This week for Flora and Fauna Friday we have a pair of unrelated but extreme exemplifying butterflies, the Eastern Giant Swallowtail (Papilio cresphontes) and the Eastern Pygmy-Blue (Brephidium pseudofea).
The reason why I’ve decided to shine a spot light on these two unrelated species today is because they represent the full range of physical size for our native butterfly species here in South Carolina. Additionally, their preferred natural habitats overlap quite well and you may very well see both species on the same day in the same place. Let’s start with the little one.
The Eastern Pygmy-Blue is a miniscule butterfly in the Hairstreak family. Usually it’s no bigger than a fingernail. Its underside scales are overall a warm golden-brown down the wings, blending into a silvery-white body. Across the underwing are dashes of white and a trailing edge on the hindwing of six small black and metallic-silver eyespots. The upperside of females is a cinnamon-brown and males a darker shade of cinnamon but with a flash of sapphire blue over and along the body. The Pygmy-Blue can be a troublesome butterfly to find due to its itty-bittiness and preferred habitat, salt flats. The Eastern Pygmy-Blue caterpillar hosts on just as select few species of glassworts and so the adults can only be found in and around these sunny, soggy, sea-breezed, salt-saturated sand-lands. Adults begin flying in late spring and continue through to the end of summer in coastal South Carolina.
The Eastern Giant Swallowtail is a big honkin’ butterfly. They can grow nearly the size of your hand but are generally about six inches wide. Beyond their size, which dwarfs even our other swallowtails, they’re easy to identify by just their coloration. The upper surface of their wings is slate-black with a thick pastel-yellow line of blotches from one forewing tip straight through to the other and another line of yellow blotches running from the “wrists” of the forewings down where they make a “V” near the inner corner of the hindwings, just below a set of sky-blue and sunset-orange eyespots. From below they are even more distinctive, with the entire body and much of the wings being basted in a pure wash of butter-yellow. Through the center of the hindwing underside runs a series of powder-blue crescents and blood-orange blobs bordered with ink-black. The Eastern Giant Swallowtail is not a hard species to spot when you’re in the right place. They patrol the fringes of maritime forests and tidal creeks and are especially common along barrier islands and the Sea Islands. This is because they’re searching for or patrolling around their most prolific native host plant, Toothache Bush, which grows across the coast of the Lowcountry. The caterpillar of our Giant Swallowtail can also eat citrus leaves, and so they’re also a common visitor to orchards and coastal yards. Their caterpillar is easy to spot too. Not only is it big, it also has a distinctive color pattern of white, brown, and black blended together to create a perfect disguise as bird poop. This camouflage helps keep the caterpillars safe from avian predators but does make them stand out starkly against green foliage to the trained eye. Adult Giant Swallowtails fly from mid-spring until down into fall here in the Lowcountry.
This week for Flora and Fauna Friday we’re simply going to be learning about our Elms, genus Ulmus.
Here on Edisto Island we have two native species of Elm, American Elm (U. americana) and Winged Elm (U. alata), and one exotic, Chinese Elm (U. parvifolia). All our Elms share a couple common characteristics. Elm trees tend to be about as wide as they are tall and, here in South Carolina, they maintain a compact height, usually not exceeding 50ft. All three of these elms also have a simple, elliptical leaf with prominently serrated margins and an alternate arrangement. The fruit of the tree is a dry winged seed called a samara. These samaras are compose of a single seed surrounded by a circular wing that catches the wind as the seed falls from the tree. To distinguish them by species, Chinese Elm is purely an ornamental exotic. It’s very common nowadays in urban parks, parking lots, and road islands but shows no characteristics of an invasive species in South Carolina. It has a very compact growth here in the Lowcountry, holds it small dark-green leaves throughout winter but sheds them in spring, and sports a beautiful calico bark of reds, grays, and yellows. Winged Elm is probably the easiest to spot. Its twigs, and the trunks of saplings, are flanked by broad, thin, corky wings of bark. Its leaves are small compared to American Elm. It is a fairly slow growing tree that demands full-sun and is most often found on field edges, clear-cuts, and stream banks. American Elm is the largest of the three by far, with a wide trunk covered in shaggy gray bark and a broad crown. Its leaves are roughly two to three inches in length and have the interesting characteristic of being asymmetrical at the base, with one side slightly longer. It prefers to grow along ditch edges, floodplains, and other rich, moist soils.
