This week for Flora and Fauna Friday, we have our common compact wader, the Green Heron (Butorides virescens).
Buried between the buckling branches and broken boughs on the banks of a backwater bottomland stalks our Green Heron. Green Herons are a small, stocky wading bird with proportionately shorter legs than most of our other herons and egrets and a neck tucked tight against the body. They’re about the size of a crow. Despite the compact body plan, the Green Heron still sports that trademark long serpentine neck of the herons. Which, fully extended, is as long as its whole torso. Green Herons are an easy bird to identify just by their size and shape. However, their plumage is also distinct; Golden eyes, golden legs, dark bill, a neck and breast saturated with a rich burgundy-brown broken only by a jagged white streak down the center, all capped off with a mantle, wings, and crown of inky iridescent-green. The Green Heron’s call is a staple sound of the dog days of summer along our marshes, a sharp, ringing “Skyow!” that trails off as it soars overhead or a short burst of harsh growls and clucks as it jettisons itself from a creek bank.
Green Herons are most abundant on Edisto Island in the summer, after they’ve returned from a spring of nesting in the rookeries. However, juveniles and a few resident birds can be spotted around the Sea Islands year-round. Green Herons are generalists and can be found in most permanent wetland habitats. From the backwater lagoons of the barriers island, up the pluff-mud banks and into the cordgrass along the tidal creeks, along the rice field dikes, into the cypress swamps and bottomlands, and around the oxbow lakes, canals, reservoirs, and ponds, they can be found all across South Carolina. Green Herons are ambush hunters. They prefer to nestle onto a promising cove, snag, mat, or hummock positioned over standing water to wait for passing prey, rather than to wade for prey like our larger herons and egrets. From there they use their extra-long neck to strike through the surface of the water. Green Herons feed mainly on small fish but also a wide variety of little critters, including crayfish, insects, and frogs.
This week for flora and fauna Friday we have a common cosmopolitan colony fern, Bracken (Pteridium aquilinum).
Bracken, also called Eagle Fern, is a widespread fern in the southeast and an extremely successful genus with a worldwide distribution. Its spores are very lightweight and so it has been able to distribute itself globally through wind dispersal. Bracken generally grows in woodlands, beneath the forest canopy. It prefers more acidic soils and is both drought and fire tolerant. Thus it can be found at home practically everywhere in the Southeast. It is a vigorous colonizer and will spread laterally to form huge colonies of densely packed fronds. The fronds of Bracken are large, triangular, and often wider than they are long. They are also generally held upright, with the blade bending at a forty-five degree angle from the stalk. Each frond emerges as a single wiry stalk sent up from the earth and its leaf blade is usually divided into seven leaflets, or pinna to be technical. Each pinna is again divided into a dozen or two pinnules, which themselves each have another dozen or so lobes on them. The key things to look for to identify Bracken are these pinnules and how the lobes of those closer to the tip of the pinna start to merge together, with the terminal pinnules being narrow and un-lobed. This characteristic, along with the broad triangular frond, make Bracken easy to pick out in the southern woodlands.
Another major reason for Bracken’s success is that its foliage contains a chemical called Ptaquiloside, which is toxic to nearly all mammals. This chemical causes hemorrhagic diseases and tumors in cattle, deer, pig, rabbits, rodents, and other mammals. It is also a carcinogen in humans and can cause gastro-intestinal cancer when eaten. This means that, although Bracken can be found nearly everywhere, it is rarely eaten by herbivores and can thus grow in peace, un-browsed.
Here on Edisto Island and across the Lowcountry, Bracken is often used as an indicator species for quickly delineating wetland boundaries. Bracken is one of our few colony forming upland ferns and it grows almost exclusively on upland soils. Because of this and its ubiquitous presence on the landscape, it can serve as a rough boundary of wetlands for ecologists and land managers. Bracken will often grow right up to the edge of a permanent wetland or into the margin of regular ephemeral wetlands, but not into it. Within the wetland can be found many of our other common colony forming ferns, like Chain Ferns (Woodwardia sp.). This creates a sort of no-ferns-land on the boundary which neither the wetland ferns nor Bracken can successfully colonize. On dry years Bracken gain grounds in this boundary but then retreats inland in wet years. Thus it is not a perfect means of delineation but, in the field, it can give a good idea by eye of the area where a wetland’s boundary falls.
