This week for Flora and Fauna Friday we have nature’s shag carpet, Haircap Mosses (Polytrichum spp.).
We have two fairly abundant species of Haircap Moss here on the Sea Islands, Common Haircap Moss (Polytrichum commune) and Juniper Haircap Moss (Polytrichum juniperinum). Common Haircap Moss is found nationwide and across South Carolina, but is most common in the piedmont and mountains. Juniper Haircap Moss is found throughout the United States, and is our most prolific Haircap in the Lowcountry. Yet, it is still a scarce member of our Sea Island ecology. It appears most often on the shaded margins of pine savannas, sand barrens, and dry sand ridge forests. It prefers to grow on exposed, weathered sands and is tolerant of fire and other habitat disturbance.
These two species look incredibly similar. One of the easier ways to tell them apart is through their leaves under droughty conditions. Common Haircap’s leaves have a distinct downward curve to them, which can exaggerate as they dry. Juniper Haircap, conveniently and conversely, has straight leaves that fold upward tightly against the stem as they dry. If you look really, really close at the leaf margins, Common Haircap is serrate all the way towards the tip. But you’ll likely need a hand lens to see this. Both species grow in mats on the soil’s surface, like a lush shag carpet. Each stem is usually one to three inches in height and ringed in narrow needle-like leaves, giving it the shape of a bottle brush.
In order to go any further, we’ll need to take a detour for a crash course on Moss biology. Mosses are plants, but very primitive plants. They lack the means to produce the polymer lignin. Lignin gives plant cell walls their rigidity. It’s what makes wood “woody”. Like steel reinforced concrete, lignin is the rigid cement and cellulose the flexible steel scaffold. It’s also critical to the proper structural formation of vasculature and roots in plants. Thus, lacking lignin, Mosses lack roots and the internal vasculature to transport water and nutrients around their body. Instead, they’re basically a sponge, passively wicking water from the soil’s surface and through their skin throughout the rest of their body. They must also sponge mineral nutrition from the environment, absorbing it not only from the soil but through windblown dust and ash they trap between their leaves, and from the acids and other trace nutrients dissolved in rainwater.
Now it gets weird and I have no choice but to start using the big science words. Mosses don’t reproduce with flowers nor with seeds. They pre-date both. Instead, they produce capsules and spores. But these are produced by a second plant, which grows on top of the first plant. (I told you it was getting weird.) The Haircap Moss we see, that we all know and love, is a gametophyte. It’s a haploid. It only has one set of chromosomes. It has half the genetic material of the organism, just like sperm and eggs in animals. In spore reproducing plants, including Mosses, Clubmoss, Horsetails, and Ferns, the gametophyte is the main life stage that anchors to the soil, photosynthesizes, and lives a long healthy life. The opposite is the case in flowering plants and gymnosperms (E.G. pines, cedars, cypresses).
The gametophyte of Haircap Moss, when mature, will produce a dense spiny disk at the tip of the stem. Haircap Moss is dioecious, meaning it has male and female plants. Male plants grow an Antheridium, female plants an Archegonium. When rainwater lands into the bowl-shaped male Antheridium, it splashes sperm away with it. If those droplets of water land on a nearby female Archegonium, it’ll be fertilized. From within this Archegonium cradle, a diploid sporophyte, with a full set of chromosomes, will grow directly out of the tip of the gametophyte’s stem. In Haircap Moss, this sporophyte derives all its water and nutrition by leeching from its parent gametophyte. When the sporophytes of Haircap Moss begin to emerge, they’re spear-shaped and protected by a fibrous sheath that whitens and frays away with age. The orange-brown sporophytes of Haircap Moss are shaped like a golf club when mature, with a skinny stalk holding aloft a rounded oblong lump of a capsule at a roughly right angle. This capsule will produce gamete spores and, once the sporophyte dies, the capsule dries and will pop open, scattering spores into the wind.
This week for Flora and Fauna Friday, it’s our sulfur throated spring songster, the Yellow-throated Warbler (Setophaga dominica).
On the threshold of spring, a monochrome spec smears itself across the horizon, melting upon a canvas of pale-gray moss. Then, like day’s break into the chilled sky of morning, a flash of yellow illuminates the gray. A golden glow shines from that spec, while a chorus of birdsong follows from it in kind. Our Yellow-throated Warblers are staking their spring claims.
