close again in the afternoon, lasting only about a day. Then they seal tight for a couple of days, undergoing a botanical metamorphosis, like a caterpillar in a chrysalis. During this time, the stalk elongates, lifting the flower higher into the air. Finally the head opens again, revealing a “fairy clock”, a globe of barbed seeds with downy parachutes. In time, those seeds are carried away in the wind, or rising convection currents, or the gentle breath of a child.

This article was originally published on March 28, 2010.

Getting Close to Nature Through a Gap in the Fence (Sunday at the Archives #6)

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Feb 022014

A posted gap in the fence along a trail at Newman Wetlands offers wetland access to visitors.

Last weekend, this author took a visit to Newman Wetlands Center, following a familiar half-mile trail of gravel and boardwalk along and through areas of ponds and woods. Fences or railings along most of its length keep visitors to the straight and narrow, preventing them from stepping off trail — and potentially, into the muck. Gravel and boardwalk surfaces are level, and capable of sustaining heavy foot traffic. The wetlands themselves are not. A single deep boot-print in the mud could remain for months.

It was quite a surprise to discover, along the trail, that a section of wooden fence had been removed. According to a laminated paper sign attached to one of the remaining fence posts in that section, the purpose of this break in the fence was to enable visitors to use “new trail areas”. Perhaps the plan is to add gravel and perhaps a wetland overlook, with more fence and railings. Or maybe the gap is there to enable visitors to feel mud underfoot and thorny briars rubbing against their bare legs.

Beyond the gap in the fence, a zone of flattened leaves marked an impromptu path a few dozen feet to the edge of a stream within the wetland. A bit of bushwacking led to a great spot for photographing some aquatic turtles (painteds and sliders) sunning themselves on a log. In his enthusiasm, the writer startled many of them while trying to approach, and they plopped into the water and swam away.

The “adventure” was one of the high points of the author’s trip, and marked the only point on the trail where there were “hazards” such as thorny underbrush and patches of deep mud. There is something unsettling, though, about that gap in the fence. It is not the gap itself that is troubling, but the fear of what its impact might be. The same space that provides children (accompanied by adults) and adults alike with a way to get closer to nature can also become heavily compacted and eroded with so many passing feet. And what of the turtles on the nearby log? Will they eventually move on, after too many times of being scared off their chosen logs? No doubt the wetlands would be much better protected if we all kept to clearly marked paths of gravel and wood.

And yet, this line of thought is even more troubling to the author, as an environmental educator. As Richard Louv has documented so powerfully in his Last Child in the Woods, children today have fewer opportunities to get out into nature than their parents did. They spend much less time splashing in the water, jumping in the mud, catching frogs and salamanders, and using leaves and branches to construct imaginary realms. Increasingly, children are growing up in suburban developments whose doctrines and convenants expressly forbid tree forts and wild spaces in residents’ yards. Where can children go to bond with nature? “Where do the children play?” as a famous songwriter once asked.

There are so few places left in Georgia, and throughout much of the eastern U.S., for children to connect with the natural world. So naturally, those few places open to them are in danger of abuse from overuse, because they are all there is. We need more gaps in the fence, not fewer. We need a lot more places without fences, or “keep out” signs, or wood-chip paths where nature is to be observed at a respectful distance, like paintings behind ropes in a museum.

This article was originally published on March 31, 2010.

On Keeping Frogs (Sunday at the Archives #5)

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Jan 262014

Author with Couch’s spadefoot toad

My name is Clifford Blizard, and I keep frogs. There. I’ve said it. I have terrariums set up all around my home office, full of different species of frogs. A new, large terrarium awaits setup in the living room; once it is ready to house its intended occupants, I will move it into the office as well, after rearranging several bookshelves in order to have necessary space. I used to think that my ideal office would be lined with wall-to-wall books; lately, I have decided that wall-to-wall frogs would be even better yet.

