This week for Flora and Fauna Friday, it’s a pair of woodland vines on which Monarchs dine, the Milkvines (Matelea spp.).
Here in the Lowcountry we have two species of Milkvine: Carolina Milkvine (Matelea carolinensis) and Yellow Milkvine (Matelea flavidula). Both of our Milkvines are rather uncommon sights and they are both denizens of the understories of hardwood forests. Carolina Milkvine is most common along swamps and freshwater rivers, just above the floodplain. It’s a species that is more abundant in the piedmont of South Carolina and much of the Southeast. Yellow Milkvine is a rarer plant overall, being found from just a smattering of locales in South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, and north Florida. It’s well adapted to the sandy, rich soils of the Lowcountry and our Sea Islands and is found most often along wetland margins underneath hardwood forests, where those habitats punctuate the sand ridges and limestone outcrops of the Lowcountry landscape. The Lowcountry of South Carolina is the stronghold of Yellow Milkvine’s global range.
Both of our Milkvines are perennial, herbaceous, twining vines and, when not in flower, look very similar to each other. Both have large, rounded, dark-green, opposite, palm-sized leaves with a smooth margin, cleft base, and either a round or slightly-pointed tip. Their vine grows atop vegetation most often to waist height, is thin and pliable, and often covered, along with their leaves, in a light fuzz. When damaged, Milkvines ooze a white latex sap full of toxic compounds to help ward off insects and other would-be herbivores. The flowers of our two Milkvines are similar in shape but differ markedly in color. Both have a five-petalled star-like flower with uniformly colored, rounded and lightly wrinkled petals that merge towards their base around a raised cylindrical center. In Carolina Milkvine, this flower is most-often a dark-maroon with a black-purple center ringed in a variable but paler color. In Yellow Milkvine, the flower is a pale yellow-green with green net-like veins across the petals and a golden center. Both of our Milkvines bloom in late-April and May. After their flowers bloom, if pollinated, they mature into an elongated, inverted teardrop-shaped seedpod covered in short spiny bumps. As the seedpod dries, it splits open to reveal many rows of fluff tethered seeds to be swept away to lands unknown by any passing breeze.
Milkvines are most easily confused with a third, far more abundant and closely related vine, Anglepod (Gonolobus suberosus). Anglepod leaves and vines look extremely similar to Milkvines, with only subtle differences, which takes an experienced eye to differentiate. Anglepod leaves tend to be darker green, slightly shiny, a little wrinkled, and with a deeper cleft on their base, but there is much overlap between the two clades. Anglepod also prefers to grow in the understory of hardwood forests, just like Milkvines, but is more attuned to life in wetlands, floodplains, and the occasional shaded roadside. Anglepod is found throughout all of South Carolina. Yet thankfully, Anglepod is readily differentiated by its flowers and seedpods. Anglepod flowers are very similar in structure to Milkvines but have pointed petals, no net-like veins, and are usually maroon at their center and pale-green towards their tip. The seedpods of Anglepod are angled, hence the common name, having a mostly smooth, inverted teardrop-shaped seedpod with five pronounced longitudinal ridges.
Both Milkvines and Anglepod are relatives of Milkweeds (Asclepias spp.) and all three can serve as a host plant for the caterpillars of the Monarch butterfly (Danaus plexippus). Although not seemingly a preferred host here in the Lowcountry, Milkvine and Anglepod plants scattered throughout our hardwood forests can help bolster and buffer our local non-migratory Monarch population from year to year against environmental anomalies.
On May 8th, 2026 the Edisto Island Open Land Trust’s Environmental Committee made a presentation on the benefits, limitations, and practical pointers for residential solar implementation on Edisto Island and other Sea Island and Lowcountry locales. EIOLT hosted a similar presentation the spring prior on March 6th, 2025.
Both presentations had a full house! Due to limited seating, not everyone could attend who wanted to. So by popular demand, we’ve made the slides for the 2026 presentation available here. Although now somewhat outdated, the slides and recording of the 2025 presentation are also available.
This week for Flora and Fauna Friday, we’re spying on the slightest of our shore nesting seabirds, the Least Tern (Sterna antillarum).