The Yellow-throated Warbler’s summer range extends across much of South Carolina. They are most abundant on our coast and even live year-round here on the Sea Islands. They are abundant in maritime forests, the fringes of cypress swamps, and the wetland margins and valleys of pineywoods. But, pretty much anywhere on the coast with plentiful hardwood tree cover is suitable habitat for them.
Male and female Yellow-throated Warblers look much the same and are mostly monochrome birds: Black legs, black beak, black eye, black mask, gray back, white belly, and black wings broken by two heavy, white wing-bars. Their face is distinct with a strong white stripe above the eye, a white bag below the eye, and a white crescent behind the cheek that frames a black cheek patch, which blends above into a black eye-stripe and flows below like drops of black ink down its flank. This face serves as a frame for their namesake yellow throat, an explosion of rich sunflower-yellow glowing from chin to chest, sometimes radiating up to the lores in front of their eyes. From this iconic mug emerges a rather long and stout bill for a warbler, with an ever so subtle hook to the tip.
Yellow-throated Warblers are one of the earliest warblers to begin migrating north. They begin singing on Edisto Island near the end of February. Males sing a pleasant, rhythmic song of a dozen notes that fall in pitch while speeding up, before rising back with the last note or two. Pairs build their nest most often here in Spanish Moss, weaving the crook of a tangled beard into a hammock before lining it with straw and webs. I occasionally see them eviscerating the webs of spiders and tentworms for their silk, leaving the terrified web’s keeper thoroughly confused and homeless. Yellow-throated Warblers provision themselves and their young with a diet of insects and arthropods, patrolling tree branches throughout the year for tasty morsels.
This week for Flora and Fauna Friday it’s one of our widespread winter wildflowers, Crowpoison (Nothoscordum bivalve).
Crowpoison, also called False-Garlic, is a common wildflower found throughout the Southern United States, including all of South Carolina. It’s a member of the Onion subfamily, Allioideae, and a cousin of Onion and Garlic (genus Allium). Crowpoison is a hardy perennial found in a wide array of locales. It’s most abundant in fertile glades in river floodplains, in sandy barrens, and along road shoulders. Those three habitats share little in common! But the common thread they do share is sparse or short understory vegetation and full sun. Crowpoison has but a few narrow, grass-like leaves emerging from a small bulb, much like true garlic, but with a much smaller bulb. In order to eke out a living with that scant foliage, it needs lots of sunlight. So as long as it can soak up enough sun, it can grow in some of the worst soils and most disturbed sites nature has to offer.
Crowpoison blooms on the Sea Islands starting in late February but peaks statewide throughout March. Its flowers are about a half-inch wide with six petals, cotton-white with a faint green stripe down their middle, and a lemon-yellow center ringed with six short golden anthers. Very similar in shape to an individual Onion or Garlic flower. These flowers bloom most often three to six at a time, held aloft the soil on a narrow flower stalk no more than a foot high. These flowers are a great little nectar plant for early spring wildflowers. They are relied upon heavily by the Falcate Orangetip (Anthocharis midea); a scarce species of butterfly that flies whilst Crowpoison blooms and prefers similar habitats. The flowers, once pollinated, mature over spring to yield six hard, black, triangular seeds.
Let’s talk about names for this plant real quick. The scientific name “Nothoscordum bivalve” means “two-halved false-garlic” referencing its two papery bracts, which protect and sheath new flower buds, and that this plant looks a lot like wild garlic, but isn’t. If you’re ever stumped wondering if you’ve got a False-Garlic or a real Garlic, our False-Garlic lacks the trademark Onion smell. The “Crowpoison” common name is a bit of a mystery. No one knows if it is actually poisonous to crows or not. It’s not even really certain if it is toxic to humans or not. I’ve read some vague and apocryphal tales that the name originates from a Native American legend, where the plant was used to brew a poison to keep the crows from murdering the corn crop, but the current consensus is, no one knows!
Crowpoison, being a bulb plant, is a perennial that returns each year. It can also reproduce through “pups”, tiny bulblets that emerge from the base of the main bulb. Pups are a clone of the parent plant and will grow into their own bulb with time. These do two things: they form a small colony around the parent plant and they serve as an insurance policy. If the parent plant dies from herbivory, pests, uprooting, or just plain old age, then its offshoots will take its place. Crowpoison is not a prolific pup producer though. So, it’s most often found singly or in sparse clumps.