My wife and I love animals. We have many housecats and several small dogs, plus turtles, salamanders, and a bearded dragon. I enjoy all of our other-than-human companions. But I have a particular fondness for frogs. Maybe it is their confident, sometimes even smiling facial expressions, or possibly their various vibrant colors (particularly the poison dart frogs), or perhaps their placid temperaments. I enjoy the sound of frogs calling, too, though just our White’s tree frogs have has deigned to do so thus far, and only at certain stimuli – most notably, the opening theme to Doctor Who. For whatever reason or reasons, I have become quite enamored of frogs. In this article, I would like to share a bit of that passion with my readers, offering some guidance (and encouragement) to others who might consider keeping frogs in their homes.

The first thing to know about frogs is that they are highly varied in appearance, behavior, locomotion, and food and habitat needs. Some frogs are strictly aquatic, while others spend most of their lives buried underground, only emerging after a heavy rain. Some of the larger frog species are solitary and spend most of their lives motionless, waiting for hapless prey items (such as crickets or even mice) to wander by. Others are social, living in groups of half a dozen or more and ranging freely along a forest floor or clambering among the trees. For this reason, it is very important to choose a particular frog species and research its needs thoroughly before buying one or more of them for your home. In this article, I will offer a brief overview of some of the frogs that I have adopted. I am a relative beginner to frog care myself (I have had frogs in my home for less than a year), so the ones I will recommend are all “beginner” species – ones that do not pose major challenges to maintain. After the overview, I will close with recommendations on how to obtain healthy frogs for the home in an ecologically responsible way.

White’s tree frog (also known as Dumpy tree frog)

White’s tree frogs (Litoria caerulia, also known as “Dumpy” tree frogs) are an ideal “first frog” for the home. Native to Australia and Indonesia, these solid, placid, mild-mannered frogs average four inches in length, with females occasionally growing to five. Although they are tree frogs (as evident from the broad pads on their forefeet), they tend to be fairly inactive when not hunting. Active (well, active by White’s tree frog standards, anyway) at night, they spend their days curled up in a hollow log or perched on a tree branch. As you can see from the photograph above, they don’t seem to mind being handled, and they are fairly hardy. Adopting one is a serious commitment, though; White’s tree frogs have been known to live for up to 21 years in captivity. Because they are fairly large frogs, they need a lot of room. Two or three frogs require at least a twenty-gallon glass terrarium. The base of the enclosure should be lined with coconut coir fiber or a similar substrate, and the terrarium should include a number of plants (live or artificial) and branches or sections of bamboo for climbing and perching. A water dish several inches in diameter and a few inches deep is needed. Like most all of my frogs, the White’s tree frogs feed on live crickets.

Amazon milk frog

While White’s tree frogs are fairly common in pet stores, Amazon milk frogs (Trachycephalus resinifictrix) are just now becoming popular with hobbyists. It is easy to see why. Native to the lowland tropics of South America, these highly attractive black, white, and gray frogs are charming, with facial expressions that seem almost puppy-like. Like White’s tree frogs, they grow to four inches in size; they can live in captivity for ten years or more, feeding contentedly on crickets. Their name comes from a white sticky secretion that they excrete when stressed. Based upon my experience caring for them (and holding them) without this happening, they seem to stress much less easily than I do. Milk frogs enjoy opportunities to swim, so a large water bowl should be included in their enclosures. They also appreciate highly humid environments, so misting them once or twice a day with a water bottle is also a good idea.

