This week for Flora and Fauna Friday it’s one hull of a hardwood, the Mockernut Hickory (Carya tomentosa).
The Mockernut Hickory is a species of Hickory tree found throughout the Southeast and all of South Carolina. It’s highly drought tolerant and much prefers dry soils. It is just as much a common sight on the rocky ridge tops of the foothills and piedmont as it is on the fire pruned savannas of the sandhills, coastal plain, and sea island sand ridges. However, it’s also often found on richer soils that are sufficiently well-drained. This tree can eventually reach a hundred feet in height in forest settings, but generally is closer to seventy-five feet at maturity here in the Lowcountry. Its bark is dark gray, rather thick, and fissured with a blocky net-like pattern. This thick bark allows it to tolerate infrequent fire, although it’s not as fire dependent nor tolerant as many of our trees. Its leaves are compound, most often having seven broad leaflets, notably displaying wooly undersides, and can vary widely in total size from one to two feet in length. Here on the Sea Islands around the latter half of November, Mockernut and our other Hickories will release their fall colors, turning sharp shades of amber-yellow and candle-orange as they shed their leaves. About that same time in late October and throughout November, Mockernut Hickories begin to drop nuts. It’s a massive seed, often an inch wide, inch tall, and three-quarters of an inch thick, with a square profile, broad shoulders, and small point at the tip. The whole seed grows within a rind that is another quarter to three-eighths of an inch thick, making the entire fruit larger than a golf ball and nearly two inches around. This rind is dehiscent, meaning it splits as it dries in order to release the seed, and will itself be shed to the ground in four pieces.
Mockernut gets it common name from its seed. It’s a nut that makes a mockery of anyone who tries to get into it. The hull of a Mockernut seed is a full quarter-inch thick with many deep ridges that furrow the wrinkly, brain-shaped meat within. It’ll take two big rocks for you to get into one. And when you do, more often than not you’ve crushed the entire thing into oblivion. But even if you crack it cleanly, you’ll be granted only a paltry reward of meager nutmeat treats wedged irrecoverably between chunks of hull as hard as cement. Even though Mockernuts are perfectly edible to humans, they are practically impossible to make a living on. But that’s not the case for all wildlife. Mice, Woodrats, and Squirrels can use their ironclad incisors to chisel open the hulls and shell Mockernuts with relative ease. Deer and Turkeys will also gulp them down on occasion, but generally prefer any other nuts when available. These mammoth Mockernut Hickory seeds are primarily dispersed by squirrels, gravity, and floods. Squirrels will haul them up hills to stash for later, often forgetting a few that will later germinate. Trees growing on hilltops drop seeds that then roll downhill and settle on slopes and in valleys. Fall and winter flooding will float Hickory seeds downstream, depositing them inland when floodwaters recede.
What Mockernut Hickory lacks in value to humans as a food source, it makes up for in its value as a timber tree. Mockernut Hickory, being the most abundant Hickory in the Eastern United States, makes up the bulk of the Hickory wood grown and used in the country. Hickory is a stiff, tough wood that resists impacts and cracking very well, all while still being fairly light. This makes it the ideal wood for tool handles, particularly axes, hammers, and shovels that need to absorb a lot of repeated stress. The wood is also prized as a firewood as it burns hot, burns long, produces little smoke, and that smoke smells nice to boot. In fact, the smoke not only smells nice but tastes nice, and is regularly used in smoking and curing meats, particularly pork.
The Mockernut Hickory is one of eight species of Hickory tree found here in the Lowcountry. It shares this landscape with the abundant Pignut Hickory (Carya glabra), Sand Hickory (Carya pallida), Water Hickory (Carya aquatica), Bitternut (Carya cordiformis), and Pecan (Carya illinoinensis) as well as the locally scarce Shagbark Hickory (Carya ovata) and Nutmeg Hickory (Carya myristiciformis). Hickories all share a few common characteristics that make them an easy genus to spot. Their leaves are alternate and pinnately compound, generally with seven to eleven leaflets emerging from the mid-vein. One leaflet emerges from the tip and the remainder as opposing pairs shrinking in size as they get closer to the twig. Their barks tend to have a diamond-weave pattern, with vertical ridges that merge and split from each other, unless obscured in some species by flaky peeling plates. They’re all wind pollinated, and produce inconspicuous green catkin flowers in mid-spring. Their fruits are large, oblong nuts that are usually edible for humans and a dietary staple of many forest rodents. Underground, Hickories seedlings take advantage of their huge seed to grow a deep taproot when they germinate. This not only anchors them to the soil but affords them ready access to the local water table and deep soil nutrients that many other hardwoods can’t reach.