This week for Flora and Fauna Friday we’ve got a long-legged leopard-printed night-goer, the Southern Leopard Frog (Lithobates sphenocephalus).
The Southern Leopard Frog can be found all across South Carolina. They are not picky about habitat and can be found in pretty much any semi-permanent body of freshwater in the Lowcountry. They are also surprising salt tolerant for an amphibian and can even live in an array of brackish wetlands. Our Leopard Frog is the easiest to identify of the “true frogs” of the genus Lithobates. They’re roughly three inches in length and have a distinctive pointed head, with the specific epithet of their Latin name “spenocephalus” meaning “wedge-head”. Southern Leopard Frogs are primarily bronze in color and sometimes a pine-green along the spine, with two raised ivory-white lines down each side of their back and small dark-brown blotches across the body. These blotches giving it the “leopard” part of the common name. The call of our Leopard Frog is unmistakable, sounding like someone flicking the teeth on a plastic comb, except low pitched and variable in tone. Like most frogs, the best time to see and hear a Leopard Frog is at night following heavy rains. However, Leopard Frogs are also fairly active in the day and can often be spotted on pond banks and ditch edges, usually as they jump out of sight. Like most frogs, their primary defense mechanism is jumping. This allows them to shoot off the ground and move several feet in an instant, generally in the direction of the nearest body of water. Leopard Frogs primarily eat insects, spiders, worms, and other invertebrates. They usually hunt by ambush, posting up beside a wetland and allowing the prey to come to them. Frogs and Toads have a sticky tongue which they are able to flick out and whip back, drawing food into their mouth.
Leopard Frogs prefer to lay eggs in shallow ephemeral wetlands. Ephemeral wetlands are lowland areas which dry up entirely during the year. More particularly, frogs and other amphibians like to breed in isolated ephemeral wetlands. These are areas that are disconnected and distant from permanent wetlands and generally only fill with water after prolonged heavy rains. These conditions are important to the frog because it means there are no fish, which are the number one predator of their eggs and tadpoles. Non-isolated ephemeral wetlands, like floodplains and marshes, often flood when a nearby permanent wetland overflows or a stream breaches its banks. Within those floodwaters comes fish and fish eggs, which populate the ephemeral wetland and feed on the frogs and their offspring. Isolated ephemeral wetlands have less risk of fish establishing and so are often a safer bet for a baby frog nursery.
This week for Flora and Fauna Friday we have an overlooked but very common wildflower, St. Andrew’s-cross (Hypericum hypericoides).
St. Andrew’s-cross is found throughout the Southeast and South Carolina. It’s a member of the St. John’s-worts and, in my opinion, our most common and easily identified member of their genus. St. Andrew’s-cross can be found in all manner of upland habitats and is particularly common on our sandy coastal soils. St. Andrew’s-cross is a small woody shrub, often only growing one to three feet tall with sparsely vegetated branches. It’s perennial and evergreen, with opposite, simple leaves a shade of soft, pale green. Its stems are narrow and rich cinnamon-brown. St. Andrew’s-cross blooms in the dead of summer, generally starting in July and continuing through August. Its flower is light yellow with four narrow petals, laid flat atop two spade-shaped bracts, and at the center a small off-green ovary in a cloud of short anthers. Distinctly, its flower petals are set apart from each other at roughly sixty and one-hundred-and-twenty degree angles, rather than a square ninety degrees. Once pollinated, the petals fall away and the two bracts dry and fold up to enclose the ovary like a clamshell. These folded up bracts, along with the diagonal flowers, make this plant easy to identify in the field.
Today’s plant gets its common name from the uneven diagonal arrangement of its flower. This petal pattern of the St. Andrew’s-cross flower is reminiscent of the shape of St. Andrew’s Cross, the form of which is best exemplified by the saltire on the Flag of Scotland. The Apostle Andrew was said to have been crucified on a diagonal cross. The flag of Scotland prominently displays a single diagonal cross and was named in reverence of St. Andrew. The Scottish flag itself is likely the inspiration for the name of the St Andrew’s-cross plant.
This week for Flora and Fauna Friday we’ve got a two-faced cherry-picking butterfly, the Red-spotted Purple (Limenitis arthemis astyanax).
