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.
This week for Flora and Fauna Friday it’s our most common slithering friend, the Southern Black Racer (Coluber constrictor priapus).
The Southern Black Racer is the subspecies of Black Racer found here in the Lowcountry. The Black Racer is a spindly snake with a long thin body, small head, large eyes, and semi-gloss black coloration, often with a white chin as its sole accent. Juveniles are phosphate-gray with ruddy-brown blocky blotches down their back. Adults can reach five feet in length but are usually three to four feet long. Black Racers can be found practically anywhere in the state, especially along woodland edges. They’re probably our most commonly seen species of snake on Edisto Island and usually one of the first to stir in spring. Unlike many other snakes, Black Racers are diurnal and hunt during the day. They hunt a wide range of prey including mice, skinks, birds, frogs, and insects using their exceptional speed for a snake. They will also raid low-lying bird nests but are not as adept at climbing as the Rat Snake. Black Racers hunt by sight and don’t constrict their prey, so they generally only eat small critters that don’t put up much of a fight. Another interesting trait of Black Racers is their preference for fleeing over camouflage. Most snakes stay stock still when approached or will coil up in defense. Black Racers, however, turn tail and scurry away as fast as possible. You’ll generally spot one coiled up on a log sunbathing or surveying the forest floor with its head held half a foot above the ground. If you get too close or move abruptly, they’re gone in a flash. Yet, when cornered, Racers are feisty and will not hesitate to strike and bite anything that gets too close. Despite this, they’re nonvenomous and totally harmless to people and all but the smallest of poultry.
This week for Flora and Fauna Friday we have a two-toned forest flower found in the freshwater floodplains of the Edisto, Indian Pink (Spigelia marilandica).
Along the banks of the South Edisto and in river valleys across the South, Indian Pink blooms each spring, peaking in May. Indian Pink is a low growing, perennial wildflower partial to moist, nutrient rich soils. It tolerates deep shade and spreads into dense clumps. Its leaves are a deep green, almost triangular in shape, and held opposite each other. Atop the foliage the flowers are held upright in one-sided spikes. Each five-petalled flower is trumpet-shaped with a crimson-red exterior and golden-yellow center. These flowers are pollinated by hummingbirds and provide a welcome flare of color to the deep understory of floodplain forests. Indian Pink is by no means a common plant but it is a native and one that is well adapted to garden conditions. It thrives in the moist, rich soils and dappled sun of a shaded garden bed and its attractive appearance, to both man and Hummingbird, ensure it will be an appreciated addition to any backyard botanical project.
This week for Flora and Fauna Friday we’re taking in the sight of the big, bold, lumbering Eastern Lubber Grasshopper (Romalea guttata).
Each spring, wellsprings of bubbling black masses flow forth from our swamps to scour the forests and freshwater marshes of the Lowcountry. Swarms of Eastern Lubber nymphs emerge from the soil to begin their lives on the surface. Lubber nymphs are about a half-inch long, wingless, and matte-black with lemon-yellow highlights along the fringes of their bodies. Nymphs first start appearing in spring, usually in April, and they will slowly mature throughout the year until they become full-sized adults by September. Adults are downright huge, often three and sometimes four inches in length with a stout, hefty body. Their coloration varies from sunflower-yellow with accents of black and scarlet to nearly solid black with highlights of dingy yellow and red. Adults have tiny, nonfunctional wings and must clumsily saunter and lumber their way over the ground to get anywhere. You’d think this would make them a sitting duck for predators but that bright yellow and red coloration signals their toxicity. Lubbers naturally assimilate plant toxins into their flesh throughout their lives while feeding on a broad selection of forbs and shrubs. They will eat many ornamentals plants that are well known to be toxic and which are avoided by most herbivores. This makes them particularly unpalatable as each Lubber is poisonous in a slightly different way from each of its neighbors. It all depends on what plants it ate growing up. Additionally, they are able to release a foamy chemical cocktail from their sides in order to poison any predator that ignores their warning colors and takes a bite. Other than that, they are harmless to people. Despite their lack of flight, they can climb as well as any grasshopper and their large size means they have a big appetite. They can defoliate shrubs and crops but thankfully they’re scarce enough in South Carolina to never be much of a threat to our farms. However they can wreak a bit of havoc down in Florida.