American Elm was once a massively popular landscape plant throughout the Eastern United States. However, the introduction of Dutch Elm Disease in the late 1920s caused a mass die-off of Elm trees across the country. Dutch Elm Disease is a fungal pathogen spread by beetles when they lay their eggs on Elm trees. The most prominent symptom is the death of upper limbs of the tree, eventually spiraling into the entire crown dying. Nowadays, very few Elm trees reach maturity before succumbing to the disease, leading to their relative rarity in modern forests. The American Elm was by far the hardest hit. The Winged Elm is also highly susceptible but its southeastern range is not as conducive to the spread of the disease. The ornamental Chinese Elm is highly resistant but still susceptible.
This week for Flora and Fauna Friday, we have the manically cackling seabird, the Laughing Gull (Leucophaeus atricilla).
Gulls are members of the family Laridae. This family includes Terns, Skimmers, Noddies, and Gulls. On Edisto, one species of Gull dominates the inland and coastal habitats. The Laughing Gull is our most common Gull and rules the island in the warmer months. In the winter, some head further south but there is always a presence in number year-round. Laughing Gulls are named for their distinct call, a derisive guffaw that sails through the sea breeze. They’re our second smallest Gull, which aids in identification by size. They’re otherwise easily identified by their dark-red legs and bill, slate gray back, and black-capped head in summer. In winter their plumage changes to faded shades of the same and a mostly white head but otherwise remains distinct.
Laughing Gulls are equally at home in the air, on the water, and on the ground. They typically stay close to tidal systems. Gulls are opportunistic omnivorous seabirds that will eat anything that suits their fancy. They are primarily carnivorous and will hunt fish, crabs, shrimp, shellfish, rodents, insects, and even shorebirds. They’re also scavengers and will eat any carrion that washes up on the beach. Most are also kleptoparasitic, meaning they steal from other animals. Gulls are well renowned for their ability to adapt to human environments and structures, such as marinas, grocery store parking lots, and garbage dumps. That’s thanks mostly to their bold nature and opportunistic diet. This makes them equally at home feeding above a school of fish on the open sea, stealing a Tern’s catch, swallowing wayward hotdogs whole at a ballpark, or picking at kitchen scraps at the municipal dump. This is an important new ecological niche that Gulls and Crows fill. Their adaptability helps fill ecological voids that might otherwise be exploited by more harmful invasive species, such as Black Rats and Feral Pigeons.
Whether we may want to or not, we share our island, our beach, and the handrails of our docks and boats with Laughing Gulls. No matter how tough things get, they’re a group of species that’s here to stay. There’s more to these birds beyond their proficiency at whitewashing decking lumber or swallowing half-eaten hamburgers. We should have an appreciation for their place in our coastal ecosystems and metropolitan landscapes.
This week for Flora and Fauna Friday we have a salty twining vine with an underappreciated role in coastal Monarch conservation, Gulf Coast Swallowwort (Pattalias paluster).
Twining ‘round the Fimbry and tangled between the gnarled boughs of the Redcedar lies an unsuspecting vine. Gulf Coast Swallowwort is an herbaceous, perennial vine found along the extreme coast of the southeastern United States. It’s emerald-green foliage, thread-thin stem, and needle-like leaves allow it to blend in, almost undetectable, amidst the grasses, sedges, and rushes it grows overtop of. It’s found most commonly in maritime forests on barrier islands and the fringes of saltmarshes along our Sea Islands, including as Edisto Island. It prefers moist soils, full sun, and is fairly salt tolerant. As such, it can often be found along the banks of causeways, margins of feeder creeks, hammock islands, and just upland from sand flats. Swallowwort blooms throughout summer. Flowers are borne in spherical clusters with each flower being a five-point bell-like shape draped in a shade of pastel-green, accented inside with white and sometimes washed above with pastel-pink. The fruit of Swallowwort is a dry, spindle-shaped pod filled to the brim with cottony, wind-blown seeds.