The Least Tern can be found in summer up and down most of the East coast of the United States, and year-round in the Caribbean. Here in South Carolina, they call the estuaries of our sea islands and the beachfront of our barrier islands their summer home. The Least Tern is our smallest species of Tern in the United States. They’re about the same size as a Purple martin, but with a much broader wingspan. Least Terns have long, pointed wings and a short “swallow-tail” trailing behind them. Their plumage is pale overall, white below, a cool silver-gray above, and with a dark leading edge to their wing tips. Whilst perched, Least Terns in breeding colors are readily recognized by not just their petite presence and pallid plumage but also a lemon-yellow bill, golden legs, and a full black cap with a distinct white triangle on their forehead. Their call is a squeaky, shrieky, raspy, resonant cry that trails down in volume as it progresses, and is similar but lighter and higher than other, larger Terns.
Least Terns here on Edisto subsist primarily on a diet of small fish. Like all our Terns, they hunt using plunge diving. They cruise up and down creeks and shallow flooded flats in a slow flight on deep, bobbing wing beats, scanning the water’s surface for schooling fish. Once a buffet bears itself beneath them, they lock on and drop down, plunging bill-first into the water to spear or snatch a meal, before their buoyant body buoys them back above.
Least Terns are a threatened species here in South Carolina and a species of significant conservation concern for SCDNR. In the Lowcountry, they principally nest on sand bars, beach dunes, and inlet sand banks right up against the ocean and they share this space with myriad other nesting shorebirds and seabirds each year. Least Terns are smaller than all other sea birds that nest here in the Lowcountry. Thus, they rely heavily on the more chaotic and dangerous beachfront nesting sites to raise their young, as they are easily pushed out by bigger birds from the other more favorable, safer sites on isolated, protected sand banks. Use of these extreme coastal nest sites not only places seabirds and their nests at heightened risk of harm from extreme weather and hurricanes, but also human induced pressures and disturbance. Erosion from coastal infrastructure shrinks banks, bars, and beach dunes to reduce the total area available as nesting habitat. Coastal development further eliminates potential nest sites by converting the landscape to an unusable state for wildlife, while also introducing invasive plants, feral animals, and general ecological imbalance that cause increased nest failure. Increased beach traffic, and especially unleashed dogs, disturb nesting birds in the dune systems, forcing them to waste energy when escaping to the air, preventing them from feeding their young, and exposing delicate eggs and fledgling birds to the broiling rays of a Lowcountry summer sun. Sea level rise compounds these threats further by shrinking the total area of beachfront and accelerating the shifting of these sandy lands. This cumulative stress on estuarine ecosystems is called ‘coastal squeeze’. Coastal squeeze is felt most sharply by intertidal and beach dependent species, and has rapidly become an existential threat to many species in recent decades.
Least Terns, thankfully, are one of the more resilient and adaptable beach nesting species when faced with such pressures. For example, they famously have begun nesting on flat, graveled rooftops Downtown and in other coastal cities. Nonetheless, the compounding impacts of coastal squeeze are taking their toll on Least Tern populations range wide. You can do your part to help protect Least Terns, and other seabird and shorebird nests, by staying off the beach dunes, keeping your dog on a leash whenever on the beach, and respecting SCDNR and other conservation signage you find that closes or restricts beach access for the wellbeing of some of our most imperiled and beloved Lowcountry birds.
This week for Flora and Fauna Friday we have the purple plumed imposter of the swamp, False Indigo-Bush (Amorpha fruticosa).
False Indigo-Bush is found across much of the South and Midwest, and is distributed throughout much of South Carolina. Here in the Lowcountry, it’s most often encountered in the floodplains and margins of freshwater rivers, particularly the fresh but tidal reaches of blackwater rivers, like the South Edisto. False Indigo-Bush is a member of the legumes and a mid-sized shrub, growing most often a bit over head high, and just as broad, on tangled twisting stems. It can spread through its roots to form small colonies, but around here is usually encountered as a singular clump or two. Its leaves are pinnately compound, with small ovular leaflets, and roughly hand length. It blooms here in April and May, peaking near the end of April. From the ends of its upper stems it bears half-foot long, dense, clustered spikes of flowers. Each flower is cylindrical in shape, with a single rolled royal-purple petal and a bouquet of golden-orange anthers bursting out from the center. It is a uniquely delightful color combination. Come summer into fall, the flowers of False Indigo-Bush mature into brown seedpods, each shaped like a tiny, warty butterbean and containing on average just one or two seeds. Birds and small animals feed on its scattered seeds. Its flowers provide nutritious pollen for bees, wasps, and other native pollinators. Some butterflies will even host their caterpillars on its leaves, such as the Silver-spotted Skipper.