Of all these species, Mockernut Hickory is the most common Hickory you’ll encounter in South Carolina and much of the Eastern United States. However, Pignut Hickory is just as abundant here on the Sea Islands, if not a bit more. Telling a Mockernut from a Pignut is an easy feat. Habitat-wise on the Sea Islands, Pignut Hickory prefers coarser sands and younger soils with a water table readily accessible to their deep taproot. They also grow closer to the coast and can tolerate salt’s influences to a slight degree. Mockernut Hickory and Pignut Hickory are equally-sized trees, each readily attaining a height of seventy feet tall at maturity. At a glance, they look quite similar but differ in the finer details once scrutinized. Mockernut Hickory generally has a thicker, rougher bark toned a darker shade of medium-gray. Whereas Pignut Hickory has a smoother, less blocky barker that’s a paler gray. Their leaves are also a giveaway. Mockernut Hickory leaves are coarsely hairy, especially on the petiole near the base. Pignut Hickory leaves are totally smooth by comparison. This dichotomy is captured in their scientific names, with “Carya tomentosa” meaning “Wooly Hickory” and “Carya glabra” meaning “Smooth Hickory”. Their common names describe another dichotomy found in their fruits. Mockernut seeds are huge, square, and have a very heavy hull, making a “mockery” of anyone who attempts to crack them. Pignut fruits are smaller, more circular, and have a “pig nose” projection at the tip of their rind. Their nuts most often fall from the tree with this rind still attached. However, the name “Pignut” actually describes their historic importance in feeding semi-free-range pigs reared by early colonists, as the nuts are palatable and more readily cracked and digested by livestock compared to the Mockernut.
Sand Hickory is a less common lookalike to Mockernut Hickory found in many of the same habitats on the coast. Picking between a Sand Hickory and a Mockernut Hickory on the Sea Islands can be a difficult task. Both grow on dry sandy soils, have similar bark, and have hairy leaves. Sand Hickory, as a consequence, hides in plain sight and often gets written off as an under-sized Mockernut, even by seasoned ecologists and foresters. However, it’s not an impossible identification. Sand Hickory tends to have a silvery underside to its leaves and Mockernut Hickory instead a brass-colored fuzz below. Sand Hickory also has, on average, smaller leaves and more narrow leaflets. The twigs and buds of Sand Hickory tend to be svelter too. It’s also a smaller tree, generally only growing closer to forty feet tall. Their seeds as well are about two-thirds the size of Mockernut seeds, with a thinner rind and a more circular profile.
This week for Flora and Fauna Friday we watch for the descent of the infamous Rice Bird, the Bobolink (Dolichonyx oryzivorus).
Bear with me a minute as we cast our mind’s eye back some two-hundred years. Edisto Island, and the whole of the ACE Basin, looked quite different then. Sea Island Cotton blanketed nearly every inch of the sea islands’ sandy plains. In parallel between the upland and the saltmarsh, Carolina Gold Rice filled our swamps and freshwater marshes with tens of thousands of acres of golden, swaying grains. Just as surely as the rice would gild the marsh each autumn, a golden storm cloud would soon brew and descend upon it. Bobolinks, flocking by the thousands, once called the Lowcountry’s rice fields home, most unwelcome guests for the holiday season. Fast forward back to today and a mere dozen Bobolinks ‘most anywhere on the Sea Islands is a welcome sight to see.
The Bobolink is a mid-sized songbird in the Blackbird family, Icteridae. They’re a striking species unmistakable here for anything else. In spring, males flaunt a raven-black underside, silver shoulders and back, and a balding head of permed blonde locks. Quite the iconic fit. Fall males, and females year-round, look very different, but just as handsome. They wear streaky plumage of ebony-brown on the back diffused down into golden-tan on the belly, accented on the face with a strong pale eyebrow and dark line behind the eye. It’s a perfect camouflage for blending into the bending boughs of an overladen rice field. Their song is quite unique as well, a bubbly jumble of disjointed digital tones harshly strung together into a chaotic rambling.