Red-eyed tree frog

One more charming tree frog that the dedicated beginner might consider is the red-eyed tree frog (Agalychnis callidryas). This arboreal frog is native to Costa Rica and is decidedly nocturnal in temperament. Red-eyes will spend their days snoozing away, curled up on a leaf or clinging to the glass of terrarium. At nightfall, they languidly open their eyes, yawn a few times, and slowly stretch out their limbs, Somehow, although they tend to move with kabuki-like slowness, they still manage to catch plenty of crickets. Red-eyed tree frogs have lanky bodies, making them a bit more fragile than the solid (flabby, even) White’s tree frogs. Like the milk frogs, they require high humidity conditions. Some care sheets discourage beginners from buying these frogs, because they tend to be more expensive than other frogs and should be handled less often because of their more delicate bodies. I have found, however, that they require no more care than the milk frogs do. To fully appreciate them, I recommend getting a red flashlight or bulb, so that you can view their nighttime antics as they roam their enclosure and hunt for prey. Because they spend so little time on the ground, red-eyes do better in an upright glass terrarium than a horizontal one. That way, they can have plenty of space for climbing on branches, lengths of bamboo, and plant leaves.

Poison dart frog (Dendrobates tinctorius)

Poison dart frog (Dendrobates tincturious “Yellowback”)

Another option for the beginning frog aficionado is one of the various kinds of poison dart frogs. Unlike tree frogs, poison dart frogs are relatively poor climbers, spending much of their time on or near the ground in their native habitats of the South American tropics. They are much smaller than the previous frogs I have discussed, rarely reaching two inches in length and many topping out at an inch or even less. Most species are highly colored, such as the Dendrobates tincturious “Yellowback”. Their colors (which range from vibrant yellows and oranges to metallic shades of turquoise and blue) warn would-be predators in the wild that their skin contains a potent toxin. Indeed, several species of poison dart frogs were actually used by South American Indians as a source of poison for blow-darts for hunting (hence their collective name). Fortunately, the frogs gradually lose their toxicity in captivity; however, it is still essential to handle them as little as possible, and only while wearing latex gloves. Another challenge to raising poison dart frogs is feeding them. Because they are so small, they favor wingless fruit flies over crickets. While crickets can be ordered live online with ease, the best way to have fruit flies on hand is to buy a fruit fly culturing kit and raise your own. So those seeking to care for poison dart frogs should plan to care for their prey as well. However, the rewards of adding poison dart frogs to the home are many. These frogs are like tiny hopping jewels, with rich colors unlike practically any other animals on Earth. They are enthusiastic feeders, snatching up vast numbers of fruit flies with their tongues. They are also quite intelligent, recognizing when their caretaker is approaching to feed them, and moving quickly into position near the front of the terrarium. There are also dozens of choices on the market, with natural color morphs (varieties) of many different species currently available. Keeping poison dart frogs can be an expensive hobby, though; individual froglets range from $35 to $75 or more each. And who can stop at just one?

Assuming that this article has convinced you to consider adding one or more frogs to your home, how does one go about doing so? One thing that makes frog keeping both exciting and a bit difficult is that frogs are much less commonly kept as pets than many other “herps” (reptiles and amphibians), such as geckos and snakes. Only a few frogs can be found in most pet shops, and I have yet to encounter any of the ones I talked about in this article in a “big box” pet store. Occasionally, a frog will appear for sale on Craigslist; in my experience, buying a frog from a former keeper can be a risky proposition, though. One advantage with this approach is that the frog or frogs will often come with a prepared terrarium, making initial setup much easier and less costly. However, many frog owners do not do their homework on the needs of the particular frog that they are caring for, and the result is an animal that may already be stressed or ill by an inferior environment. Therefore, the best route by far for the beginning frog keeper is to purchase frogs (usually sold as juvenile froglets, one or two months beyond the tadpole stage) from a reputable dealer, either one at a reptile show such as Repticon, or else one available online. For about $40 in shipping, a group of froglets can be sent overnight mail and will arrive ready to occupy a new terrarium and start feeding right away.

One very important consideration when purchasing frogs is to determine whether the animals for sale are wild-caught or captive-bred. I strongly urge you to avoid wild-caught frogs. These frogs were taken out of their native environment, which (given all the other pressures frogs face, from habitat loss to global warming) could threaten popular species with extinction. Wild-caught frogs often have parasites that those born and raised in captivity do not. One superb source of 100% captive-bred frogs is Josh’s Frogs. I have ordered three times from this company, and cannot recommend them enough. Josh’s Frogs is dedicated to protecting wild frogs by supplying buyers with healthy captive-bred ones instead.