It’s been a hot minute since I’ve done one of these, but I reckon today is a good day to dust off and bust out the ‘name game’, as this plant is ripe for an etymological adventure. The common name “False Indigo-Bush” is pretty straightforward. This plant is a bush and it looks like Indigo (Indigofera spp.), except it’s not Indigo. The leaves of this plant are very similar in size and shape to cultivated Indigo species and the two genera looks especially similar when young or regenerating. The seedpods of False Indigo-Bush are also very similar to those of our native Carolina Indigo (Indigofera caroliniana), although the two inhabit very different habitats and have very different growth forms. More relevant, False Indigo-Bush does actually contain the precursors phytochemicals that can be processed into usable indigo dye. Yet, they are generally not in a high enough concentration within the plant tissue, nor is there often enough young plant tissue altogether, to be worth extracting and processing the dye at any meaningful scale. On an aside, a decent number of our native legumes contain the precursor compounds that can be processed to generate indigo dye. This collection of related phytochemicals have some insecticidal properties that help protect the plants producing them from insect munching.
The scientific name for this plant, “Amorpha fruticosa“, roughly translates as “Bush without Shape”. That’s a pretty apt name for this bush with a chaotic, disordered growth form in its branches. But many other bushes grow just the same way and this is oddly generic for a generic name. Therefore, we have to dig a bit deeper to reveal the whole truth hidden in its name. The genus name “Amorpha” really refers to this clade’s flowers. Botanists and taxonomists have long categorized clades of plants based on the shapes of their flowers. Flower shape is closely linked to reproductive success for plants. If they don’t reproduce, their lineage won’t survive through the ages. Meaning flower shape is often a ‘do or die’ trait, onto which natural selection then applies the adage of ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’. Mutations in flower shape are rarely inconsequential to the offspring of the individual expressing them and so they quickly get weeded out. Thus, flower characteristics are broadly well preserved through even 1,000s of generations and can be used to readily and reliably differentiate different lineages of plants into higher classifications, as the scientific community feels its way backwards through evolutionary history. But on the flipside, things like leaf shape, growth form, height, hairiness, and even flower color can mutate much more often and randomly with wanton abandon. These mutations can more easily persist for multiple generations, or even diverge a population into a unique form or subspecies if it confers a benefit in that space at that time. But I digress. What was I typing about? Oh yeah, “Amorpha” is really describing the shape of the flowers within this genus. They only have one, singular petal that rolls itself up like a burrito around its anthers and styles. This is an odd trait for the legumes (family Fabaceae) and that singular dimension of petal equated to a “shapeless-ness” for the botanists first describing its flowers, relative to other more “shapely” legumes.
This week for Flora and Fauna Friday, we’re tracing out the finely lined Eastern Ribbon Snake (Thamnophis sauritus).
The Eastern Ribbon Snake is found throughout South Carolina and much of the Eastern United States, excepting the Appalachian mountains. Ribbon Snakes grow up to two feet in length and have a very narrow, delicate body with a proportionately slightly oversized head and eyes. Their belly is a pale-yellow or ivory. Their back is a dark-walnut or chestnut-brown, sometimes with faint checkerboard pattering along their flanks, and has three obvious pale-yellow lines down their length, one in the center and one on each flank. Eastern Ribbon Snakes closely resemble their cousins, the Eastern Garter Snake (T. sirtalis sirtalis). However, the Garter Snake is heavier bodied, often greener in coloration, and has more pronounced checkering. A quick way to check between the two species is to look at the lower jaw. Garter Snakes generally have black lines between their labial scales while Ribbon Snakes have a solid white jaw.