What makes Gulf Coast Swallowwort important for coastal Monarch conservation is that it’s a member of the Milkweed family, Apocynaceae, and a host species that is able to support the Monarch’s larvae. It can also host the Queen, a tropical relative of the Monarch that makes its way to Edisto most years. Not only that, it’s one of very few native Milkweed species that can still be found growing wild and abundant along the extreme coast. Further inland, there are still many great protected lands which support a wide diversity of native Milkweeds. However, here on the Sea Islands, many of those species can’t survive in salt intruded soils and those that once grew on the uplands have long since been pushed to near eradication by prolonged past agricultural use. This leaves Swallowwort as the sole native Milkweed on all of our barrier Islands and much of the Sea Islands. Although the Lowcountry’s resident population of non-migratory Monarchs is not yet well understood, I can’t imagine Swallowwort doesn’t help bind our Sea Islands back to the mainland and create a bridge for this imperiled butterfly species to recolonize the coast.
This week for Flora and Fauna Friday we have a collection of communally living insects who don’t always make the best neighbors, the Umbrella Paper Wasps of subfamily Polistinae.
Paper Wasps are a clade of wasps that build nests out of “paper”. They chew on dry, dead wood and stems to collect wood pulp, chew it up into a paste, and then meticulously construct an intricate nest one mouthful at a time. Today I’m focusing on the Umbrella Paper Wasps who build upside-down, open-face nests on the limbs of shrubs, in the cavities of trees, or the underside of under-used lawn furniture. Paper Wasps are all eusocial insects, meaning there is a “queen” who founds a colony and gives birth to subservient, infertile workers who then go about managing, maintaining, and expanding the nest. Umbrella Paper Wasp colonies are fairly small compared to other eusocial insects, like ants and honeybees, and usually clock in between 1 to 4 dozen individuals. Colonies only last a year, with the queen’s fertile offspring overwintering to found new colonies the next spring.
Paper Wasp nests are a common sight under eaves and porches, and other inconvenient places throughout South Carolina. We have several species of this subfamily common throughout the state but two which are particularly common here around Edisto that I’d like to shine a light on: the Ringed Paper Wasp (Polistes annularis) and the Mexican Paper Wasp (Mischocyttarus mexicanus cubicola). These two species are the two you’re most likely to encounter taking up shop in the crook of your awning or underside of your rocking chair. The Ringed Paper Wasp, or Jack Spaniard Wasp, is found throughout the Southeast. It’s about an inch and a half long with black wings, a black abdomen, brick-red body, yellow feet, and a yellow ring around the waist. They’re big for a Paper Wasp and, in my experience, they’re far more aggressive than other species. Most Umbrella Paper Wasps are fairly docile and it takes a concerted effort, or really poor luck, to get them to rouse. However to me it seems like Ringed Paper Wasps are always itching for a fight. All female Umbrella Paper Wasps can sting and I can tell you from experience that the sting of the Ringed Paper Wasp is particularly painfully. Said species’ sting usually resulting in a white-hot searing pain, throbbing soreness, and light inflammation at the site of envenomation. Conversely, the Mexican Paper Wasp is very docile and they tend to just stare passive-aggressively at you from their nest unless you get dangerously close. This species is common on the extreme coast of South Carolina, down into the coastal plain of the lower Southern states. The Mexican Paper Wasp is petite at about an inch in length. Their coloration is a brick-red base on much of the body with prolific rings and markings of lemon-yellow, and black undertones on the upper legs and thorax. Their small abdomen and elongated waist sets them apart from smaller members of the Polistes genus.