If you are interested in adding frogs to your home, I encourage you to start with reading about possible frog species of interest, and what care they require. Josh’s Frogs has an extensive collection of “how to” guides, available here. An excellent introduction to keeping frogs and toads is provided by Frogs and Toads (Complete Herp Care), available at Amazon and other online booksellers and neighborhood bookstores.

This article was originally published on July 8, 2013. Photographs copyright Valerie Hayes.

Lichens 101 (Sunday at the Archives #4)

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Jan 192014

Foliose and fruticose lichens growing on a tree branch, Chattahoochee Hills, Georgia.

Lichens are true oddities of the natural world. They do not fit squarely into any botanical category, or, for that matter, kingdom of living things. They are composed of fungi and plants that are either collaborating in a symbiotic relationship or represent the successful enslavement of a member of one kingdom by a member of another. Are they “algae with space suits”, wrapped in the hyphae (threads) of fungi, and therefore capable of living in such inhospitable environments as bare rock faces? Or are the “fungi that have taken up farming”, using algae and cyanobacteria (“photobionts”) to produce their food so that they no longer need to work as decomposers? Either way, the result is an organism whose thallus (body) looks neither like an alga nor a fungus.

There is an impressive body of vocabulary words peculiar to lichens. One set of terms classifies lichens by the form that the lichen takes. Lichens that form crusts on rocks are crustose; ones that appear leafy are foliose; and those that have three-dimensional, shrubby forms are called fruticose. Another set of terms classifies lichens by where they are found: corticolous (on tree bark); saxicolous (on rock); terricolous (on bare earth); and even lichenicolous (on other lichens).

Then there are the terms for the fruiting bodies, all of which are best appreciated with a hand lens. These are important to be able to distingish (a task that is both an art and a science), because they play a significant role in lichen identification. Apothecia are shaped like cups or disks, and release fungal spores. Perithecia are also spore-bearing structures, but ones that are embedded within the lichen’s body, opening with pores. Isidia are fingerlike projections from a lichen which break off, enabling the lichen to reproduce vegetatively. Soralia are another means by which lichen can spread vegetatively. They are dusty patches on the surface of a lichen’s body that release fine particules of algae and fungal threads mixed together (called soralia). This list is not exhaustive. And there are even some lichens that have not been observed bearing fruiting bodies of any kind; biologists still do not know how they reproduce.

The oddest thing about lichens, though, might be that they can be found living almost anywhere, yet so few people stop to notice them. As long as you live where the air is relatively pollution-free (downtown Atlanta has a “lichen-free zone”), you will find them on rocks, tree branches, and disturbed soil. The best way to enter their world is on hands and knees, with a magnifying lens. Bring a child along, too. She will notice them before you do, and will explore their shapes and patterns with a sense of wonder that we adults would do well to emulate.

This article was originally published on April 5, 2010.

In Praise of Dung Beetles (Sunday at the Archives #3)

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Jan 122014

Dung Beetle Dung Beetle 2

One year ago, scientists announced their discovery of the first animal ever observed using the light of the Milky Way galaxy as an aid to navigation. This same organism also uses the Sun and Moon to guide it on its journey. The animal in question is not a mammal or a bird, but a lowly dung beetle, an insect which (as its name suggests) feeds on excrement, and spends much of its life preparing balls of excrement to feed its young after they have hatched. While scientists do not believe that their eyes can detect individual stars, the beetles can perceive the gradient of light that our home galaxy traces across the night sky. As it rolls its ball of dung away from the source, the dung beetle will stop and climb to the top of the ball, in order to determine which way to go. This insures that the dung beetle will continue to move away from the original excrement source, rather than risk running into other dung beetles all clamoring for their share of the prize.