The Eastern Ribbon Snake is found in wet habitats, most often along wetland margins, pond banks, pocosins, bottomlands, floodplains, and other areas where water intermingles with land. They are semi-aquatic, weaving through vegetation and swimming into shallow water in search of frogs, salamanders, fish, insects, invertebrates, and anything else succulent their svelte selves can siphon down. Eastern Ribbon Snakes are non-venomous and, due to their slimness, not constrictors either. They simply overpower and swallow their small, soft-bodied prey whole. If you happen to spot an Eastern Ribbon Snake sitting still, consider yourself lucky! They are quick little buggers and will often vanish like a flash into brush, vegetation, or murky water when walked up on.
This week for Flora and Fauna Friday, we have three ferns of a feather that fringe wetlands together, Virginia Chain Fern (Anchistea virginica), Netted Chain Fern (Lorinseria areolata), and Sensitive Fern (Onoclea sensibilis).
Here in South Carolina, we have two species of Chain Fern, Virginia Chain Fern and Netted Chain Fern. Both grow deciduous feathery fronds about a foot long, spread underground into small but sprawling colonies, and have a preference for isolated or ephemeral wetland systems in the understory and margin of a forest or woodland. Chain Ferns further get their common name from the net-like chains of circular veins that run down the midlines on the undersides of their fronds. (These two Chain Fern species used to share the genus Woodwardia, but were recently split into their own separate genera.) Sensitive Fern is unrelated to the Chain Ferns, but is similar enough in appearance and habits to warrant being part of the same conversation.
Virginia Chain Fern is restricted to the coastal plain of South Carolina, but nonetheless found throughout the Lowcountry. It is best adapted to locales with acidic soils, more direct sunlight, standing water, and increased disturbance from fire and other forces of nature. This makes it a common sight in Carolina Bays, Pocosins, ditches, and other isolated or ephemeral wetlands in pine dominated or poorly drained systems. However, it will also grow in much the same habitats as Netted Chain Fern when given the chance. Its fronds are a shiny emerald-green and feathery in appearance. Its central rachis, the stem of the frond, is smooth, wiry, and sometimes a dark-green or black. The pinnae have smooth margins and many small, stubby lobes that don’t fully divide to the midvein. Underneath, each of these lobes has a chain of circular veins down its center that radiate out many thin parallel veins towards the margin. Virginia Chain Fern produces fertile fronds that look the same as its sterile fronds but bear spores from granular sori arranged in parallel, angular lines from its chained midveins.
Netted Chain Fern can be encountered all across South Carolina, from the mountains to the sea. It is most commonly found in the understory of hardwood forests growing in wet depression or isolated wetlands, the margins of swamps and freshwater marshes, streambanks, and narrow floodplains outside of standing water. Its fronds are bright emerald-green with entire pinnae that merge together on the upper half of the frond, through a shared wing along the central rachis. Below, these fronds are covered in a net-like network of veins, with a central “chain” down the center of each pinnae. Netted Chain Fern produces spores on fertile fronds, which are similarly shaped to the normal sterile fronds but held upright and possessing a stringy, withered appearance. These fertile fronds bear elongated sori below that look like paired strands of sausage links.
Sensitive Fern is found statewide in similar habitats to Netted Chain Fern, and it shares a close physical resemblance. However, Sensitive Fern, in my experience, prefers to grow in the richer and wetter habitats within river floodplains, bottomlands, and their tributaries and is less abundant on the Sea Islands and along the coast. It can also have significantly larger fronds up to knee height that are more delicate in texture. Sensitive Fern gets it common name from the frost intolerance of its leaves, which wither and die at the first frost. By contrast, Chain Fern leaves are far hardier and leathery, and thus persist longer into winter. On Sensitive Fern, the fronds are often a pale bluish-green and the upper pinnae are solid blades that merge into a common wing along the rachis. The lower you go on the frond, the wavier the pinnae margins are, with the bottom two often prominently lobed. Underneath, it has a prominent, raised vein down the underside of each pinnae, rather than a chain of veins. The fertile fronds of Sensitive Fern are distinct and have upward pointing clusters of spherical sori, like strings of beads.