However, there is another False-Garlic species on the landscape, Slender False-Garlic (Nothoscordum gracile), which pumps out pups like crazy and rapidly forms dense colonies. This skill has elevated Slender False-Garlic into an invasive species in certain areas of the United States, particularly Southern California, the Mississippi and Mobile Delta on the Gulf Coast, and certain regions around Charleston. Slender False-Garlic is native to South America but was brought to the United States as an ornamental. You can tell it apart from our native Crowpoison from its much wider and longer bluish-green leaves, taller flower stalks, April bloom time, and propensity for forming colonies.
This week for Flora and Fauna Friday we’re keeping an eye out for a radiant pair of fruit-loving birds, the Orioles, genus Icterus.
Here in South Carolina, we have two species of Oriole, the Orchard Oriole (Icterus spurius) and the Baltimore Oriole (Icterus galbula). Orioles belong to the Blackbird family Icteridae, alongside Grackles, Meadowlarks, Cowbirds, Bobolinks, and, of course, Blackbirds. Orioles share many of this family’s more common features including a sharp bill and deep black feathers accented by a shade of red, orange, or yellow. The root of the family name Icteridae means “jaundiced” in reference to the prevalence of yellow and orange plumage in many Blackbird species. Both of our Oriole species can be found across much of the Eastern United States and throughout all of South Carolina. Yet their presences here in the Lowcountry alternate with the seasons. Orchard Orioles suffer alongside us during our sweltering summers and Baltimore Orioles linger here for our mild winters.
The Orchard Oriole is small for an Icterid, with an overall size similar to a Brown-headed Cowbird but erring smaller with a slim, streamlined build. Their bill is sharp with a slight decurve. The male’s plumage is jet-black contrasted by a rich cinnamon-brown on the back, breast, and belly. Females are chartreuse-yellow across the body with black-gray wings. Immature males look much the same as females but with a black beard. Orchard Orioles nest in South Carolina and can be found here from spring into fall. Their song is a complex warble of disjointed notes that, to the ear, seems to follow no rhyme nor reason, changing pitch and character every note. They prefer habitats with a mix of open land and hardwood trees. Field edges, neighborhoods, savanna margins, and their namesake orchards are common haunts for Orchard Orioles. Yet they aren’t particularly abundant on our landscape and this Oriole can be a difficult bird to pin down in the Lowcountry.
The Baltimore Oriole is a larger bird, growing to a size somewhere between Cowbird and Red-winged Blackbird. Their bill is longish, sharp, and with a narrow triangular shape. The male possesses a jet-black head and mantle extending down to black wings streaked with white. His belly and breast are dyed a rich saffron-yellow bordering on orange. Females have a similar plumage but are muted somewhat in color and with a golden-khaki head instead of black. Their song is a strikingly musical verse of whistled notes, distinct and flute-like, cutting through the other birds’ chatter to the forefront of the soundscape; the same way an unanticipated Jethro Tull flute solo on the local classic rock station breaks its way into your absentminded consciousness. Baltimore Orioles are only in South Carolina for the fall and winter, arriving with fall migration and departing in spring to nest up north. Their favorite habitats are river margins, open hardwood forests, forest edges, and suburbs.
Orioles subsist off of a diet of mainly insects, especially in the warming months. They’ll also sip nectar from large flowers, eat small berries, and pick at larger fruits. The Orchard Oriole, only being here for the warmer months, doesn’t eat a whole lot of fruit in the Southeast. The Baltimore Oriole on the other hand has quite the sweet tooth. They regularly winter around residences, suburbs, and urban forests whose scattered trees and brushy wooded margins mimic their natural habitats and provide an abundance of small fruits throughout winter. Here on the Sea Islands, there’s often an overladen citrus tree in every neighborhood for them to visit as well. They’ll even sneak sips from Hummingbird feeders! If you’d like to lay eyes on a Baltimore Oriole, they can be attracted to yards with cut fresh fruit skewered on branches and with fruit jelly feeders.
The South Carolina Department of Natural Resources would also like to see those Baltimore Orioles! Every February SCDNR conducts the Baltimore Oriole Winter Survey on the same weekend as the Great Backyard Bird Count (GBBC). For 2025 that weekend is February 14th through 17th. Most of the Baltimore Oriole population migrates to the tropics for winter but, over the last few decades, a group of Orioles started calling the Charleston area home. Ornithologists noticed this shift and started looking into it. In 2015, SCDNR started a public survey for Orioles in winter and the results were surprising. The Baltimore Oriole presence in the Lowcountry has been growing ever since. Currently, South Carolina boasts the largest population of overwintering Baltimore Orioles in the United States!