Bobolinks spend their winters down in the plains of South America and nest in summer in the northern United States. They only pass through South Carolina during migration, briefly barreling through the State in spring but lazily lingering in fall here in the Lowcountry. They’re most often encountered in active agricultural fields, feasting on fallen grains and insects in small flocks, as well as in old rice fields within our tidal freshwater marshes, as if reminiscing of days long past. Back in the Antebellum during the heyday of Carolina Gold Rice, there was never such a thing as a small flock of Bobolinks, only imposing leviathan storms that came surging over the dikes, countercurrent to the September Gales. But that past is behind us.
Bobolink populations have declined tremendously over the last century. Before then, they ballooned well above their historic norms thanks to the consequences of European colonization and agriculture. Land clearing for agriculture in the northern United States expanded their nesting grounds, the same in South America bolstered their wintering grounds, and the booming rice industry in South Carolina gave them a fall feast along their southward journey that no bird could ignore. This cycle continued for a couple centuries, swelling the ranks of the Bobolink in kind. Here in South Carolina, the birds were seen as a nuisance and agricultural pest, but also a delicacy. Bobolink flocks were hunted by the thousands each fall, both for pest control and cuisine. Despite being small, their staggering abundance and the rich, buttery flavor of their meat made them a worthwhile target for market hunting. However, in the twentieth century, things changed rapidly. Rice culture had dropped off dramatically in South Carolina at the start of the 1900s and several laws prohibiting the market hunting of wildlife were passed in the first two decades. These factors de-coupled the Bobolink from our culture and cuisine here in South Carolina, turning it into a memory of the past. But regardless of being relegated to the annals of Charleston’s history, Bobolink populations continued mostly unabated range-wide for several more decades. Yet by the 1940s, agricultural practices began to shift in their northern nesting grounds. The tractor had thoroughly made its way to the prairies and plains, converting hayfields and native grasslands to neat fields of unsuitable crops for Bobolink nesting. This was followed by widespread insecticide use in the 1950s, decimating the populations of arthropods they relied upon to feed their young. Again in the 1970s came selective herbicides paired with advanced crop cultivars, obliterating the remaining native habitats and weedy field borders Bobolinks need to nest. Although there aren’t many hard numbers to lean on, evidence indicates towards a nearly 90% population loss since the turn of the twentieth century. A nearly two-thirds decline between today and the 1960s has been well documented by ornithologists.
The plight of the Bobolink is a dire fate shared by many grassland bird species across the United States. Prairies, plains, grasslands, savannas, pollinator habitat, snake-y lookin’ old fields, whatever you want to call them, they’re a habitat type that’s a rare commodity these days in much of this country. They’re also a bastion of biodiversity built by native plants and relied upon by scores of specialized animals. Species like the Boboloink can’t survive without them. Native grasslands are important not only to protect where still present, but also to create, restore, manage, and maintain where they historically occurred. They only exist today due to the divine intervention of natural disasters, or regular deliberate action by mankind. If we don’t intentionally protect and promote our grasslands, we’ll assuredly reap the ruin of our natural history and the loss of myriad species, to include our Bobolink.
This week for Flora and Fauna Friday it’s a tri-lobed twining vine with a twisted seed, Carolina Snailseed (Nephroia carolina).
Carolina Snailseed is a perennial vine found throughout the South and all of South Carolina. It can tolerate a wide range of growing conditions, from the heavy shade of the forest floor to full sun on a fence row, and from the fertile floodplains to the barren sand ridges. It’s a very versatile vine. It grows by twining its narrow, wiry stem around vegetation and can reach about ten feet in height. Its leaves are a rich emerald-green, tri-lobed in shape, and leathery in texture, often with prominently sunken veins. Carolina Snailseed blooms in late spring throughout summer. Its flowers are tiny, cream-white in color, and bloom in small clusters along the stem below each upper leaf. These flowers, once pollinated, will mature in fall into brilliant, scarlet-red berries about a quarter-inch in size. Within each colorful berry is a single seeded secret surprise.