This week for Flora and Fauna Friday, it’s the façade of the forest’s eyes watching from the night, the Polyphemus Moth (Antheraea polyphemus).
Warm spring day. Cool spring night. Saturated air. Land slicked with dew. Wrapped in the cloak of dark. Tucked beneath the canopy. The forest yet stirs restlessly. The excitement of spring. Crickets chirp, toads shuffle, raccoons squabble while rodents skitter to and fro. Through that thick air frolics forward a specter. Like a leaf loosed from the lead of the wind and the fetters of gravity, it floats any direction it may please. It settles and re-adheres itself to the surety of a tree. Two ochre eyes gaze back outward as a Polyphemus Moth greats the night, its world, wide-eyed.
The Polyphemus Moth can be found in hardwood forests throughout the Eastern United States and much of the west. It’s a large moth, growing to about six inches in wingspan. From below its wings are a ruddy-brown with a wash of silvery variegation for camouflage. From above, it’s a warm brown across most of its wings but bearing a thick outward fringe of orange-brown with an inward border of black and white. Peering out from the middle of all four wings is a single eyespot. The forewing eyespot is a single translucent circle ringed with gold. The hindwing eyespot is the same design but larger and with silvery frosting gradating out from above into the large black oval it is set within. They are a hard moth to mistake in the Lowcountry. Their name “Polyphemus” is Greek and comes from Homer’s Odyssey, it’s the name of the demigod cyclops that was blinded by Odysseus.
Polyphemus Moth caterpillars are large, heavy-bodied, and bright-green with a brown face and fine vertical slashes down their side with narrow red spots amidst them. Their caterpillars feed on the leaves of many genera of hardwood trees, including birches, maples, willows, hickories, and oaks. The Polyphemus Moth is a member of the family Saturniidae, the Silk Moths. This family contains our largest moth species here in the Southeast, but actually doesn’t include the domestic Silk Moth (Bombyx mori). Although all moth and butterfly caterpillars can spin silk, many Saturniids use a gracious plenty of it when they construct the cocoons that protect them as a pupa. The Polyphemus Moth is a particularly noteworthy silk spinner. They spin a thick walled, pale-brown silk cocoon that’s about two inches long and just under an inch wide. They secure this cocoon with a broad tether to the limb of their host tree. Adult Polyphemus Moths are most abundant in April, May, and July. But their silk cocoons can often be spotted high above in winter, or empty and strewn about the forest floor throughout the year.
This week for Flora and Fauna Friday we have a miniature mallow, Carolina Bristle Mallow (Modiola caroliniana).
Carolina Bristle Mallow is a perennial wildflower that flattens itself across the ground with a prostrate growth form. As the common name implies, it is indeed a Mallow and it has many of the typical characters one expects from that lineage. It has emerald-green, inch-wide leaves with coarsely serrate margins and usually three to five lobes in an overall palmate-shape that is quintessential to Mallows. Its stems and leaves are covered in hairs. Its foliage can serve as the host plant for a handful of native butterflies, chiefly the 3 species of Checkered-Skipper (Burnsius spp.) found in the Carolinas. Carolina Bristle Mallow blooms throughout April with a small, 5-petalled, bowl-shaped flower coral-pink in color with a yellow center ringed in crimson. Its flowers mature into a flattened fruit of a dry capsule containing about 1-2 dozen seeds.
Carolina Bristle Mallow is most often found interspersed in lawns, along roadsides and trails, on parking lot margins, in agricultural fields, and about other disturbed areas dominated by sparse, low growing vegetation. It can be encountered throughout the southern US but is rather sporadically scattered around the landscape. Despite the “Carolina” in its common name, Carolina Bristle Mallow is more than likely an adventive species from South America that hitched a ride across the hemisphere on the coattails of humans. Carolina Bristle Mallow is a fairly innocuous herb here today in the Lowcountry that rarely, if ever, causes an issue in our natural landscapes. Thus it falls squarely into the “naturalized” bucket and doesn’t achieve that infamous entitlement of “invasive” species. Most often, it’s found making bedfellows with the other non-native herbs and grasses that have come to dominate the botanical witch’s-brews of suburban and urban landscapes, where the harm is already done and only the plants most tolerant of the mower deck can persist.