To help SCDNR with their survey, simply count the highest number of Baltimore Orioles you can see at one time, each day of the count, and report those numbers online, either through the SCDNR website or through eBird. (You can get more technical with data collection too if you want.) If you submit your Oriole observations through eBird, you’ll be able to report other bird species and simultaneously participate in the GBBC.
So go look at your window and count some birds!
Learn more about SCDNR’s Baltimore Oriole Winter Survey:
https://survey123.arcgis.com/share/67f948fa5f3e4243bdb72073346013f2
You can learn more about how to participate in the Great Backyard Bird Count at: https://www.birdcount.org/
-Tom A.
This week for Flora and Fauna Friday we have a relict plant of our wild past, Heartleaf Ginger, AKA Little-Brown-Jugs (Asarum arifolium).
Heartleaf Ginger is a common forest dweller in the Carolinas, increasing in abundance with altitude. Yet it still has a presence in every county of South Carolina. There are over eleven species of wild gingers found between South Carolina and North Carolina. But Heartleaf Ginger is the only species you’ll find here in the Lowcountry. Beneath the umbrella of a forgotten hardwood grove one can even find Heartleaf Ginger on Edisto Island, nestled between tree roots, draped over leaf litter, and smothered with heavy shade. Heartleaf Ginger needs deep shade on moist but well-drained soils to thrive and most often persists below undisturbed hardwood forests. Here on the Sea Islands, it’s quite scarce due to our flat topography, high water table, and our extensively intensive agricultural history. Meaning when you find a grove of Little-Brown-Jugs here, you know you’re standing in a special place. A relict of our original sea island ecology, trapped on an Island since the last ice age.
Heartleaf Ginger is a perennial plant with a leathery triangular leaf which varies in shape from heart to arrowhead. These leaves are about three-inches long, a dark jade-green, and often patterned with blotches of pastel-green in between the leaf veins. (If you find yourself botanizing in the Appalachians, these blotches between the veins help separate Heartleaf Ginger from its rarer mountain relatives, who have variegation along the veins.) Each leaf is held just above the ground on a short petiole, with the leaves emerging directly from the soil. Heartleaf Ginger can spread by its roots to create an evergreen groundcover in ideal conditions. Yet, it also has an interesting means of spreading by seed.
The flowers of Little-Brown-Jugs are, little brown jugs. It’s in the name. Well, they’re more like little mauve or burgundy jugs, but we’ll let it slide this time. Heartleaf Ginger is a member of the Pipewort family, Aristolochiaceae, which is a plant family with some strangely shaped tubular flowers. Heartleaf Ginger’s flowers are fairly tame for this clade, but still unusual among our Lowcountry flora. Each flower is an inch long urn with three lobes at the mouth. They’re colored dark-mauve to burgundy over a base of cream-white. These flowers crop up from the soil near the center of each leaf cluster, poking through the leaf litter or staying buried beneath it. There’s usually roughly one flower per leaf. These flowers are pollinated primarily by beetles, as well as ants, flies, and other minute insects. Their method for seed dispersal relies on insects as well, specifically ants. Little-Brown-Jugs seeds have a tiny nugget of fat attached to them that attracts certain species of native ants. The ants then carry the seeds back to their nest, where the seed germinates underground and a new Heartleaf Ginger plant springs forth.
Heartleaf Ginger is in the same genus as Wild Ginger (Asarum canadense). Both species were used by Native Americans and European settlers of Appalachia in folk remedies. Folks even used to flavor candies with Heartleaf Ginger. However, modern medicine has discovered that both species contain aristolochic acid, a trademark of the family Aristolochiaceae. This compound is carcinogenic and causes permanent kidney damage. Suffice it to say, this is an herb best appreciated by eye, and not by taste!
This week for Flora and Fauna Friday it’s our smallest salamander, the Coastal Plain Dwarf Salamander (Eurycea quadridigitata).
The Coastal Plain Dwarf Salamander is our smallest species of salamander here in the Lowcountry and one of our most abundant. They reside from the southern tip of North Carolina, throughout the Lowcountry of South Carolina, southern Georgia, and the panhandle of Florida. The Coastal Plain Dwarf Salamander has a sister species, the Chamberlain’s Dwarf Salamander (Eurycea chamberlaini), which was recently split off and is found in the midlands and foothills of South Carolina. The Dwarf Salamanders belong to the genus Eurycea, the Brook Salamanders, and are joined here in the Lowcountry by their congenerics, the Southern Two-lined Salamander (Eurycea cirrigera) and Three-lined Salamander (Eurycea guttolineata).