The Red-spotted Purple is a common woodland butterfly found throughout the Eastern United States. It’s a moderately-large butterfly found along forest edges, dirt roads, walking trails, and orchards. They are partial to landing on bare ground to lap up minerals from damp soil. You’re just as likely to see them on the ground as you are on a flower, and they’re hard to miss! The Red-spotted Purple has a black base color. On the top of the wings it is washed in a vibrant sky-blue iridescence. This blue and black is complimented by fine white marks on the wing margins and a handful of orange spots at the tips of the forewing. Underneath, bold orange spots dominate the pattern, flanking the wing margins atop waves of powder-blue crescents in a sea of faint, blue iridescence. They are one of our most striking butterflies. The Red-spotted Purple’s caterpillars host on several groups of woody plants including willows, blueberries, and cherries. Black Cherry is their preference around Edisto Island. Both the larvae and pupae of Red-spotted Purples mimic bird droppings.
The Red-spotted Purple is a subspecies of the White Admiral (L. arthemis), which is found along the Great Lakes and in New England. The two subspecies have markedly different color patterns but are still all one species. The White Admiral has a heavy white band across each set of wings. This white band is totally absent in our Red-spotted Purple, instead replaced by extensive blue iridescence. The red-spotted Purple is in the same genus as the Viceroy (L. archippus) and these two species share similar body shapes, behaviors, and ecologies. One of those shared traits is mimicry. The Viceroy mimics the toxic Monarch and the Red-spotted Purple mimics the poisonous Pipevine Swallowtail. Interesting to note is that the Red-spotted Purple’s range stops and the White Admiral starts at the same latitude where the Pipevine Swallowtail’s range ends. So the mimicry clearly offers an advantage to the species in the South but must be a hindrance in the Northeast.
This week for Flora and Fauna Friday we have a widespread wildflower of wet woodlands, Jack-in-the-pulpit (Arisaema triphyllum).
Jack-in-the-pulpit is a perennial wildflower found throughout the Eastern United States, to include Edisto Island. It grows most commonly in shady woodlands with a sparse understory. There it crops up singly or in a small colony within depressions and damp spots in the soil with a high water table. Jack-in-the-pulpit is an easy plant to identify. It has large three-lobed leaves that emerge straight from the ground, generally in pairs, with each leaflet being angled roughly ninety degrees apart from one another and the whole leaf reaching a foot or two above the ground. Below these leaves emerges a unique flower for our uplands.
Jack-in-the-pulpit is a member of the Arum family, Araceae. Arums are best known for their large leaves and unique flowers. Arum flowers have two distinctly visible parts, an outer spathe and an inner spadix. The spadix is a spike that contains the real flowers, both male and female. The spathe is an outer covering that wraps around and protects the spadix and functions a bit like petals and sepals do on other flowers. It also acts as a funnel to channel pollinators down to the true flowers. In Jack-in-the-pulpit, the flower stands upon its own vertical stalk and is a pale green cup with longitudinal stripes. Those stripes are either a darker green or a deep burgundy. The spathe wraps the whole way around the spadix and curls down over the top to form a hood. From within the spathe the rounded tip of the spadix peeks out. This uniquely shaped flower is where the Jack-in-the-pulpit name comes from, as the bloom looks like a man (assumedly the fella’s name is Jack) peering out from an elevated gothic-style pulpit. Jack-in-the-pulpit blooms in mid-spring. Its flowers are pollinated by tiny fungus gnats. Flies are the target pollinators for most Arums. Arum flowers go so far as to emit specialized scents and their spadix even generates its own “body” heat to attract to attract flies! Jack-in-the-pulpit is no exception there. Once pollinated, the flower matures into a cylindrical cluster of bright red berries.
Lastly, Jack-in-the-pulpit is a species complex containing five separate subspecies. Each of these subspecies has discernable physical characteristics, differences in their ranges and ecologies that keep them reproductively isolated, and genetic variation. Many botanists consider them separate species while many others consider them just subspecies. However, as far as I can figure, here in the South Carolina Lowcountry we have but one of these subspecies, the traditionally named Jack-in-the-pulpit (Arisaema triphyllum).
This week for Flora and Fauna Friday we’re gazing upon our most reliable resident raptor, the Red-shouldered Hawk (Buteo lineatus).
