This week for Flora and Fauna Friday we have the wild corndog: the Cattails of Genus Typha.
Long tongues of green with glaucous sheen lap the air over the interstice of water and land, straining to taste the sun and feel the breeze. It lifts an offering on high, one by one its colony of clones sacrifice their labors to the bright above. Loaves of love its community comes to offer into the grip of the wind. A chance for their future to be flung forth into the world, to escape this mire they’ve found themselves confined to and confine itself to another a ways away. The Cattail wades its life away content in its yesterday but not in its future.
Cattails are a staple feature of freshwater marshes throughout the United States but they have a fair bit more competition for murky homes here in the Southeast. Here on Edisto we have three species: Common Cattail (Typha latifolia), Southern Cattail (T. dominigensis), and Narrowleaf Cattail (T. angustifolia). Common Cattail is not surprisingly the most common species and is expected in nearly every sunny freshwater system of the Lowcountry. It’s tall with a broad leaf and with male and female flower parts that butt against each other. Southern Cattail is much the same in appearance to Common Cattail but with leaves a few feet taller and a few millimeters less broad, in addition to flower parts that are soundly disconnected. Its preference is strongly for brackish water and can crop up on the outskirts of our tidal rivers. Narrowleaf Cattail is not a native to South Carolina. Its origin is uncertain and it is likely of European descent. Regardless, it’s here to stay as it has carved out a niche in salt seasoned ditch-work and brackish marshes. As its name implies it has leaves much more narrow, as well as shorter, than its larger congenerics. Its flowers are gapped, and narrow, to boot.
Cattails are a large grass that spreads by stolons, or underground stems. It spreads fiercely in shallow marshes along ponds and rivers. Lands where wet is absolute but the degree of wet is middling and variable. Those stolons are stuffed with starch and edible as well. Its leaves are long and narrow, uniform in their length for feet on end as they tower upward above mud. These leaves are thick and hollow, honeycombed within, which lends them their vertical stability and keeps them afloat in times of flood. Like most wind pollinated grasses, their flower is a two piece affair. It is a tall spike that rises just beyond the sea of leaves. The top is first to mature, with a thin needle of pollen to saturate the air. Shortly behind, the broader sleeve of female flowers captures said windborne pollen with the hopes of it being of foreign origin. As the male pieces wither away the female cylinder swells and darkens to a ruddy complexion. It is a fruit that is best described as a corndog on a bamboo skewer. (No getting around that literarily.) Come winter the breading peels away from our mystery meat shish-kabob to reveal it nothing but breading. A breading of cottony seeds instead of meal. As can be surmised this corndog is less than edible and will quickly lead to cottonmouth. However, the fresh male flowers at the extreme tip are edible yet the other cottonmouth might run you off on attempt to collect some. This compressed seed head quickly disintegrates in the teeth of the biting winter gusts that slice across the marsh and scatter every which way into the atmosphere. The pilgrim progeny let loose to assimilate into the marshes of the Lowcountry.
This week for Flora and Fauna Friday we have a high flying easy to ID raptor: the Red-tailed Hawk (Buteo jamaicensis).
An adult Red-tailed Hawk is one of our easiest raptors to pick out of the sky on any sunny day. That ember-orange plume of tail feathers trailed behind their stocky body and broad wings gives them away with just a glance. When perched, their milky-white throat and underside, brown shoulders, and a patchy band across the belly set them apart from the front. The Red-tailed Hawk is our largest hawk and they’re plenty common year-round across South Carolina. They hunt in open areas and perch high above the ground. You’ll most often see them circling high in the air over fields and clear-cuts. Their call is distinctive as well, a long hoarse scream. A sound Hollywood has long misattributed to the Bald Eagle in TV and films.
Like all raptors, the Red-tailed Hawk is an ambush predatory that uses its keen eyes and hooked claws to drop on prey from above. Their diet is predominantly rodents and other small mammals. They are a major predator of Squirrels, Rabbits, Rats, and Mice. They will also hunt snakes and take out Quail, Ducklings, and Blackbirds. Because of their predatory nature, you’ll commonly see Hawks being chased and harassed by Crows, Kingbirds, and Mockingbirds who see them as a threat to their own peace and quiet.
This week for Flora and Fauna Friday we have the more reserved relative of a certain attention-hungry, pastel-purple pendulous plant: the American Wisteria (Wistera frutescens).
I’m sure we’re all familiar with the truly awesome display we’re treated to each March. The Chinese Wistera explodes into view with a roaring blaze of violent violets and magnificent magentas. A floral inferno that swallows up tree lines and rains pink ash down upon us for weeks. For me it’s a sincerely bittersweet occasion. I marvel at the inarguable beauty of it all but recoil at the realization that I’m witnessing the coat of arms for a conqueror, an invader laying siege to our native plants. Chinese Wisteria (Wisteria sinensis), as the name implies, is not a native plant. Its origins are in temperate China. It made its way to the United States on its merits as an ornamental and has been campaigning through the countryside ever since. Without its natural rivals to keep it in check, its toxic flesh, nitrogen fixing roots, and vigorous twining vines enable it to engulf shrubs and trees uncontested.