These four Brook Salamander species all share a common body plan, being small and skinny with short legs and a delicate head. The Dwarf Salamanders are best told apart by their small size, often only reaching two inches in length, and by only have four toes on their hind feet. Between the two Dwarf Salamander species, their diverging ranges are often sufficient for identification. But, in the hand, the Chamberlain’s Dwarf Salamander is often a straw-yellow in color. The Coastal Plain Dwarf Salamander by comparison is chestnut-brown along its back and flanked with sides of slate-gray peppered with flecks of quartz-white. Although a bit smaller, this Salamander’s shape and coloration are uncannily similar to our Ground Skink (Scincella lateralis), an abundant lizard in our Lowcountry forests.
The Coastal Plain Dwarf Salamander is found in a variety of shallow wetland habitats, from flatwoods and floodplains, to Carolina Bays, bluff seeps, coastal swale swamps, and even the margins of vegetated ponds and ditches. Here they spend their days worming through waterlogged leaf litter and squirming through Sphagnum capped seeps, hunting for miniscule invertebrates to devour. Like many of our salamanders and other amphibians, they lay eggs in the water, which hatch into, and spend the first several months of their life as, aquatic larvae before metamorphosing into more terrestrial adults. Dwarf Salamanders typically reproduce and lay eggs in winter, when water tables are highest in their wetland abodes.
I personally don’t associate salamanders with the Sea Islands. With our saltwater moats and three-hundred year history of intensive agriculture, which was followed swiftly by intensive coastal development on many islands, you wouldn’t expect for there to be much left in the way of salamander habitat. Especially for species sensitive to water pollution, temperature, and other environmental conditions, like the Brook Salamanders. And that is in fact the case. Yet, although few and far between, they’re still here! More terrestrial species, like the Marbled Salamander (Ambystoma opacum) and South Carolina Slimy Salamander (Plethodon variolatus), as well as fully aquatic species, like the Two-toed Amphiuma (Amphiuma means) and Sirens (Siren spp.), are more abundant and widespread. But in the untouchable backwaters and forgotten bogs, our delicate Dwarf Salamander still persists on Edisto Island.
This week for Flora and Fauna Friday we have the wick of the savanna, the tinder of the timberlands, the powder keg of the pineywoods, Threeawn (Aristida spp.), aka Wiregrass.
Here in South Carolina we have a little over a dozen species of Threeawn. In the Lowcountry, that number dips to about seven decently common species. Four of the dozen species I want to highlight: Southeastern Slimspike Threeawn (Aristida longespica), Arrowfeather Threeawn (Aristida purpurascens), Southern Wiregrass (Aristida beyrichiana), and Carolina Wiregrass (Aristida stricta).
Southeastern Slimspike Threeawn is the most common species of Threeawn you’ll find on Edisto Island. It’s an annual species that grows most often in sunny sand barrens and other dry clearings. It has a compact and skinny growth form, sparse flower stalks that reach upright to about knee height, relatively small seeds, and narrow leaf blades that curl when they dry. Arrowfeather Threeawn is the most widespread species statewide but not as abundant on the Sea Islands. It grows on deep sands and dry ridges in pineywoods, barrens, and savannas. It’s a perennial bunch grass with an upright form, dense flower stalks reaching up to about waste height, fairly large seeds, a burgundy-purple wash to its upper foliage, and blade-like leaves that curl as they dry. Southern Wiregrass and Carolina Wiregrass are a package deal. The two species were recently split and look quite similar. Carolina Wiregrass is found in the northern Sandhills of South Carolina down our eastern border to and through the coastal plain of North Carolina, but not in the Lowcountry. Southern Wiregrass, however, is found throughout the southern point of South Carolina, from the Francis Marion National Forest to Aiken and down through the savannas to the Savannah River. The two Wiregrasses reside in frequently burned Longleaf Pine savannas and grow on deep sands. They’re a perennial bunch grass that spreads clonally, grows as a dome of thin wiry leaves, and bears narrow but dense flower spikes which may reach up to hip height.