This week for Flora and Fauna Friday we’re getting acquainted with the dark sheep of the frogs, the Eastern Narrow-mouthed Toad (Gastrophryne carolinensis).
The Eastern Narrow-Mouthed Toad is found throughout South Carolina and in all but the highest elevations of the Southeast. It’s a resident of woodlands and savannas, where below abundant humidity and ample water make for a cozy home for this amphibian. Narrow-mouthed Toads are fossorial, living in the soil underneath fallen logs and leaf litter for most of their lives. Their pointed head and flattened bodies lets them push through soil and wedge beneath rocks and logs. This subterranean environment is far more stable than the surface world and allows them to better conserve water. Their namesake ‘narrow mouth’ defines their diet. They specialize in eating some of the tiniest, yet most abundant, of our insects, the ants and termites that are prolific in leaf litter and the soil.
Because Eastern Narrow-Mouthed Toads are subterranean, they are rarely seen. But that doesn’t mean they’re rare or hard to observe, quite the opposite. They’re a very common species and, during wet nights in spring and fall, they can be heard wailing along freshwater wetlands and down roadside ditches all across the Lowcountry. The male’s courtship croak is the unmistakable bleat of a lamb, albeit a bit more monotone, which lasts for two to four seconds. But good luck trying to spot one calling!
Eastern Narrow-mouthed Toads are just as secretive on the water as they are on land. But when you do chance upon one, most often when flipping rocks or rolling logs, they are an obvious sight. A plump little body just over an inch long on short legs and covered in subtle warts over moist skin, a tiny head with a pointed nose, and a brown-gray triangle on the back flanked by wide ruddy-tan stripes are features that give this toad a unique shape among all our other local frogs and toads. Speaking of frogs and toads, the Eastern Narrow-Mouthed Toad is really a frog, not a toad. Well, all toads are frogs, but not all frogs are toads. (Same situation as Turtles and Tortoises, rectangles and squares.) True Toads belong to the family Bufonidae, they have dry skin, obvious warts, poisonous parotoid glands behind their head, short legs for walking, and mainly live on land. However certain frogs, like the Eastern Narrow-Mouthed Toad, can check most of those boxes and so are commonly called toads. This similarity is a product of convergence, multiple lineages of life finding the same answers to the same problems.
This week for Flora and Fauna Friday we have the saline, sea breeze swaying Saltmarsh Bulrush (Bolboschoenus robustus).
Saltmarsh Bulrush, also called Seacoast Clubrush, is a species of sedge found up and down the Eastern Seaboard of the United States. It used to belong to the genus Schoenoplectus but was recently split off into Bolboschoenus and, between these two genera, there are about seven species of Bulrush found in South Carolina, three of those being fairly rare in our State and then two of those rare species being mainly inland and submergent in growth form. But here on the coast, Saltmarsh Bulrush is the most common species you’ll encounter in our salt suffused marshes around the Sea Islands. Saltmarsh Bulrush has more salt tolerance than other Bulrushes and grows abundantly in the brackish marshes of tidal rivers, especially in old tidal rice impoundments where it can be the dominant vegetation. It also occurs on brackish pond banks and on the upland borders of salt marshes, in the uncommon spots where there is consistent confluence of upland groundwater running out to sea and intermingling with tidewater to create micro-habitats of brackish marsh.
Saltmarsh Bulrush is a perennial aquatic sedge that spreads clonally through underground rhizomes. It has a grassy appearance and emerald-green leaves and stems reaching up to waist-high. As a sedge, not a grass, it has stems that are triangular in cross-section and leaves with a strong crease down the center. In ideal conditions, it grows vigorously and can form a monoculture in shallow brackish waters. Saltmarsh Bulrush flowers appear at the top of the stem from brown, hairy, teardrop-shaped structures in clusters of a dozen or two. It begins to bloom in early spring and can continue blooming throughout summer. Its seeds mature within these same structures before being shed into the water below, where they drift to shore or settle below into the sediment. These seeds provide food for waterfowl, rails, and rodents and the Bulrushes themselves provide cover and protection for these same critters, and many more.
