This week for Flora and Fauna Friday, we have not so much a species but an assorted collection of fascinating parasites, plant galls.
Plant galls are, ostensibly, plant tumors. However, rather than forming due to genetic degradation and mutation, like with cancer, they are instead caused by an outside force. Think of them less like cancer and more like warts. Plant galls can be formed by any manner of parasitic organism, be they a bacterium, fungus, nematode, mite, aphid, fly, moth, wasp, beetle, or something else. Due to the unique way each species of gall-forming parasite interacts with the physiology and biochemistry of the plant, each different parasite species creates their own distinct looking galls, some with incredibly intricate and well-adapted shapes.
The way a gall forms is first by a foreign organism entering the tissue of the plant. They do so either through an open wound, as with some fungi and bacteria, or, as with many of the gall-forming arthropods, by being laid in a wound created by the parent animal. Once inside the plant, the parasite starts releasing chemicals that mimic certain hormonal signals of the plant. Because plants lack a central nervous system, they communicate internally primarily through hormonal signals. By mimicking these signals, the parasite can force the tissue of the plant in its immediate vicinity to grow in very specific and peculiar ways. This often creates strange and fantastical looking growths that resemble no natural feature of the host plant. The bacterium, fungus, or invertebrate is doing this for one specific reason, free room and board. Rather than attacking the plant directly, the gall-former has tricked the plant’s own biochemistry into engulfing it with a protective shell made of nutritious plant tissue. As the parasite feasts on this newly formed gall, the plant keeps regenerating it. It’s a simply ingenious strategy. However, the plants catch on eventually and so this trick works best only during the growing season. Thus most gall-formers are adapted to take advantage of this narrow window of opportunity before going dormant until the next spring.
Plant galls can appear on any part of the plant. However, leaf and twig galls are generally the most common. Some common plant galls in our area include the following. The Goldenrod Stem Gall which is caused by a fly. Sweetleaf Gall which is caused by a fungus. Witch-Hazel Cone Gall which is caused by an aphid. Crown Gall which is caused by a bacterium. Spongy Oak Apple Gall which is caused by a wasp. Hickory Leaf Gall formed by an aphid. Lastly, Root Knot which is induced by soil nematodes and is a major agricultural pest in the Southeast.
This week for Flora and Fauna Friday we have an irritating but interesting insect, the Tussock Moths (Genus Orygia).
Here in the Lowcountry we have three species of Tussock Moth: the Live Oak Tussock Moth (O. detrita), the White-marked Tussock Moth (O. leucostigma), and the Definite Tussock Moth (O. definita). Tussock Moths are most easily recognized as a caterpillar. Their larvae have a colorful head, bright orange and yellow spots and stripes, contrasting black and white markings, and are totally coated in an assemblage of various whiskers, hairs, and plumes. Their three caterpillars are very similar in appearance but easily distinguished from one another. The Definite has a yellow head, the White-marked has a set of white or yellow racing stripes down the back, and the Live Oak Tussock Moth has a red head and no white stripes.
The Live Oak Tussock Moth is definitely the most common of the bunch on Edisto Island, so it’s who I’ll focus on. Its larval host plants are principally oaks, particularly Live Oak, which is why it’s so common in the Lowcountry. The Live Oak Tussock Moth caterpillar comes in one of two color morphs, gray and yellow. The yellow is less common and is washed across its entire body with pastel yellows. The gray flavor is the prototypical morph. Its body is phosphate-gray with a thin pastel-yellow stripe on the lower flank, a line of tangerine-orange dots down the side, and a thick black stripe down the back accented with more orange spots. Their head is a vibrant scarlet and straddled by a pair of long, black, feathery whiskers. On their rear is an upward pointing black and chestnut bundle of whiskers and all along their sides is a sparse forest of stiff hairs. Yet, the most striking feature is the tussocks, four dense clumps of white or cream-colored hairs rising like a centurion’s crest from its upper back. These tussocks are not only the moth’s namesake but also the source of its infamy. Each hair in the tussock is microscopically barbed down its entire length. They’re what’s known as urticating hairs and their sole purpose is to cause irritation and itching in whatever touches the caterpillar. On top of that, each hair is attached to a tiny venom gland, which coats them in a mild venom just to make them even itchier. The “sting” of the Tussock Moth is not dangerous to humans, just highly irritating. Children are especially susceptible due to their sensitive skin along with their curiosity leading them to grab the caterpillars.