Threeawns are remarkable both physiologically and ecologically for their seeds and foliage. The seeds of Threeawns have three conspicuous awns. That’s where they get the common name. Awns are a long pointed projection of the leaf-like bracts that surround a grass’s flowers and often sheath the seeds. (Recall a head of wheat or barley. Those pointy bits are the awns.) The three awns of Threeawns are notable for twisting around each other, like a basket in a wrought fence, before then bending at a right angle. It’s a shape that’s hard to describe. Imagine an umbrella without the fabric and only three arms, but with a spiral twist in the middle. This twisted tripod of a seed has some innovative properties that enhance its chances of finding a good home. Firstly, that umbrella like shape helps the seed catch the wind and float further than it would just falling straight down. Although, they’re too heavy to float indefinitely. Second, the awns catch on the fur of passing mammals or pants legs of hikers, letting the seeds hitchhike to a new home. Saving the best for last, the awns are a compliant machine that operates as a drill fueled by humidity. These three awns are grown with an asymmetrical composition; one side of each wiry awn is denser than the other. When these awns dry, their difference in internal density causes one side to shrink more than the other, twisting and bending the base of the awns like a clock spring. When rain or heavy dew wets the seed, the awns absorb the water and stretch back out into their original straight shape. As sun dries the seeds, they twist back up. This acts on the same principal as an analog hygrometer, used to measure humidity. You can even grab a seed off a plant on a dry day, breathe heavily onto it, and watch the thing spin in your hand! This hydrated helical spin has an important function, drilling the seed into the soil. When the seed falls to the ground, the heavier seed side lands pointed down. If it’s lucky, it will land on bare soil, but it might be blocked by debris or duff. That’s when the drilling begins. Even in the driest of climes at the driest of times in the Lowcountry, our air is still sopping wet with water. That water condenses and drenches the ground as dew every night. Then, the scorching suns evaporates it all back into the air. This process repeats every day, spinning and shifting our little Threeawn seed. When the awns straighten, their tips anchor into the substrate as they twirl and push the seed forward, deeper towards the soil. When they dry and curl back up, the awns smoothly slide against the litter like a free spinning one-way ratchet, preserving the progress of the seed’s downward spiral. This cycle repeats daily, until the seed strikes pay dirt and sets roots in the sandy soil below. It’s a truly amazing adaptation!
Yet, spinning seeds ain’t the only trick this grass has hidden up its leaves. The foliage of Threeawns is built to burn. When old leaves dry, they do so thoroughly and then twist like a corkscrew together into a ball of tinder. This effect is most evident in the annual Slimspike Threeawn. However, both the Wiregrasses take this strategy to the extreme. Wiregrass is an ecosystem engineer. It combines its flammable foliage with its dome-like shape, its deep and expansive root system, and clonal nature to dominate the understory of the Southern Pine savanna. Hand in hand with Longleaf Pine it turns the forest floor of the pine savanna into a web of fuses, linking the ring of pitch plastered pine needles around each Longleaf Pine into a continuous carpet of fuel. The foliage of Southern Wiregrass in particular is so flammable, it will purportedly still burn in wet conditions. Through this smoldering smothering of the understory, Wiregrass fans the flames of renewal brought by natural and controlled fire. When Wiregrass’s prescription for fire is met, it is astounding how stable an ecosystem Longleaf Pine and Wiregrass have forged, its beauty jaw-dropping and biodiversity awe-inspiring. I’ve even read research suggesting the mycorrhizal fungi living in the sands of these fire-ravaged lands have a third hand in the conspiracy for conflagration, supporting the growth of the pyrophytic plants, promoting the flammability of their duff, and suppressing fire-phobic plants and fungi. The interwoven complexity of the southern pine savanna is an intoxicating realm to ecologists, extending above the pine boughs and below the tortoise burrows with a breadth wider than the Wiregrass roots that tie it all together.
If you’d like to get a gander up close at the glory of our southern pine savannas, SCDNR’s brand new Coosawhatchie Heritage Preserve in Yemassee, SC is a prime site to see a proper Wiregrass savanna. Or if you ever find yourself upstate cruising down HWY-1 through McBee, SC, Carolina Sandhills NWR is unforgettable detour!
This week for Flora and Fauna Friday we have a cryptic mammal with some crazy physiology, the Southern Short-tailed Shrew (Blarina carolinensis).
The Southern Short-tailed Shrew is native to the Southeast and found throughout the Atlantic Coastal Plain from Virginia to Texas as well as up the lower Mississippi River Valley into Kentucky. Shrews are an odd family of creatures belonging to the mammal order Eulipotyphla, the true insectivores. This order also contains moles and hedgehogs. Shrews share several traits with moles, notably a dense coat of soft fur, a soft pointed snout, and tiny poorly formed eyes that render them practically blind. Shrews, at a glance, look a lot like a mouse or vole, being about the same size and shape. But even a cursory up close examination reveals just how different they are.