The Red-shouldered Hawk can be found year-round across the Southeast and the state of South Carolina. Compared to some of our other birds of prey, its abundance remains consistent and high throughout the year. Meaning this is the most likely raptor for you to spot across the Lowcountry. They’re not a hard hawk to identify either. They’re about average size for our raptors, bigger than a Cooper’s Hawk but smaller than a Red-tailed Hawk. Adult birds have rust-red shoulder patches, a rusty-orange belly broken up by fine white bars, and a black tail with several thin white bars. On the wing, they can easily be picked out by the “windows” at the tip of the wings. These are distinct translucent, half-moon-shaped patches in the feathers that brighten against a sunny sky. The call of the Red-shouldered Hawk is unmistakable as well, a loud descending scream repeated a half dozen or more times in short order. They’re not shy about calling either and can be heard vocalizing far and wide. However, our Blue Jays love to imitate the Red-shouldered Hawk’s call and they’ve got a spot on impression too. The best way to sort out the real deal hawk hollerin’ is by paying attention to the depth and the breadth of the screaming. Blue Jays are much smaller and don’t have as much bass behind their call. They also don’t commit to the bit entirely and often stop after just two or three shouts. Red-shouldered Hawks are partial to open woodlands and clearings. However, they can be found practically everywhere from swamps to savannas and from farm fields to suburbs. They hunt from a perch, waiting and watching for motion, before diving down to grab their prey. Red-shouldered Hawks eat a variety of prey including songbirds, rodents, frogs, lizards, snakes, and large insects.
This week for Flora and Fauna Friday we have a large and leafy pollinator plant, Hairy Leafcup (Smallanthus uvedalia).
Hairy Leafcup, also called Bear’s-Foot, is a large perennial wildflower in the sunflower family, Asteraceae. It’s found throughout the Southeast, nearly all of the state of South Carolina, and is common along roadsides on Edisto Island. Hairy Leafcup prefers moist soils on shady forest edges. Ditch banks and the shoulders or dirt roads are a particularly preferred habitat, but it is hardy and will readily live in many environments. Hairy Leafcup grows into a multi-stemmed bush, generally reaching about head high but can add a couple extra feet to that in ideal conditions. It spreads laterally to form thickets. It has large, opposite, papery leaves that can reach a foot in width. Hairy Leafcup is best spotted by its flowers, which can emerge as early as May and can continue through September but peak in late June. Hairy Leafcup’s flowers are an inch and a half wide with lemon-yellow petals and a more golden center. Flowers emerge at the tips of the stem in loose clusters. These flowers are well-loved by all pollinators and produce both pollen and nectar in abundance. Its hollow stems also provide great nesting habitat for cavity nesting bees and wasps the following year. Hairy Leafcup can be a good pollinator planting but usually needs its own space by itself. These plants also create great wildlife habitat, as their height and broad leaves provide cover for all manner of critters to hide and its seeds are eaten by many species of songbird.
This week for Flora and Fauna Friday, it’s our once prolific, pint-sized partridge, the Northern Bobwhite (Colinus virginianus).
The Bobwhite is our resident species of quail found throughout the Southeast and Mississippi River Basin. They’re about the size of a Mourning Dove but taller and stockier. Bobwhite have a small round head, short but heavy beak, football-shaped body, stubby tail, and strong legs. Both males and females are cryptically colored with an intricate mottling of black on white across the belly that bleeds up into the rust-washed flanks and folds below a nigh kaleidoscopic slurry of camouflaged grays and browns over the back. Males wear a white beard, black mask, heavy white eyebrow, and dark speckled cap. Female have a similar facial pattern but of golden and neutral browns. Due to their small size and cryptic coloring, quail are tough to get a good look at. However, they’re not hard to hear. The male sings an unmistakable whistle of “bob-Bob-WHITE” that rings across the countryside, like a church bell on Sunday morning, and gave the Bobwhite its common name. Bobwhite are ground birds and spend their entire lives walking, foraging, and nesting on the ground. There they feed on insects, seeds, fruits, and vegetation. Being a bite-sized biddy your whole life has its downsides. To compensate, quail live in groups, called coveys, which are comprised of a handful of birds at the low end and up to several dozen on the high end. Living in groups increases the number of eyes on the lookout for predators and helps the birds escape harm. When startled, coveys explode out of cover and take to the air, flying to better cover a distance away. Bobwhite have particular habitat needs, which helps assure they have ample food and cover in the right types and quantities year-round. This gives them the best opportunities to hide and escape from predators, as well as the chance to raise a nest of young ‘uns. Bobwhite are most commonly found in pine savannas, fallow fields, grasslands, clear-cuts, and the borders of crop fields. All big open areas with lots of vegetation. However, their habitat requirements are not as simple as they sound and they need very specific conditions, consistently, across huge areas for populations to remain stable. This makes Bobwhite sporadically common on the landscape nowadays and more often than not a pleasant surprise to find, rather than a guarantee.