The seeds of Carolina Snailseed are large and helically twisted. They look just like a tiny snail shell, but with a rough exterior. Carolina Snailseed also goes by two other common names: Carolina Coralbead and Carolina Moonseed. Both of which are equally fitting, this plant having both coral-colored bead-like berries and also being a relative and visually similar to Common Moonseed (Menispermum canadense) which is found throughout the Northern United States and mid-South. But neither of these names are quite as iconic as “snailseed” in my opinion. Despite this plant having a snail-seed, it doesn’t spread at a snail’s pace. Carolina Snailseed is dispersed by birds, which eat the enticing red berries and then deposit the snail-shaped seed along a tree line, thicket, or fence some ways away. Here on the Sea Islands, Carolina Snailseed is often evergreen, thanks to our subtropical climate. These always verdant leaves paired with brilliant red berries make it a wonderful yard plant to train up a trellis or fence to retain some life into winter in your yard or garden, while feeding the birds to boot!
This week for Flora and Fauna Friday there’s a hunter in the dark, a wader in the shadows, the Black-crowned Night Heron (Nycticorax nycticorax).
As the cloak of twilight settles on the Lowcountry, the diurnal din dwindles with the dissolving glow of day. A croak, like stone on rock, a sudden nasal squawk, half rally cry – half shock, pierces the veil with the fear of the dark. It echoes from above, resonating in the lower spine, rising and shaking loose the frigid frisson of hairs on end as you stand frozen in silence, now beyond the threshold of the night. Terror thaws under warming recollection. ‘Twas merely a Night Heron, plunging excitedly into the darkness of an inverted dawn, in anticipation of the hunt.
The Black-crowned Night Heron is one of two Night Heron species found in South Carolina. The other being the Yellow-crowned Night Heron (Nyctanassa violacea), a more seasonal and scarce species that visits our coast in summer. The Black-crowned Night Heron calls our coastline and Sea Islands home year-round. They’re a wide-ranging species found across the tropics and temperate regions of the globe. Looking at the species in local context, they’re a stockier and shorter build than most of our other Herons and Egrets, a middling size by comparison but with and uncharacteristically short neck. They’re a shape and profile unlike any of our other waders. That uniqueness is further distinguished by their plumage. The Black-crowned Night Heron’s back and cap are a bluish slate-black, their wings smoky-gray, and their belly and throat pearl-white. From below all is upheld on golden legs, out in front juts a dark dagger of a bill, and peering out from the dividing line between a sky of black and a sea of white hovers in the horizon an imposing crimson eye. Like a setting sun pushing the blinding day away from the cloak of darkness. Juvenile birds are more subtly colored with the browns of weathered, fallen leaves plowed and peppered with bone-white in a blend made for blending in, and the only color expressed being a smoldering orange eye.
Black-crowned Night Herons, despite being common birds, are often hard to find. That’s owed to their nocturnal nature. Most wading birds forage throughout the day and huddle together in treetops for safety throughout the night. But Night Herons work the graveyard shift and so do the reverse. At the shuttering of dusk, they rouse and scatter across the landscape of the Lowcountry, squawking with rejoice as they commute. They’ll settle onto a bank of a wetland, pond, or creek and fish the night away below the illumination of starlight. They’re not picky eaters either, and will eat most anything they can catch and swallow. As dawn looms over the horizon, Black-crowned Night Herons return to their rooks. This is where you’re most likely to spot them. Overhead in a hedge or thicket overhanging a pond or marsh in a secluded corner, they hunker down in numbers to sleep the day away.
This week for Flora and Fauna Friday we’re on the lookout for the compressor of the canopy, the twister of twigs, the possessor of pines, the enigmatic Witch’s-Broom.
Witch’s-Brooms are an arboreal anomaly. They’re a dense, gnarled cluster of leaves and twigs twisted together into a rounded mass within the crown of a tree or shrub. Somehow, somewhere, for some reason, a switch is flipped in the inner machinations of a single new limb and it begins to grow wrong. Its twigs become condensed, growing only a fraction of an inch in length while still packing new buds into every millimeter of space. Each of these buds still bears its leaves, creating an impossibly dense ball of foliage. Over the years the mass will continue to grow, inch by inch. On some parent tree species these twisted twigs shoot upward in a dense fan, resembling the bound sticks in the head of a handmade broom. When you factor in the seemingly arcane origin of these aberrant tree growths, then you end up with the folk name of “Witch’s Broom” bestowed upon these mysteriously mangled limbs. It’s a moniker that implies a fleck of the dark arts or some whiff of black magic has nestled itself into your local woodlot.