Here in the Lowcountry of South Carolina, we have three species of shrew: the Southeastern Shrew (Sorex longirostris), North American Least Shrew (Cryptotis parvus), and the Southern Short-tailed Shrew (Blarina carolinensis). The Southeastern Shrew is about two-inches long with a tail half that length and ruddy brown fur. The North American Least Shrew is a little over two-inches long with a tail a third of that and gray-brown coat. (Meaning the Southeastern Shrew is actually smaller.) The Southern Short-tailed Shrew is by far the most common shrew you’ll find on the Sea Islands and throughout the Lowcountry. It averages three-inches in body length with a tail somewhere between a quarter to third of that length and with fur a dark-gray often peppered with silver. In the upstate and mountains can also be found the Northern Short-tailed Shrew (Blarina brevicauda), which is very similar overall to its Southern sibling but about an inch longer and double their weight. The Northern Short-tailed Shrew is the largest Shrew in the United States.
Shrews, for the most part, lead a predominantly fossorial lifestyle, rooting around in leaf litter or digging tunnels underground that protect them from predators, keep out the elements, and facilitate hunting. A Shrew’s wedge-shaped face, dense fur, and strong legs enable its subterranean homebuilding. This makes Shrews quite cryptic critters. They are rare to encounter in the wild by chance. Unlike moles, they don’t leave obvious tunnels and molehills on the soil’s surface to track them. So most often people find them deceased lying atop the ground somewhere or by chance unearth them while gardening.
Southern Short-tailed Shrews inhabit a variety of habitats from forests to fields to floodplains but seem to most prefer habitats underlain by productive, moist soils which support relatively healthy and diverse plant communities. That’s not because they eat those plants though. It’s because they hunt the herbivores and detritivores that subsist on those plants. Shrews are ravenous predators with an insatiable appetite. They have an absurd metabolic rate, meaning they need to eat year-round, day in and day out, both day and night and throughout the dead of winter just to stay alive. Their heart rate clocks in around 900 beats-per-minute, about 75% that of a hummingbird and over ten times that of a human! To sustain this hyper fast metabolism they hunt nonstop and subsist on a diet of earthworms, slugs, snails, insect larvae, arthropods, and fungi, alongside just about any other small animal they can sink their teeth into. That’s possible because Short-tailed Shrews are venomous. You read that right. This mammal packs a neurotoxic venomous bite that’s strong enough to paralyze mice and other small vertebrates. A Shrew’s venom is secreted into its saliva. So it has to chew that venom into its prey, rather than inject it like a viper or spider would. This venom isn’t fatal to humans but is reportedly quite painful. The Northern Short-tailed Shrew, with its larger body, is the most accomplished small game hunter among all the North American Shrews. Yet, you can still add small reptiles, mammals, and amphibians to our smaller Southern Short-tailed Shrew’s menu. As a defense mechanism against its own predators, the Southern Short-tailed Shrew has musk glands, which it uses to exude a nauseating stench to ruin the appetite of would-be Shrew eaters. Often times the Shrew doesn’t sense the threat until it’s already mortally wounded, which is likely why we find dead, uneaten Shrews lying about the place. Although it doesn’t help that particular now deceased shrew, it might keep that particular Bobcat or Gray Fox from bothering other Shrews going forward.
Now, the astute among you may be wondering how a stinky nearly blind furball, the size of your thumb, with the heartrate of a hummingbird, venomous or not, can even find enough food to survive. Thank you for that perfect segue my dear hypothetical reader, now I can talk to you about the senses of the Short-tailed Shrew. Our shrew has a fantastic sense of smell, allowing them to sniff out food both underground and on the forest floor by the trace scents animals leave behind. They also have a well-developed tactile sense, allowing them to feel vibrations underground to further hone in on prey. Their sense of hearing is similarly well developed. Oh, and they can echolocate. Yeah, you read that one right too. This venomous, bloodthirsty mammal can echolocate. Their acute hearing affords them the capability to utter clicking noises, which bounce off the surrounding landscape like radar, and permit Shrews to perceive nearby objects by listening for the echoes. Their echolocation ability isn’t nearly as well defined as a bat’s, but it certainly gives the Southern Short-tailed Shrew another tool in the toolbox. Shrews need all the help they can get after all. They’re burning the candle at both ends and it’s a shrew eat mouse world out there.
This week for Flora and Fauna Friday we have the pine of the high hills, Shortleaf Pine (Pinus echinata).