However, the Southeast was once thick like rats with Bobwhite. Their coveys littered fields and savannas in every corner of the South and a rich hunting tradition evolved around the quail. However, Bobwhite rapidly started disappearing from the landscape in the 1970s. The reasons for this are complex and not fully understood. However, it’s thought to boil down to habitat loss, degradation, and fragmentation. In order to thrive, Bobwhite need grasslands and other brushy open areas to be maintained in diverse conditions in large interconnected matrixes across the landscape. Historically, farms provided a lot of this habitat within their row crops, on their margins, in the fields left fallow for rotation, and in the regularly burned pine woods and forests that surrounded them. All these farms then abutted each other across the entire Southeast to create one giant network of suitable Bobwhite habitats. Over the years as new technologies were invented, farms progressively increased their land use efficiency. Meaning they got bigger, more orderly, left less land out of cultivation, and became cleaner. Particularly, the advent and widespread use of modern selective herbicides and insecticides also meant there were less weeds and insects in and surrounding farm fields, removing important quail cover and food. Simultaneously, the number of farms and the amount of land in agriculture shrank. To cap it off, the anti-forest fire campaigns that started in the 1950s sought to wipe low-intensity prescribed fire from the southeastern landscape, in a misguided effort to prevent wildfires back before we understood the ecology of these fire-adapted systems. These factors all in combination started eroding Bobwhite habitat from every angle, until a tipping point was hit and quail populations started rapidly evaporating across the United States. Over the last 50 years, great efforts have been taken by all manner of federal, state, and local natural resources agencies to study quail populations and habitat, and many nonprofit organizations and conservation programs were founded to halt the decline of Bobwhite and other upland game bird species. Many Bobwhite populations across the Southeast have stabilized and the species as a whole is no longer in immediate danger. However, as the core landscape and land uses of the Southeast have changed dramatically, and continue to change, Bobwhite will almost assuredly never return to their historic abundance. Yet, with any luck, we can continue to make strides towards making room for them in the Lowcountry once again.
It’s Pollinator Week, a time to think about, appreciate, and help out the pollinators who keep agriculture and ecosystems going behind the scenes! We all know honeybees, bumblebees, and butterflies and appreciate the pollinating they do, but do you know all the other critters that pollinate?
Beyond honeybees and bumblebees, we also have myriad species of native solitary bees who are every bit as important as their social cousins. Our native leafcutter, miner, digger, cellophane, sweat, and carpenter bees all carry their weight in pollinating not only our native plants but our garden vegetables, fruit trees, and agricultural crops. They’re often specialize for certain groups of plant and time their emergence to when these plants are blooming.
Beetles were the world’s first pollinators and still play an important part in pollinating many species of wildflowers as well as magnolias. Beetles lack the coordination and efficiency of other pollinators but their size and posture mean they get coated head to toe in pollen before moving to another flower.
Flies of all shapes and sizes fill a vital role in pollinating small flowers. Many flies are small and agile, allowing them to precisely move between tiny, spaced-out flowers. Other flies, like Lovebugs, emerge in swarms and clumsily crawl across flower-heads from all manner of plants, pollinating as they go.
Ants are a key pollinator of many low-growing plants, like Wild Ginger. Although not a common pollinator they are critical to the survival of these plants. Other plants have developed ways to enlist ants for guard duty. These plants secrete nectar from their leaves, stems, or elsewhere in order to convince ants to patrol their stems and attack any pests they encounter.
Wasps are our most under-appreciated pollinators. Wasps are a very diverse group with varied life histories. Many rely heavily on nectar and pollen to survive and act as vital pollinators in the process. Other species pull double duty, where adults drink nectar and pollinate flowers as they patrol for caterpillars and other arthropods. They capture these potential pests and bring them back to feed to their young, helping control crop pest populations in the process.
Last but not least, Ruby-throated Hummingbirds have formed mutualistic relationships with many species of wildflower in the Southeast. These plants have shaped their flowers so that only hummingbirds can use them. In exchange for nectar, the hummingbird’s head is dusted in pollen that it carries with it to other plants in the area.