Paper Wasps have an interesting diet and, as a result, an irreplaceable role in our ecosystems that many overlook. Paper Wasps are actually a very important pollinator. A significant portion of their diet comes from nectar, which they sip directly from wildflowers, pollinating them in the process. They also incidentally pollinate flowers while collecting their primary food source, caterpillars. Paper Wasps patrol flower, leaf, and stem of all manner of wildflower, grass, tree, and shrub on the hunt for caterpillars. Captured caterpillars are either eaten by the wasp that found it or brought back to the nest to feed their sisters and carnivorous larvae. The ability of Paper Wasps to hunt the caterpillars of innumerable moth and caterpillars is second to none. This provides an invaluable ecosystem service in the form of pest control for farmers and gardeners and, in the strictly natural setting, is a critical link in the natural checks and balances for population control of certain plants and moths. Without the Paper Wasps, certain moths and butterflies would multiply unchecked, defoliating and/or killing many plant species across an entire ecosystem, decreasing plant diversity at best or totaling destabilizing certain fragile ecosystems at worst. Of course, Paper Wasps don’t do all the work. Caterpillars make up a majority of quite a number of species’ diets but the seasonal consistency and non-specific targeting of Paper Wasps puts them in another league.
This week for Flora and Fauna Friday we have the most reviled vine in the Southeast, Poison-Ivy (Toxicodendron radicans).
Much maligned, this unsuspecting vine seems to be the scourge of all those would be wanderers of the woods. Few plants garner as visceral of a reaction from folks as today’s Poison-Ivy. However, I’m here today not just to tell cautionary tales but also to share the many merits of this persistently persecuted plant.
Poison-Ivy is found throughout the Eastern United States. It’s not a true Ivy but instead a relative of Cashews, Mangos, and Sumacs. Poison-Ivy, along with its cousins Poison-Oak (T. pubescens) and Poison-Sumac (T. vernix), can all be found in South Carolina. Poison-Oak grows as a small shrub and is partial to sandhills and Longleaf Pine Savannas. Poison-Sumac can grow into a small tree and is found on saturated soils along wetlands. Poison-Ivy grows primarily as a vine but can become a shrub on especially sandy soils or a groundcover in open areas. When growing as a vine, Poison-Ivy prefers to cling to the side of a tree using a profusion of tiny rootlets. These rootlets wriggle into the bark of the host tree, firmly anchoring the vine in place all the way up throughout the canopy. Poison-Ivy vines can eventually reach the size of your thigh, given enough time. These hairy vines are one of the key ways to identify Poison-Ivy at a glance. The other is by its leaves. Poison-Ivy leaves are compound with three leaflets, giving a vague resemblance to English Ivy, where it derives the “Ivy” part of its name. This three leaflet arrangement is consistent but the shape of the leaflets is not. The leaflets themselves can be highly glossy or nearly matte on the surface and their margins can be either straight, toothed, or semi-lobed.
Poison-Ivy provides many benefits to wildlife. In late April into May it blooms with clusters of greenish-white flowers enjoyed by a wide array of pollinating species. Further on into late summer, the fruits of their pollinated flowers mature into tiny off-white drupes, which are scoffed down by many of our songbirds. These birds then scatter the seeds of Poison-Ivy far and wide. Come fall, the deciduous leaves of Poison-Ivy are shed with an autumnal display of crimson and blood-orange. However, before that foliage is shed, it can be eaten by a wide variety of foraging mammals including Deer, Woodrats, and Raccoons, all of whom are unaffected by the Poison of this Ivy. Which leads us to the reason why most of us despise this plant.
Every part of the Poison-Ivy plant contains a compound called Urushiol. It is especially concentrated in the sap of the plant. (This compound is also produced by Poison-Oak and Poison-Sumac as well as certain parts of Cashew and Mango trees.) When a person leans against the trunk of a Poison-Ivy vine, steps on its leaves, digs up a root, or stands inside smoke from a brush fire containing the vines, then they may experience what’s called Urushiol-induced contact dermatitis. For those uninitiated, it’s one wicked rash and not something to take lightly. Symptoms generally manifest a day or two after exposure and can take several weeks to clear out. This is actually an allergic reaction happening under the skin after the Urushiol dissolves down into the dermis. The only way to prevent the reaction is to wash all exposed skin with a special soap before the Urushiol can absorb into the skin. Every individual has a different tolerance to Urushiol and severity of reaction. Some people are almost entirely immune and others can have horrible reactions from the most minimal of contact. Generally, your sensitivity increases with age and after each exposure.
