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!
This week for Flora and Fauna Friday we have our most abundant aquatic reptile, the Yellow-bellied Slider (Trachemys scripta scripta).
The Yellow-bellied Slider is by far our most common Pond Turtle in the Lowcountry. When you think of turtles lazily lined on logs in the blazing sun or shambling around in a pet store aquarium, this is the species that comes to mind. They are a fairly large turtle that can reach twelve inches in length. Their belly is predictably yellow and their back a grungy gray-black of bumps and ridges. They’re best distinguished by their yellow sideburns, a heavy vertical band of lemon-yellow just behind the eye. The Yellow-bellied Slider has a sister subspecies that’s now found in South Carolina, called the Red-eared Slider (T. s. elegans). The Red-eared Slider is native to the Mississippi River Basin but has been spread extensively throughout the United States by the pet trade. They’re common in the upstate and around human neighborhoods but not so much in the wilds of the Lowcountry. This subspecies is easily identified by their namesake red “ear”.
The Yellow-bellied Slider appears practically anywhere there is a permanent freshwater body. That includes lakes, rivers, deepwater swamps, Carolina Bays, and parking lot retention ponds. They will eat anything they can catch or scavenge as well as some aquatic plants. They use their hardened beak and extendable neck to nab minnows, crawfish, frogs, and digits alike. This species, along with some other Pond Turtles, have an interesting method of courting a mate. The art of seductive jazz-hands. Males are smaller than females and grow long claws on their front feet. During courtship, the male will swim backwards in front of a female while rattling his claws in her face. Romantic.
This week for Flora and Fauna Friday it’s none other than our towering titans of the swamp, the Cypresses (Taxodium spp.).
Here in the Lowcountry we have two species of Cypress, the Bald Cypress (Taxodium distichum) and the Pond Cypress (Taxodium ascendens). Both species live in forested wetlands, tolerate flooding well, are long-lived, and look similar but differ distinctly in their habitat preference and leaf shape. Bald Cypress is the quintessential species of Cypress we’re all familiar with. Huge ruddy-brown trunks on broad, buttressed bases towering over the surface of a bottomland forest in a sea of black leaf litter tea punctuated with cypress knees. That’s our Bald Cypress. They’re commonly found across the Lowcountry in permanent wetlands, especially in in bottomlands, blackwater rivers, oxbows, and floodplains. They also have feather-shaped leaves held outward from the stem, which is an easy way to distinguish them from Pond Cypress. Pond Cypress is often smaller than Bald Cypress but otherwise looks quite similar. However, its leaves are far thinner and held nearly upright on the stems. Pond Cypress is also far less common than Bald Cypress but most numerous in isolated permanent wetlands, especially Carolina Bays.
Cypresses are conifers and, like pines, produce cones. The cypress cone is a roughly inch wide ball with a segmented appearance, like the scutes of a turtle. Notably for a Lowcountry conifer, both our Cypresses are deciduous, losing their leaves in the winter. Cypresses are one of the most long-lived trees on Earth, with quite a few individuals exceeding the thousand year mark and a few breaking the two-thousand year threshold. Cypress Trees have many unique adaptations for life in the swamp. One notable feature is their buttressed trunks. This broadening of their trunk base gives them a more stable foundation in the soft, soupy soils they inhabit. Another unique adaptation are cypress knees. These are projections of the root system that extend up above the soil and water’s surface. They were originally thought to help the trees breathe in the water logged soils but scientists have been unable to find any evidence of the knees breathing. Current theories believe they help further stabilize the tree in the soil as well capture sediment beneath the tree. Cypresses also have one of the most rot resistant woods, allowing trees to stand for centuries without collapsing for them inside out. This made them an important timber species historically before the advent of treated lumber. Today, they still remain an economically important timber species in Florida for producing lumber for outdoor use in humid climates.
This week for Flora and Fauna Friday it’s our pale-plumaged beach-combing shorebird, the Willet (Tringa semipalmata).
The Willet is a large shorebird found on beaches and mudflats across the coastal United States and a common shorebird here on Edisto Island. Willets stand about a foot tall on long pale-gray legs. In winter their plumage is a solid pattern of blended muted-brown, gray, and white and, in summer, the same but with black speckling. Their bill is rather long, arrow-straight, and two-tone gray at the base and black near the tip. Willets are most often spotted walking the shoreline on beaches, like a beachcomber searching for shells, or trapesing across the mudlfats at low tide. Willets, like other long-billed shorebirds, feed on invertebrates that live in the sand and mud along our saline waterbodies. Willets are quite the dull looking bird but one that’s nonetheless easy to identify. Their lackluster coloration is actually quite distinctive as no other shorebird their size is anywhere near as drab nor do they have gray legs or a gray bill. That coloration is also quite good camouflage on the beach, blending in nicely with our pale, gray-brown beach sands. On the wing, Willets are even easier to spot as their wing-tips are black and their wings split down the middle by a thick band of white. Their call is also loud and distinctive, a sharp, raspy with the pneumonic of “pil-wil-willet” that gave them their namesake.
This week for Flora and Fauna Friday it’s the golden glow of a sandy mid-spring road, Goldenmane Tickseed (Coreopsis basilis).
A small sea of rich yolk-yellow flowers, inch wide with black cores ringed in a corona of crimson, flutters and flows over the drafty shoulders of our rural Island roads. Every year as spring enters full swing our Goldenmane Coreopsis is abloom. It’s a plant that’s native to the Gulf Coast but has long since established a foothold in the coastal plain of the Southeast. It’s a drought tolerant annual with a love for sunny roadsides, meadows, and lawn edges. In the right conditions, they can fill an entire field to the brim with glimmering golden petals. Leaves are deeply lobed and flowers borne individually on long, skinny stalks. Each plant grows singly and reaches about twelve inches in height. Goldenmane Coreopsis does fantastic in gardens and will readily volunteer year after year.