When Tussock Moth caterpillars descend from their oaken nurseries to pupate, they can become quite the nuisance. They drop to the ground and swarm out and over anything they encounter, looking for the perfect cozy crevice where they can spin a cocoon. Often your lawn furniture, siding, and eaves make the grade and they spin a cocoon there, sometimes with several caterpillars clustering together. Like most moths, their populations can fluctuate dramatically from year to year. Sometimes they’re scarce and other times they’re seemingly everywhere. Throughout this all, we mere humans can do nothing other than make way for them. Most of us, myself included, having been traumatized as curious children into a lifetime of quietly complying when these bumbling caterpillars make their yearly debut.
The tussocks play a vital role in the defensive strategy and life history of the Moth. Most obviously, they’re a defense strategy for the caterpillar. Any predator that gets a mouthful, or eye-full or nose-full, of stinging hairs quickly learns to never do that again. However, the hairs’ defensive capabilities extend beyond the caterpillar. When the caterpillar pupates, these hairs are shed and spun into the lining of its cocoon. You can often still see the caterpillar’s whiskers and hairs sticking out of the cocoon, making it look like a white dust-bunny. These hairs can retain their urticating qualities for a whole year, protecting the pupa within. However, it doesn’t stop there. The pupae metamorphose within a few weeks. The male Live Oak Tussock Moth is a small, brown, cryptically patterned moth. There’s nothing too special about him. The female on the other hand is very interesting indeed. She is not only a flightless moth but almost completely wingless! She emerges from her cocoon a ghostly white with a swollen egg-shaped abdomen. She then hangs nearby the cocoon, releasing pheromones to draw in a male. Once she’s mated, she returns to her cocoon and fills it full of eggs, coats them in a protective foam, and then rubs urticating hairs from her body into the foam. After that’s all said and done, she dies. Her eggs then lay dormant, in a very itchy cradle, until they hatch the following spring.
This week for Flora and Fauna Friday, we have our compact coastal chestnut, the American Chinquapin (Castanea pumila).
Chinquapin, also spelled Chinkapin, is a large shrub, bordering on small tree, found across the Southeast. Here on the coast, it’s most commonly found in uplands on high sandy soils. Chinquapin is typically found in clearings or roadsides within oak-hickory forests and pine forests and can tolerate intermittent fire. It’s by no means a common plant in the modern day but can be reliably be found, albeit few and far between, in the right habitats. Chinquapin leaves are large, elliptical, toothed along the margin, and are coated in a silvery-bronze sheen of hairs underneath. Its growth form is shrubby and gnarled. The best way to spot a Chinquapin is by its flowers and the best time for that is mid-May. Chinquapins produce a profusion of cream-white fuzzy flower spikes from their twigs in the middle of Spring. These flowers are hard to miss and attract droves of pollinators to buzz about the bushes. Flowers require cross-pollination with another Chinquapin to mature. Once pollinated, the flowers can set seed and spiney fruits begin to appear. These fruits grow and harden into hedgehog inspired globes of sharp spines. Within this outer husk is cradled a single Chinquapin nut. The Chinquapin is a native species of chestnut and their nut has many of the characteristic qualities of chestnuts. However it is small, round, and nearly black towards the tip, which set the nut apart. They’re edible and quite flavorful as well. However, I’d recommend against foraging for Chinquapins as they’re hard to find, not very productive, and in need of some conservation care.