This week for Flora and Fauna Friday we have a lemon-lipped homewrecker of a bird, the Yellow-billed Cuckoo (Coccyzus americanus).
The Yellow-billed Cuckoo, colloquially known as the Rain-Crow, is a large and peculiar bird. It, along with its much less Lowcountry common cousin the Black-billed Cuckoo (C. erythropthalmus), are the only two members of their order found widely within the eastern United States. The Yellow-billed Cuckoo has a marble-white belly, brown-gray back, rusty-brown wing tips, and a long tail that’s brown above and black below but broken up beneath with three pairs of white blobs. The brown of their back flows up over the head to meet the white of the belly just below their black eye, which is sometimes ringed in yellow. Their namesake beak is heavy and two-toned, black above and lemon-yellow below. The song of the Rain-Crow is quite distinctive, albeit a bit bland. They can be heard from nearly a mile off, letting loose a monotonous series of dry but resonant “kuh”s, like something between a cough and a wheeze. Their call is just as recognizable, a persistent rising string of sharp knocks, sometimes ending with a slew of brief, percussive rolls.
Yellow-billed Cuckoos are summer residents, flying in in late spring to breed and then departing in fall. Cuckoos build nests and lay eggs like any other bird. However, they’re also brood parasites, meaning they’ll lay eggs in the nests of other birds but, unlike the Brown-headed Cowbird, they’re not obligated to do so. Generally, they parasitize the nests of large songbird species but will also parasitize other Cuckoos. Yet, Yellow-billed Cuckoos rarely do so unless food is particularly abundant in their territory. In order to capitalize on the brood parasitism strategy, Cuckoo eggs are also extremely fast maturing. This allows their young to get a head start when laid in another species’ nest. To counteract this rapid maturation when raising their own young, they lay their eggs asynchronously, allowing eggs to hatch several days apart and lessening the burden on the adults who would otherwise need to feed all those hungry mouths at once. Yellow-billed Cuckoos are primarily insectivorous and spend their days patrolling hardwood forests looking for food. They are the number one predator of Fall Webworms and Tent Caterpillars, using their strong bill to tear into those silken fortresses and gorge themselves on the caterpillars inside. They also hunt cicadas, katydids, and other such noisy nuggets of summer. Cuckoos will also feed on various fruits when available.
This week on Flora and Fauna Friday it’s a sassy shrub with a soft drink pedigree, Sassafras (Sassafras albidum).
Sassafras is a large shrub or small tree, depending on how you slice it, that’s found throughout the entire Eastern United States, except south Florida. It grows well on sandy uplands, especially those that can retain a little moisture. The trees themselves have a roughly straight trunk, usually with a few kinks or twists for style, and can exceed 40 feet in height in ideal conditions. However, much of what you’ll find in the Lowcountry will be lucky to reach 20 feet high. The leaves are a little under hand-sized, deciduous, simple, emerald-green, and with a matte to semi-gloss surface. The leaves themselves are trilobic and trimorphic. Meaning they usually have three lobes, thus resembling a flattened turkey foot, but they can take on two other shapes; a simple oval leaf and a two-lobed “mitten”. Our Mulberry tree’s also exhibit this same polymorphic leaf shape but the entire, untoothed margin of Sassafras makes it easy to identify by leaf alone. Sassafras is most often found growing in the understory of upland woods, with larger trunks being found on forest edges or clearings. Sassafras are clonal and will spread laterally by their roots into loose thickets. Sassafras blooms in early-spring, bearing twig tip clusters of tiny greenish-yellow flowers.
In the Lowcountry, Sassafras is our most widely used host plant for the Spicebush Swallowtail, whose snake mimicking caterpillar can be found folding sassafras leaves from late-spring into fall. Sassafras also has historical culinary significance to humans. Sassafras roots, as well as bark, contain a substance called Safrole. This compound is the primary flavoring in traditional root beer. Traditional root beer was a slightly alcoholic brew, usually consisting of water mixed with some form of sugar (usually molasses), sassafras root, and yeast. However, Safrole has been deemed to be mildly carcinogenic and so modern root beer recipes omit the namesake root altogether.