Witch’s-Brooms occur on the limbs of a wide array of woody plants but, here in the Lowcountry, are most commonly seen and most impressively sized in the crowns of pine trees. When produced by a pine, a Witch’s-Broom most often appears as a small, dense hedge growing right in the middle of a tree, a nearly solid mass of needles some two to six feet wide. These Witch’s-Brooms materialize in maybe one in fifty-thousand Loblolly Pines (Pinus taeda), seemingly at random on the landscape. But, with how many Loblolly Pines we have in the South, that shakes out to about one every hundred acres, a half-dozen or so per square mile, or at least that’s the rate my gut indicates from my own anecdotal experiences. Thus they’re by no means a rare sight when looking at the landscape as a whole, but it’s by no means a guarantee you’ll find one on any given tract of land.
Witch’s-Brooms are not a discrete taxon of life we can define. Instead they’re a loose collection of botanical phenomena that lead to a similar end point, a common downstream symptom of a complex biochemical interaction within a host plant induced by an external influence. You can think of them like something between a tumor, a gall, and a wart. In many trees, Witch’s-Brooms are caused by an infection. Be it a fungus, virus, protozoan, insect, or arthropod, the most common offender varies greatly between different lineages of plants. But the common thread with most Witch’s-Brooms is that something has invaded the tissue of the plant, triggered an immune response, instigated biochemical warfare, and initiated a cascade of hormonal responses within the host plant which, ultimately, leads to inducing dense, congested growth of limbs and leaves. However, in Pines, sometimes the root cause is a little deeper. It’s the genes of the plant itself that mutate or are epigenetically suppressed by an outside stimulus, inducing a form of localized dwarfism in its crown. Over the decades, some ambitious and pioneering horticulturalists have even collected cuttings from Witch’s-Brooms and propagated them, resulting in true-to-type dwarf Pine trees!
This week for Flora and Fauna Friday we have a briny bicolor barnacle biter, the Sheepshead (Archosargus probatocephalus).
Sheepshead are a marine species of fish found along the East Coast of the United States. They live in habitats along the coast from the brackish marshes of our estuaries, to the briny back rivers of barrier islands, and down into offshore reefs and forgotten shipwrecks. Sheepshead are an easy fish to identify. Their body is marked with alternating heavy, vertical bands of white and black. They have a high-sloped forehead and grow to about the size and shape of a turkey platter, being twice as long as they are tall. Sheepshead average between a foot to foot-and-a-half in length at maturity, but old fish can readily reach double that size. Legally harvestable fish generally tip the scales at between three to fifteen pounds. If you’ve ever hooked one, you also know they have quite a set of pearly whites! Sheepshead have very human-like incisors, but behind that toothy grin is a mouthful of multiple rows of flat, grinding molars. Those teeth are the key to its success in a unique ecological niche here in the Lowcountry tidewaters.
Sheepshead make their living eating on stationary shellfish, mainly barnacles, oysters, mussels, clams, crabs, and just about any other crustacean they can sink their buck teeth into. As such, they are commonly found hanging around docks, marinas, piers, wharfs, reefs, wrecks, jetties, and any other hard structures encrusted in barnacles and oysters. To get their victuals they simply pluck barnacles from pilings, much the same way you’d bite corn off the cob. It’s a simple but effective strategy, especially now that man has filled the Lowcountry waterways with all manner of rip rap and timber for shellfish to stick to.
Conversely though, this habit makes Sheepshead a convenient target for recreational fishing as they hang out year-round right under the dock. Anglers with a South Carolina saltwater fishing license can harvest adult Sheepshead with a total length of at least fourteen inches (as of my writing this in 2025). Sheepshead can take some skill to properly hook, and a little more skill to properly fillet, but, if properly prepared, they’re an undoubtedly tasty fish once they make it to the table.
This week for Flora and Fauna Friday we’re appreciating the elegance of Elegant Blazing-Star (Liatris elegans).
Elegant Blazing-Star is found in the coastal plain of the Southeast and much of the South Carolina Lowcountry. It grows in full sun on high and dry sandy soils, including the sand ridges of the Sea Islands and pine savannas of the mainland. Here in the Lowcountry we have nine species of Blazing-Stars, three of those being reasonably common around Edisto: Dense Blazing-Star (L. spicata), Wand Blazing-Star (L. virgata), and Elegant Blazing-Star. The Blazing-Stars can be a difficult genus to tell apart due to their similarities. Thankfully, the elegance of today’s subject blazes like a star and makes it an unmistakable wildflower.