You may have heard about the American Chestnut (C. dentata), which was a massive hardwood tree that once dominated the Appalachian mountain range, defined ecosystems, and sustained millions of turkeys, deer, livestock, and people with its reliable annual production of nuts. They weren’t found here on the coastal plain but their diminutive cousin, the Chinquapin, was and still is. At the beginning of the 1900s a parasitic fungus called Chestnut Blight (Cryphonectria parasitica) made its way to North America, likely through the transplantation of Chinese Chestnut (C. mollissima) trees into the United States. The fungus attacks the trunk of the tree, infecting its vasculature and eventually girdling the tree. However, it rarely infects the root system. Both the Chinquapin and the American Chestnut were susceptible to this fungal disease. Chinquapins had a slight natural resistance to the blight. This coupled with their small size and adaptations to fire allowed them to persevere, but not unscathed. Their populations are drastically reduced from what they were historically. American Chestnut, on the other hand, was especially vulnerable and has been driven nearly into extinction. This has had dramatic ecological and economic impacts across the Appalachians. However, hope is not lost! A few American Chestnuts still survive to this day. The American Chestnut Foundation is actively working to restore the American Chestnut back to its native range. They’ve created several promising blight resistant cultivars they hope to begin planting into the wild in the coming decades.
This week for Flora and Fauna Friday, it’s our shellfish shucking cinnabar-snouted shorebird, the American Oystercatcher (Haematopus palliatus).
The American Oystercatcher is common all along the southeastern seaboard and is a year-round resident of Edisto Island. They’re found on beaches, sand bars, lagoons, and the banks of tidal creeks. Out of all our shorebirds, it’s one of the largest and definitely the most recognizable. Untanned pale-pink legs, a snow-white belly, a chocolate-brown back, a black hood, a yolk-yellow eye with orange eyeliner, and a long heavy bill tipped with gold and dyed so dark with orange as too look scarlet. There’s just nothing else like them! American Oystercatchers, unsurprisingly, eat oysters. They also eat clams and mussels here in the Lowcountry, as well other mollusks and crustaceans they chance upon. Oystercatchers employ a unique technique for feeding on hard-shelled bivalves. As they patrol an oyster reef, they look for oysters with their shells open a smidge. Using a quick surgical strike of their oyster knife bill, they jab into the shell, slice the muscle that holds the shell closed, and wedge the halves apart. They’re then able to slurp up their catch at their leisure.
American Oystercatchers depend on oyster reefs for food and they rely on barrier islands for nesting habitat. They nest on the ground in dune ecosystems or on sand banks, where predators are scarce. This makes them highly sensitive to human disturbance during their nesting period, which in South Carolina starts in April and continues through July. Which means they’re nesting during peak season for beachgoers. This puts Oystercatchers greatly at risk of decline as coastal development increases and beach uses intensify. Many imperiled beach-nesting birds have a similar life history and face the same threats. This fact underlines the importance of respecting SCDNR conservation regulations when visiting Lowcountry beaches, which are in place to protect shorebirds. It also highlights the critical importance of coastal sanctuaries, including Crab Bank, Bird Key, Deveaux Bank, and Otter and Pine Islands, to Lowcountry shorebird and seabird conservation efforts.
This week for Flora and Fauna Friday, we have a salty, succulent, seaside shrub, American Searocket (Cakile edentula).
Across the coast, over the dunes, and down upon the beach is where you’re likely to spy American Searocket. Searocket is well adapted to this habitat on the immediate coast, and I mean the immediate coast. It is pretty much only found right there on the beach, just above the wrack line, or on sand banks in the mouths of rivers. Searocket is an easy plant to identify. It’s a member of the Mustard family, Brassicaceae, and looks a lot like its condiment cousins. Searocket is compact with a fleshy stem and thick, emerald-green leaves sporting a toothed margin. Its leaves are edible raw or cooked. Searocket flowers are small, four-petalled, and light-pink to white. The flowers are pollinated by a myriad of beach-going insects and mature into a spike of pointed seedpods. The seeds are dispersed both by the ever-present sea breeze and the tides of the Atlantic. Searocket doesn’t like freezing temperatures and can live as either an annual, biennial, or perennial depending on the climate. Here on Edisto, it tends towards the latter two.