This is an article in praise of dung beetles. Often overlooked, maligned, and even ridiculed, these beetles have, for millions of years, quietly roamed the Earth (and burrowed into it), feeding on animal waste and using it to rear their young. In doing so, they help to clean up the environment and reduce the risk of disease. Not only is dung beetle behavior fascinating (many males will use horns on their head to spar with each other over females, for instance), but many dung beetles are quite beautiful, as well.

One of the most common, and intriguing, of the New World dung beetles is the rainbow scarab beetle, Phanaeus vindex, shown in the accompanying photos. About the size of a dime, this beetle is common across much of the country, from Arizona to Florida and north to Michigan and Vermont. Few people here in the US raise them for a hobby (which is true of beetles in general), although this author is thinking about doing so. Obviously, there are obstacles, but not enough to prevent the serious beetle enthusiast from having a go at it. As the foremost expert on beetle husbandry, Orin McMonigle, remarks in his magnum opus, The Ultimate Guide to Breeding Beetles, “The idea of handling dung does not appeal to everyone.” But “when a person moves past the dung aversion, these beetles prove very interesting.” In fact, they can be “curious, active, and comical captives.”

Dung beetles are perhaps the most historic of all insects. Revered more than four thousand years ago by the ancient Egyptians as a symbol of eternal life, scarabs (as dung beetles are also called) are commonly depicted in their paintings, statues, and jewelry. Dung beetles have a four-part life cycle, passing from egg to larva to pupa to adult. During the pupa stage, the beetles appear mummy-like; emerging from the pupa, the adults rise up out of the ground to begin the search for dung. It is likely that dung beetle pupae inspired the Egyptians to mummify their dead, while the adult beetles’ emergence into daylight evokes the mythological emergence of the dead into the afterlife.

Phanaeus vindex has, too, carries traces of ancient history. The genus Phanaeus, meaning “bringing light”, was named after the sun god of the ancient Greeks. The species name, vindex, is Latin, and means “protector”, perhaps because the rainbow scarab performs the necessary function of cleaning up dung, or maybe because of the male beetle’s prominent curved horn. Males come in two types – a characteristic called allometry. Some have long horns, and others have much shorter ones. When the beetle larvae have access to plenty of nutrients, they develop long horns; when nutrients are scarcer, they develop shorter ones. The longer-horned ones wind up battling each other for mates. The shorter-horned ones don’t always lose out, though. They tend to develop faster and emerge earlier from the ground, so they sometimes get to the females first. If that fails, they rely on stealth – trying to sneak past two males with locked horns to reach the waiting female.

The life of a Phanaeus vindex centers on the quest for excrement. The beetles are equipped with highly sensitive antennae that enable them to locate the freshest, most nutrient-rich dung possible. Some will even perch on a plant branch, antennae at the alert, waiting to detect the scent of newly-deposited dung wafting in the breeze. After locating a promising source, rainbow scarabs will begin constructing tunnels in which to deposit their find, and where the females will subsequently lay their eggs. (After the eggs hatch, the larvae will remain underground, feeding on the dung, until they pupate, turn into adults, and emerge to start the excrement search again.) In the wild, male and female dung beetles have been observed working together to construct nesting tunnels. Strangely enough, once placed together in captivity, a male and female pair of beetles will ignore each other, and the female will do all of the nest-building work.

Yet another unusual quality of Phanaeus vindex is that the beetles are vibrotaxic. This means that that they can detect, and respond to, vibrations in their environment. A rhythmic tapping on the side of a beetle enclosure will cause its occupants to move in unison with the beat. Stop tapping, and the beetles stop moving, like children playing “Red Light / Green Light.” Scientists theorize that this behavior helps the beetles avoid predators, such as lizards, mice, and birds.