Shortleaf Pine is found throughout the Southeast, including all of South Carolina. In the Lowcountry, it’s most often found on hilltops, old dune ridges, and sandhills where it grows on well-drained and often droughty soils. It’s more common inland than it is on the Sea Islands, but still appears reliably on our highest sand ridges on Edisto. You’re as likely to find Shortleaf Pine mixed in with hardwoods as you are with other pines and rarely is it ever a dominate species this close to the coast. However, further up the state, it can often be the predominant pine on certain types of sites. Shortleaf Pine is a fire adapted species and often found growing amidst Longleaf Pine Savannas and along Oak-Hickory ridges. It is not as fire dependent as some other pines but does benefit greatly from fire on the landscape.
Shortleaf Pine is one of the easier pines to identify here on the Sea Islands. It has a character clearly distinct from all our other pines. It’s small for a pine, rarely exceeding one-hundred feet in height or two feet in diameter. Overall it has a thin trunk, straight shape, densely compact crown, and few trailing branches. Upon closer examination, it has key features that help identify it. Its pine cones are small and compact, on average the smallest of all our pines, and often persist upon the branches for several years. Its needles are short and straight, rarely longer than finger length, and generally grown in fascicles of three. The fascicle, the sheathed bundle containing individual needles, is an important feature to examine when identifying pines, especially in the Upstate between young stems of our other short needled pine species. But here in the Lowcountry, we have just one other short needled pine, the Spruce Pine (P. glabra). However, it’s easy to discern from the Shortleaf Pine, with Spruce Pine having twisted needles in fascicles of two most often. (Additionally, Spruce pine grows in floodplains and has uniquely smooth twigs and silvery bark.) Further, Shortleaf Pine has distinct bark from our other pines. Overall, its bark appears smoother with larger, flatter plates compared to Longleaf (P. palustris), Slash (P. elliottii), or Loblolly Pines (P. taeda). But, when you look up close, it reveals the trademark signature of the species, resin pockets. The bark of Shortleaf Pine is peppered internally with resin pockets, which weep resin when the bark exfoliates and leave behind birdshot-sized dimples across the surface of the bark. This is a unique trait of Shortleaf Pine and makes it an easy pine to identify when mature.
Shortleaf Pine is a boon for biodiversity and for bird watchers in the winter months. In my experience, I’ve found it to be particularly attractive to songbirds for a pine. Shortleaf Pine’s dense crown of needles and prolific little cones produce a bounty of seeds and attract insects seeking shelter. These in turn make it a favorite year-round hunting ground for Nuthatches, Chickadees, Titmice, Goldfinches, and Pine Warblers. This effect is further enhanced by its resilience to growing alongside hardwoods in mixed forests.
This week for Flora and Fauna Friday we’re glancing up at our ever present warbler of the evergreens, the Pine Warbler (Setophaga pinus).
From year to year and season to season no other warbler is so consistent a sight and sound as the Pine Warbler. Throughout the Deep South and in every corner of South Carolina pines abound. And in them, Pine Warblers are found. Large for a warbler, male Pine Warblers glow with lemon-yellow from beak to breast, fading to straw-yellow in winter and grading to a dingy shade towards the tail. Females shroud themselves in that same dingy straw yellow year-round. Dull steel-blue wings bear two strong wing-bars of white. A light eyebrow, dark eye-stripe, broken eye-ring, and dull, darkened cheek faintly mark their faces. The song of the Pine Warbler is simple, one to two-dozen sharp and upward notes trilled in quick succession. Yet, subtly inconsistent in its pitch and varied in rate from bird to bird. This inconsistency helps separate their song from the similar sounding Worm-eating Warbler (Helmitheros vermivorum) and Chipping Sparrow (Spizella passerina). The Pine Warbler’s call is a single “chet” note, harsh in tone with a sucking ring and the faint bass of a bigger warbler.
Just as its namesake pines remain a static and verdant fixture of our landscape, the Pine Warbler’s place in the Palmetto State is equally constant. Yet, their behavior and diet fluctuates with the seasons. In winter, they forage the treetops both above and beyond the savannas, feasting on any arthropods they can find alongside the pine seeds they pluck and the occasional fruit. In spring, they descend readily from the pines to scavenge fields and fencerows for waking insects and to collect pine straw, incessantly singing all the while. In summer, they continue their singing as they raise their young within the pineywoods, who’ll soon leave the nest to curiously and clumsily explore the wide world of pines. In fall, they fall silent as they fatten up for winter, using their mouths to eat rather than to sing for once. Despite this seasonal cycle, throughout the year Pine Warblers are always here, shifting about the pines, as surely as shadow hang beneath their needles.