You may be wondering what the name “Searocket” has to do with this plant. The term rocket originated from “rochetto”, the Italian word for spools, coils, reels, and other generally cylindrical objects, like shuttles used in weaving. When you look at Searocket, you’ll notice it has cylindrical or “shuttle-shaped” seedpods. Those seedpods are where the plant got its common name. That Italian word was applied generically to radishes, mustards, and the like. Somehow, someway, the term made its way into the English lexicon to refer to this plant and its close relatives, without any of the context. (Sort of like how the German word for “Sea Radish” morphed into the English word “Horseradish”.) Later, when the west first learned of eastern rocket technology, the same Italian term was used to describe those rockets’ shape, which was like a loom’s shuttle. So both rockets and Searockets get their names from that same Italian word, in reference to a distinct shape they have.
This week for Flora and Fauna Friday we have our weirdest and flattest turtle, the Florida Softshell (Apalone ferox).
The Florida Softshell is found throughout Florida, a bit of Alabama, lower Georgia, and up to Edisto and Johns Islands here in South Carolina. It is one of our two species of softshell turtle, the other being the Spiny Softshell (A. spinifera) which is found throughout South Carolina. Of the two, the Florida Softshell is bigger, with females being able to reach two-feet in length. Males are half that size. The Spiny Softshell is more partial to streams and rivers, where the Florida Softshell prefers slower moving waters, like lakes, large ponds, swamps, freshwater marshes, rice impoundments, and even large ditches. The Florida Softshell is a strange looking beast, especially for a turtle. Its face has a long and narrow pig-nose, tall forehead, dark and piercing eyes, long neck, pink skin, and heavy lips that partially hide a dark, “toothy” grimace. Its legs are flabby and flappy and its shell is flat, wide, leathery, and covered in small lumps. However, these characteristics help them adapt to their preferred habitats.
Much like snapping turtles, our Softshell Turtles are ambush hunters. They prefer to lie in wait and let food come to them. They do this by burying themselves in sand or mud in shallow water, leaving only their head poking out. When something comes within range, they use their long neck and strong beak to strike out and grab it. Florida Softshells typically hunt crustaceans, snails, fish, frogs, and any other small creatures that come within range. They also use their long neck to reach up to breathe while buried in shallow water while they use that pointed nose like a snorkel. Those eyes up on top of their head allow them not only to look up out of the water if needed but also to bury their head partially for added camouflage. Their shell, although covered in skin, is still solid bone underneath. However, the edges of the shell lack bones and are hence flexible, allowing them to better navigate tight spaces without getting stuck and providing a better range of motion for their legs. Their flat shell, relatively flexible body, and large webbed feet also make them excellent swimmers, allowing them to cut through swift currents and fast moving waterways. They’re also surprisingly fast on land when they need to be. You’re most likely to spot a Florida Softshell in early summer, when they come on land to lay eggs, or you may catch a glimpse of one sunning along a bank throughout summer and fall.
This week for Flora and Fauna Friday it’s our native Easter-time lily, the Rain Lily (Zephyranthes atamasca).
Also known as the Atamasco or Zephyr Lily, the Rain Lily is found across the Southeast, including much of South Carolina. It’s typically found underneath forests along river floodplains or swamps and proliferates most on damp soils in partial shade. Like our other Lilies, Rain Lily is a bulb plant and can tolerate a wide range of site conditions thanks to this bulb. It will also spread to create sparse colonies in good habitat. The Rain Lily’s leaves are thin and grass-like, arching up out of and back down onto the surface of the soil. Rain Lily blooms in early spring, about the time we get our first spring rains, and will continue through April in ideal conditions. Its flowers are a large, ice-white, six-petalled trumpet with golden anthers and a lime-green center. Flowers are usually held pointing straight up and only a foot or so above the ground. Rain Lily is very tolerant of a wide range of soils here in the Lowcountry and can be a great edition to home gardens, reliably providing a burst of spring color every year, like a daffodil or narcissus would. They are also a good pollinator plant, being frequented by many species of large bees and butterflies.