For most of the year, Elegant Blazing-Star is out of sight and out of mind. It’s a perennial bulb plant that retreats to its egg-sized corm in winter and returns in spring to bask in sun as a simple tuft of grass-like leaves. But come September through October, Elegant Blazing-Star blooms to produce a long, brush-like plume reaching an average of two to three foot in height but just two to three inches around. The flowers of Elegant Blazing-Star differ from our other Blazing-Stars in two main ways. Their petals are a pastel pink, bordering on white in some plants, as opposed to the more often hot-pink and magenta blossoms of its cousins. They also bear colorful bracts, special leaves that appear like petals in twisted tongues that flank the fringes of each flower-head, giving them a distinctly shaggy look. These two features lend them a unique color and form from all other Blazing-Stars. This pink and brushy flower stalk of Elegant Blazing-Star is ringed in hundreds of individual flower-heads, one every half-inch or so. Each flower-head is itself a compound flower of about a half-dozen individual flowers. This means each flower stalk could yield a thousand flowers! Those flowers provide sustenance for our native bees and butterflies, who help sustain the entire ecosystem as well as the bounty of local crops and gardens.
This week for Flora and Fauna Friday we’ve got a dirt common, detritivorous, diminutive butterfly, the Red-banded Hairstreak (Calycopis cecrops).
The Red-banded Hairstreak is found throughout the Southern United States and all of South Carolina. It’s one of our most widespread butterflies in the Carolinas and present in low but consistent numbers almost anywhere you go in the Lowcountry. They’re especially common along forest edges, pond banks, roadsides, powerline clearings, and other brushy areas. The Red-banded Hairstreak is a member of the Gossamer-winged Butterflies, family Lycaenidae, and more narrowly the Hairstreak subfamily, Theclinae. Our classic Hairstreaks all share a similar suite of characteristics that set them apart from other butterflies. Our Red-banded Hairstreak checks all of those boxes.
Red-banded Hairstreaks are small, about the size of a dime. They perch upright with their wings closed and have a triangular in profile. They are slate-gray and iridescent blue above and a warm-gray below with white, black, orange, and blue markings. Their namesake field mark is a heavy red-orange band down the middle of their wings. No other butterfly in the Carolinas boasts the same red band. This band has a sharp black and white margin. Paralleling it is an orange leading edge to their forewing. At the outside bottom of their hindwing is a special defensive pattern, a blue spot flanked on either side by black and orange semicircles and with a double set of “tails” protruding just above. This collection of features mimics their face, at least in the eyes of predatory insects, and draws attention to it. Many Hairstreaks employ this same defense and will slowly rub their hindwings together when perched to better emphasize it. The corner of their hindwings is actually weaker than the rest of their wings, allowing the wing to break off if attacked and the butterfly to fly away scarred but unfettered.
Red-banded Hairstreaks are quite unique as caterpillars too. They’re actually, in a way, detritivores. Rather than feeding on fresh foliage, they feed on the fallen leaves of several shrubs. Female butterflies lay their eggs in the leaf litter beneath these bushes and their young’uns happily munch away on freshly fallen leaves. It’s an ingenious strategy, as it means their larvae are safe from many patrolling insect predators and food is available essentially year-round. Red-banded Hairstreaks primarily host on Wax-Myrtles (Morella spp.) and Winged Sumac (Rhus copallinum). Both of these shrubs are extremely common in the Lowcountry. Thus so is the Red-banded Hairstreak and it can be spotted anytime from March through October. The adult butterflies are particularly fond of small white and yellow flowers for nectar nourishment, particularly Goldenrods, Bonesets, Pepperbush, and members of the Carrot family.
This week for Flora and Fauna Friday, we’ve got a shrubby symmetrical sun-loving sand ridge wildflower, Forked Bluecurls (Trichostema dichotomum).
Forked Bluecurls are found throughout the Atlantic Coastline of the United States and across all of South Carolina. It’s an annual plant, growing about knee to waist high, into a small upright bush. They grow best on dry, sandy soils and are common under pine savannas, on our Sea Island sand ridges, and along sunny upland roadsides. The stems of Forked Blucurls are covered in dense, fine hairs and often blush a burgundy-red when growing in full sun. Its leaves are light-green, small, simple, diamond-shaped, and oppositely arranged. That opposite arrangement gives the whole plant some visual symmetry and its “forked” first name. But it owes its surname to it flowers.