Dung beetles have fascinating behaviors and sport eye-catching metallic colors. Ultimately, however, dung beetles are worthy of merit simply because all living things are. All organisms on Earth participate in a complex web of ecological relationships of which we, too, are a part. As Arthur Evans and Charles Bellamy explain at the close of their book, An Inordinate Fondness for Beetles, “…beetles play a significant part of a seasonal exchange between earth and sky, a pulse in the cycle of life. Each beetle is but part of a population and embodies the sum total of its evolutionary history and potential. Each population interacts with the others, including our own, and with the soil and atmosphere in a multiplicity of interrelationships that melt seamlessly into one another. We can take solace in beetlephilia.”

This article was originally published on February 18, 2013. Both photographs are copyright Valerie Hayes.

Nature and Childhood: Worlds beyond Names (Sunday at the Archives #2)

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Jan 052014

Tiger swallowtail butterfly. Photographed June 2011 at Newman Wetlands Center, Hampton, GA.

According to the book of Genesis in the Holy Bible, one of Adam’s first actions after being created was to gather together all living things and give them names. Clearly, the human predilection for classifying and naming plants and animals goes back thousands of years. It is most evident today in birders’ life lists: collections of scientific names of all the different birds one has seen over a lifetime. My own bookshelves overflow with field guides, nearly a hundred in all, covering birds, trees, salamanders, moths, mushrooms, and many other kinds of living things. In medieval alchemy, names had power to them, as shown by the fact that to spell refers both to stating the letters in a word and exerting magical influence in the world. Nowadays, to know the name (common or scientific) of a plant or animal is enough for a naturalist to find dozens of images and species accounts scattered across the Web. It is possible to take a digital photograph of a butterfly in the morning and spend the rest of the day indoors and online, reading about the butterfly, its life cycle, host plants, behaviors, etc.

But naming is only one access point into learning about the natural world. And particularly for children, perhaps names are not the best place to start after all. The naturalist Barry Lopez warns, in his book of essays, Crossing Open Ground (pp. 150-151), “The quickest door to open in the woods for a child is the one that leads to the smallest room, by knowing the name each thing is called. The door that leads to a cathedral is marked by a hesitancy to speak at all, rather to encourage by example a sharpness of the senses.” Once we learn a name for something, there is a sense of completion, a suggestion that it is all that is necessary. Yet there is so much more out there to discover. When we take the time to study the more-than-human world closely, we begin to notice how trees and insects have individuality and personality of their own. A label just captures a static form, while living things are always changing. Caterpillars become butterflies, and a holly bush outside my window comes into bloom and suddenly swarms with bees and other flying insects craving nectar.

Thinking back to my own childhood (with many hours spent running barefoot across neighbors fields or tromping through a woodlot behind my house), I recall how few plants and animals I could identify. I knew what poison ivy looked like, and my brother taught me about jewelweed because it could be used to treat poison ivy. There was a shrub that grew in several places in the yard that I was confident was witch hazel; a few years ago, I learned that it was actually spicebush. There were dandelions, bane of my father, resident Lawnkeeper. And then there was Queen Anne’s lace, or wild carrot. My brother taught me that one, too. It’s roots tasted quite similar to carrot, but their texture was much closer to that of many strands of dental floss twisted together. In the front yard, there were black walnut trees that periodically covered the lawn with large green nuts, and in the far front, by the road, a stately sycamore that I learned in school was one of the oldest deciduous trees in the evolution of life on Earth. Animals I knew only by categories: ants, spiders, squirrels. My knowledge of classification was ad hoc and full of holes, having as much to do with uses plants could be put to as anything else.

I am in good company. Even the famous biologist E.O. Wilson recognized that this kind of nature experience may be more important in fostering a love of nature and sense of wonder about the environment around us. In his autobiography, Naturalist, he wrote (pp. 12-13) that “Hands-on experience at the critical time, not systematic knowledge, is what counts in the making of a naturalist. Better to be an untutored savage for a while, not to know the names or anatomical detail. Better to spend long stretches of time just searching and dreaming.” Wilson went on to quote Rachel Carson’s essay, The Sense of Wonder, in which she commented that “If facts are the seeds that later produce knowledge and wisdom, then the emotions and the impressions of the senses are the fertile soil in which the seeds must grow. The years of childhood are the time to prepare the soil.”