This week for Flora and Fauna Friday it’s the saffron-soaked, sweet-singing songbird of the southern swamps, the Prothonotary Warbler (Protonotaria citrea).
The sounds of summer don’t solidify until the cypress seem to shudder and flutter with the echoes of this bird’s staccato serenade, a series of cyclic “Sweet!” statements spit skyward by this sulfur-stained songbird. This is the sonorous signature our Prothonotary Warbler signs to its swampy abode. Found throughout the East Coast and the Mississippi River basin, the Prothonotary Warbler calls our swamps, bottomlands, floodplains, oxbows, and carolina bays home from spring through summer. It seems wherever one can find abundant cypress, you can spy this warbler. The Prothonotary Warbler is a hard bird to miss as their head and breast positively glow a radiant sunflower-yellow, like the sun bursting through the cavernous and claustrophobic canopy of the swamp. Their shoulders fade to brass and their wings and tail transition to a uniform silvery-black. A beady black eye and pointed black beak poke prominently out from their head.
The Prothonotary Warbler is one of our many migratory warblers but they have some unique traits and fall within a genus by themselves. Like most warblers, they are insectivorous and a leaf gleaners, patrolling the canopy and mid-story for morsels. Their call is a loud, resonant series of repetitive “sweet” notes that can be heard far and wide as the song reverberates between the foliage of the forest canopy and the black waters of the swamp below it. Prothonotary Warblers are our only cavity nesting warbler, using holes carved by woodpeckers to build their nests. So, if you live by a swamp, you may be able to attract nesting Prothonotary Warblers in spring by hanging nest boxes from trees over standing water or by mounting bluebird boxes to the back of free-standing duck nest boxes. These little yellow birds need the help too. Prothonotary Warbler populations have been in decline over much of their range since the 1960s due to historic habitat loss from historic bottomland deforestation, wetland draining, and river damming.
On a final tangent, you’re probably wondering to yourself what in the world prothonotary means. The term prothonotary in the modern United States refers to the title of Clerk of Court, specifically the chief clerk of a court of common pleas, but the term also applied to head scribes, clerks, and other similar positions at various times throughout history. It has long been told that the head scribes or clerks in various incarnations of the Roman Empire wore yellow hooded robes and thus, just like the Northern Cardinal was named after the catholic cardinals who wore red robes, the Prothonotary Warbler was named after these Roman prothonotaries who donned golden-yellow hoods. However, if one digs into history a bit, you find no references to, or paintings of, Roman prothonotaries wearing yellow vestments. If you dig into historical descriptions of the Prothonotary Warbler, you find expert naturalists from over a hundred years ago clueless as to why people call it the Prothonotary Warbler. Some have instead suggested that the term was applied to the birds colloquially by French colonists in Louisiana. Louisiana’s colonial government had an integral public notary system with local chief notaries, who held the title of Prothonotary. Apparently the people who held these bureaucratic positions, which were essential to the colony, developed a reputation for obnoxiously intrusive and repetitive conversational habits. So this yellow swamp bird, with a loud monotonous song that’s prolific in and around the Mississippi delta, is hypothesized to have been affectionately named by French colonists after their inescapable and annoying local bureaucrats, rather than after head scribes in the Holy Roman Empire. This obscure part of French colonial government was eventually lost from common knowledge and so, not having something to pin the name’s origin on, English speaking naturalists turned to the word’s use within the Roman Empire. Then at some point the origin of the birds name was likely conflated with that of the Northern Cardinal. Before you know it, history is rewritten to claim that Roman Prothonotaries wore yellow robes, all because a songbird has a weird first name. Or at least that’s what the competing theory proposes.