From the start of September through mid-October, Forked Bluecurls are in full bloom. The bush becomes emblazoned in a brilliant glow of purple-blue flowers. (“Blurple” being the technical term for this color.) Each flower is about a half-inch in size and held upright. The flowers have four short blue petals reaching left and right and a fifth long petal flowing forward and down with a blue tip and a white middle speckled by blue spots. Overtop the petals hangs a great curled arch of four anthers and one stigma. This flower is a carefully crafted apparatus for enforcing efficient pollination. When a bee approaches for a landing, that white patch on the lower petal beams in reflected ultraviolet light, like a runway beacon guiding its way. Once the bee touches down and leans in for nectar, those blue curls scrape against its back, depositing and extracting pollen. It’s a very effective system and, consequently, Forked Bluecurls are a prolific self-seeder. Despite being an annual, they’re a plant that can be relied upon, year after year, to return to any yard or native plant garden. Albeit, not always where originally intended!
This week for Flora and Fauna Friday we have the reigning regent of our ropey reptiles, the Eastern Kingsnake (Lampropeltis getula).
The Eastern Kingsnake ranges through the Mid-Atlantic States, from New Jersey through Florida, and in all of South Carolina. They’re found in a wide array of habitats but are most abundant in lands surrounding swamps and other waterbodies, where food is abundant. Unlike most of our southeastern snakes, Kingsnakes are primarily diurnal, rousing at daybreak and hunting throughout much of the day.
Kingsnakes are marked with a bold, bicolored pattern of jet-black divided by thin crosswise bands of ivory-white. These white bands interconnect with each other along their flanks to weave a net-like, reticulated pattern extending down over their belly. Their head is crowned with a smattering of white dots and dashes. Each snake has a unique head pattern, which can identify them like a name. They’re a striking, unmistakable, and handsome snake to behold. Kingsnakes are big and heavy to boot. They most often grow to three to four feet long but can exceed six feet in the wild. They’re strong constrictors and thus have a heavy, stout frame that hints at their muscled physique and big appetite.
Kingsnakes hunt a wide array of animals for food. Their diet is composed of mainly frogs, lizards, rodents, eggs, and snakes. Kingsnakes are renowned for their tolerance to viper venom, being essentially immune to the bites of Copperheads, Cottonmouths, and even Rattlesnakes. Kingsnakes lack any form of venom. Kingsnakes are harmless to humans, but not to their prey. Instead of toxic teeth they use their well-toned torso to constrict, strangle, and crush their prey before swallowing it whole. That includes venomous snakes nearly their same length! Vipers, despite being heavy and impressively large, are all bite and no might; they’re a glass cannon. Venom is their one and only defense and, if it fails, a viper is out of options. This is weakness of vipers is an ecological niche the Eastern Kingsnake has adapted to capitalize on, and the matchup couldn’t be worse for the viper. Like a black belt in jiu jitsu thrown into a bar fight, it takes a Kingsnake mere seconds to fold its opponent into an inescapable and incomprehensibly painful pretzel-like shape. Kingsnakes adhere to the age old adage of ‘might makes right’ and have been coronated the “King Snake” by early naturalists due to their uncontested position in the serpent pecking order.
But their reign is waning and their kingdom in tatters. Eastern Kingsnake populations have declined dramatically range-wide over the last few decades. The reasons behind this decline, despite coordinated research by multiple states, are worryingly unknown. The declines are even occuring in some of the most extensive and sheltered swaths of habitat on the landscape, implying the causes are subtle, diffuse, and inescapably chronic. Ubiquitous factors in the southeastern landscape like habitat loss, degradation, and fragmentation, climatic instability, invasive species, pollution, and exotic diseases are assumed to all be playing a part in some way to the withering of Eastern Kingsnake populations. Kingsnakes, being a snake eater, are also particularly poised to be overexposed and sensitive to environmental conditions that impact snake populations. Kingsnakes are more intensively exposed to snake diseases and bio-accumulating pollutants, given they subsist on a diet of snakes. Their prey may be suffering with these ailments and pass those on to the hunter. You are what you eat after all. In parallel, if other snake populations decline, that means less food for the Kingsnakes and their populations must contract accordingly to remain stable. It’s a double whammy. However, this is all speculative conjecture on my part. The takeaway is that Eastern Kingsnakes are in a rough spot and they need our attention and care to ensure their continued prosperity and governance over the snakes of South Carolina.