How, then, to encourage children to connect with nature, if not by way of field guides? One approach would be simply to encourage children to go on backyard safaris, to see what they can discover and study it closely. All that is needed are long pants and repellant against ticks and chiggers, knowledge of how to avoid fire ants, poison ivy, and other hazards of going adventuring, a magnifying lens, perhaps a jar with holes in the lid, maybe even a digital camera, and plenty of time. I suspect the child will return with tales of sights and wonders you had not imagined before.

Another activity is to choose a few trees and shrubs, observe them closely with a child, and encourage him or her to give them names. Periodically over the seasons, the child can be encouraged to revisit Bendy Tree and Prickly Shrub. How are they changing day to day, and season to season? Are there new visitors to the tree that weren’t there before? Are the leaves just unfurling, or are they perhaps riddled with holes from someone’s latest meal? Eventually, as the child gets to know the plants better, and is on familiar terms with them, he or she may inquire after their scientific names (or at least their common ones). Then it will be time to break out a field guide. The name will add one more layer of knowledge to what is already there, rather than being sufficient by itself. There is so much about nature hidden beneath the names, like salamanders beneath cobbles in a stream, just waiting to be explored.

This article was originally published on April 30, 2012.

Lost Horizons: Honoring Georgia’s Long-Vanished Topsoil (Sunday at the Archives #1)

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Dec 292013

I would like to announce a new weekly blog feature: posts from my years writing for The Examiner, in my role as the Atlanta Nature Examiner. Now that The Examiner has made viewing its posts a bit like walking through a minefield (with not only pop-ups, but pop-unders, pop-overs, and blaring videos that begin unexpectedly), I am transferring my writings here, one at a time, every Sunday during 2014 (and perhaps beyond). I hope that you enjoy them. For those that are courageous enough to try to view them in their original location (along with all the others not yet transferred), they can be found here.

This article was originally published on April 20, 2010.

Georgia red clay covers the roots of a loblolly pine in Chattahoochee Hills, Georgia.

Once upon a time, the Piedmont of Georgia was blanketed in a rich, black topsoil, covering the rolling landscape to a depth of between four inches and a foot, and in places, even more. Rich in organic matter, this “A horizon” (as the upper layer of a soil profile is called) nourished a forest of predominantly oak, hickory, and pine.

Beneath the topsoil was a nearly infertile “B Horizon” of what is now called Georgia red clay. Leached of nutrients including calcium, magnesium, and potassium, the layer was stained red from iron oxide (rust). Because of this leached, clay-rich layer, the soil would have been classified as an ultisol, a soil type common in long-stable, humid temperate forests. The result of thousands of years of intense weathering, ultisols can be found throughout the Southeast.

But then the settlers came and cleared the land. Plantation owners and sharecroppers planted row crops, especially cotton. The result was dramatic soil erosion. Enormous gullies formed in abandoned fields, carrying the topsoil away into rivers like the Chattahoochee and the Oconee, and eventually into the Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico. The A horizon was lost across nearly every acre of the Georgia Piedmont.

Now all that remains is the Georgia red clay. Referred to as a “cultural icon” by a failed General Assembly bill in 2006 that would have designated it as the official soil of Georgia, it is a soil without a top layer, stripped of most of its nutrients. Nowadays, farmers apply hefty amendments of fertilizer before the soil will yield much. A local organic farm here in Chattahoochee Hills, where this author resides, trucked in large piles of compost in order to make the soil fertile enough to plant. Left alone, somehow the red clay is sufficient to grow a forest composed principally of sweet gum and loblolly pine.

The topsoil, meanwhile, has been lost, perhaps forever. Maybe, given a couple thousand years of careful stewardship of the land, it can be restored to the parts of the Piedmont not covered over with asphalt or buildings. Meanwhile, it seems fitting to offer at least a few humble words in its memory.

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