This week for Flora and Fauna Friday we have a common but striking butterfly found in grasslands and fields, the Common Buckeye (Junonia coenia).
The Common Buckeye is a populous butterfly found throughout the eastern and southwestern United States. Here in the Lowcountry it can be found practically year round, with some adults overwintering and sporadically appearing during warm spells in the dead of winter. However, they are most abundant from April through November. The Common Buckeye is a thoroughly medium-sized butterfly, hovering around two-inches wide with its wings spread. The underside of its wings are a soft, pale tan with washed-out streaks and smears of brick-red, tangerine-orange, charcoal-black, and eggshell-white and one prominent black eyespot on the upper wing. The upper-side of the wing is far more striking. A rich walnut-brown is punctuated with eight glaring eyespots composed of concentric rings of black and tan circling in on a black core with a piercing iridescent sky-blue pupil. Four of these spots are large and prominent and the other four small and reduced. These walnut wings are also accented with bars and fringes of that same tangerine-orange and a puddle of eggshell-white engulfing the upper large eyespots. The adults who emerge in late fall and early spring have a smaller stature and a rosy, brick-red wash to their lower wings. These are referred to as the “Rosa” morph and, in my opinion, are even more striking.
Common Buckeyes are most often found in open grasslands, field edges, roadsides, weedy lawns, and other open grassy areas all throughout South Carolina. Adults can readily be spotted low to the ground, jerkily flying with sharp wingbeats, just atop the vegetation. Their larvae feed on several common species of wildflower, most notably Canada Toadflax (Nuttallanthus canadensis), Carolina Wild Petunia (Ruellia caroliniensis), Plantains (Plantago spp.), and False Foxgloves (Agalinus spp.). These plant species are all extremely common in open areas across the state, especially old fields and roadsides, which is the big reason why Common Buckeyes are as prolific as they are. The caterpillars of Common Buckeye are also quite striking. At full size their larvae reach about an inch-and-a-half in length. They’re bathed from nape to nethers in a deep ink-black but accented to the nines with all manner of other colors and adornments. Their back and flanks are streaked with tattered stripes of pastel-yellow and their head and feet washed in tangerine-orange. Their skin is puckered with nearly microscopic warts and, more strikingly, crowned with five rows of jagged thorns. The thorns on their flanks have an orange base and those thorns on their back have a girdle of iridescent indigo. Here on Edisto Island, Common Buckeye caterpillars are most easily found on Purple False-Foxglove (A. purpurea) in mid-summer. Generally, if you find a clump of these wildflowers in bloom, you’ll like find a half-dozen Common Buckeye caterpillars clinging to them.
This week for Flora and Fauna Friday I spy a little lavender summer wildflower, Carolina Wild Petunia (Ruellia caroliniensis).
Carolina Wild Petunia is a common wildflower throughout the southeastern United States. It grows on drier, sandier uplands, usually in partial shade in forest clearings or along wood-lines. The plants reach about one-and-a-half-feet high and have oppositely arranged, simple elliptical leaves of a darkish blue-green shade. Flowers emerge from the nodes along the stem, just above the leaves. Carolina Wild Petunia flowers from early June into August. The flowers themselves are a long narrow trumpet flaring broadly into a three-quarter-inch corolla of five rounded petals. The petals have the wrinkly appearance of freshly washed, un-ironed linen and are dyed a thorough but soft shade of lavender. At the center the flower are five white anthers, providing a bit of contrast for the eye. Flowers emerge singly, or in pairs, each day. Each flower lasts about a day before withering and being replaced by a newly borne neighbor.
Carolina Wild Petunia is a great addition to any Lowcountry native plant garden that has a little bit of unpopulated shade. While not as tolerant of the blazing hot sun or as tall as its ornamental cousin, Mexican Petunia (R. simplex), it tolerates drought and poor soils just as well. It even attracts bees and medium-sized butterflies. If you’re planning a pollinator garden or just want something to bring some life to the shady side of your yard, give Carolina Wild Petunia a try!