This week for Flora and Fauna Friday we have the bluish beacons of spring fields, Toadflax (Nuttallanthus spp.).
Blue Toadflax (N. canadensis) is found throughout South Carolina and much of the East Coast. Its cousin Texas Toadflax (N. texanus) is common in the western United States but can also be found less commonly across South Carolina. Toadflax are annuals commonly found in sunny open areas and on disturbed soils. Places like pastures, farm fields, roadsides, and lawns. They’re also rather drought tolerant and will crop up on sand ridges, pine-barrens, and dune systems too. Toadflax have small, narrow, pointed leaves that are yellowy-green in color and a nearly succulent texture. They spread laterally with prostrate stems from a central point, forming a clump as they grow. From the center of the clump and from the tip of each stem will emerge flower stalks. These flower stalks typically don’t grow much more than a foot in height and each bears a spike of flowers at the tip. Each flower is snapdragon-like in shape, about a quarter-inch in size, and a subtle blend of white, pastel-pink, and lavender that often blurs into blue or purple at a distance. Blue Toadflax tends to be bluer, with darker shades contrasting its white center. Texas Toadflax flowers tend to be paler, with all colors blurring together, and a bit larger overall. More distinctly the “spur” of the flower, which extends down and back towards the stem, is generally a good fifty-percent longer in Texas Toadflax than Blue Toadflax. However, at a distance, both species look identical. This “spur” is where the flower holds its nectar and, as you might be able to guess, means Toadflax provides food to native pollinators. Its leaves are also the host plant for the Common Buckeye butterfly (Junonia coenia), who’s first brood of caterpillars each year relies on Toadflax for food. As Toadflax seeds are wind dispersed, they colonize new habitats readily and can be spotted blooming just about anywhere dry and sunny in the Lowcountry in early spring. They’re some of the first annual wildflowers to bloom and will often fill up a field or lawn in early spring, briefly setting the entire acreage aglow in an electric-plasma-blue.
Rendering of final restoration by architect Simons Young
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Mellon Foundation Awards Transformational Grant to the Edisto Island Open Land Trust
The Edisto Island Open Land Trust (EIOLT) will begin the final phase of restoration of the historic Hutchinson House on Edisto Island this year, with the goal of opening both the house and grounds to the public in 2024. The next critical phase of this project is the planning and implementation of a robust and innovative humanities-based interpretation of the site. The Mellon Foundation has just stepped in to help make this next goal a reality, by awarding EIOLT a $950,000 grant to support the interpretation of the Hutchinson House site, including research and exhibit installation, programming, and the hiring of a full-time director.
“This transformational gift is incredibly generous and appreciated. It will provide the resources needed to showcase the Hutchinson House as a centerpiece for telling the full story of the African enslavement, emancipation, land ownership, resilience, and the successes one family was able to attain, on the site where all these things took place”. John Girault, EIOLT Executive Director. A very special thank you also goes out to Barbara Habhegger, who devoted a great deal of her time working on the application for the Mellon Foundation grant request.
The Hutchinson House, listed on the National Register in 1987, represents one of the oldest houses on Edisto identified with the African American community after the Civil War. Henry Hutchinson built the home circa 1885 as a wedding gift for his bride, Rosa Swinton Hutchinson and they lived there until their deaths in 1940 and 1949, respectively. The home stood as a shining example of what could be achieved when a community comes together to persevere and flourish.
Since purchasing the property in 2016, EIOLT’s primary focus has been on saving this endangered historic house from collapse, and then restoring it, as closely as possible, to its original appearance. Stabilization and exterior reconstruction are completed. Funds have been raised to preserve and restore the interior and add back the original wrap around porches and the rear room of the house. It is anticipated the physical reconstruction will be completed by early 2024.
Funds from the Mellon Foundation will be put into action right away, with the recruitment of a full time Hutchinson House Director, who will help oversee the expenditure of this grant award over the next three years.