As a gardener, I’m envious of Chinese Wisteria’s aesthetic fortitude but repulsed by its unsavory behaviors. Luckily, I have an alternative. A less passionate but no less pretty cousin who is far better mannered, our native American Wisteria. With its pinnate emerald-green leaves, supple ash-gray twining vines, and paler purple locks packed with flowers, there’s no mistaking it as anything but a Wisteria. American Wisteria is a twin for Chinese wisteria but tends to more reserved in many traits. Flowers are less numerous, with fewer per cluster more tightly packed together and a paler complexion. Leaves are smaller and bluish in hue. Vines are shorter and thinner, growing more slowly. American Wisteria is scare but far ranging throughout the Lowcountry. They love rich soils with good drainage but plenty of moisture and seem to tolerate periodic salt intrusion. If you have Chinese Wisteria in your yard or are planning a garden, consider substituting in our more mild-mannered neighbor instead.
This week for Flora and Fauna Friday we have everybody’s favorite garden butterfly, the Black Swallowtail (Papilio polyxenes).
The Black Swallowtail is our smallest Swallowtail and the most numerous one in spring. As the weather warms their numbers dwindle before they all but disappear until the following year. They fly low and quickly through meadows, fields, and lawns. Their wings and bodies are mostly coal black. Males flaunt two tightly packed rows of silver-yellow spots down the borders of their wings. A feature accented with a brushing of iridescent sky-blue sandwiched between row on the hindwings and a pair of orange eyespots staring out from the inside corners. Females are more subdued with their rows of spots far reduced, replaced by a wave of cyan gloss across the lower hindwings. Both sexes have bodies lined in strings of pastel-yellow polka dots.
Black Swallowtails are a favorite of elementary school science classes and back porch terrariums. That’s because they lay their eggs on several common species of herbs and vegetables. This makes them a common site in vegetable gardens and means they’re easy to care for in captivity. In the garden their black-banded, yellow-dotted, granny-smith-green, corrugated caterpillars voraciously munch away at Carrots, Parsnips, Parsley, Fennel, Celery, and Dill. In the wild they eat species including Marsh Parsley, American Wild Carrot, Spotted Waterhemlock, and Mock Bishopweed. When harassed, the caterpillars will extend a forked, foul-smelling appendage from their forehead and try to rub it on the attacker. This set of tangerine antlers are called osmeterium and they’re a fairly effective defense against predatory insects. However, they don’t do much to ward off curious schoolchildren. When the caterpillars have plumped up and eaten their fill, they’ll leave their buffet to find a shady spot to nap for a few months. Here they transform into a pupa. They will either emerge within a few months or wait for more than half a year to appear at the tail end of the following winter.
This week for Flora and Fauna Friday we have some wiry white wildflowers of the Orchid variety, the Ladies’-tresses of genus Spiranthes.
Ladies’-tresses are by far our most widespread and prolific orchid here in the Lowcountry. They can be found in a wide variety of habitats where moist, poorly-drained soils abound. Places like meadows, roadsides, glades, and lawns are common favorites. They grow singly but are rarely alone, with nearby neighbors soon to make themselves known. There are at least five species from Spiranthes common to Charleston County: Spring Ladies’-tresses (S. vernalis), Greenvein Ladies’-tresses (S. praecox), Nodding Ladies’-tresses (S. cernua), Marsh Ladies’-tresses (S. odorata), and Lacelip Ladies’-tresses (S. laciniata). However, with the exception of Greenvein, I’ve never been great at telling them apart. So we’ll leave today’s vignette at the genus level.
Ladies’-tresses spend most of the year as a small rosette of grassy-leaves intermixed between the surrounding grasses and forbs. They’re quite innocuous and hard to spot until spring. After the April showers comes these May flowers. Ladies’-tresses produce a single flower stalk to a height of 12 to 18 inches. This stalk is ringed at the peak in a spiraling ascent of flowers. Each flower is pearl-white and some species are accented in green or yellow. The flowers are small with mirrored symmetry and a tiny mouth, the lower lip with a wavy margin and the top usually up-ticked. A pair of narrow, pointed petals straddle each side. A very reserved display overall.
Although their flower is mostly unremarkable, what’s most remarkable about this Orchid is its hardiness. Orchids are known for being finicky plants that succeed only under very specific conditions. Ladies’-tresses are no such thing. They thrive in lawns and gardens around the state by tolerating poor soils, trampling, and regular mowing. Maybe if you’re lucky, they’re already growing peacefully in your yard, just like they are in mine.
This week for Flora and Fauna Friday it’s a prehistoric looking predatory turtle: the Eastern Snapping Turtle (Chelydra serpentina).
The Eastern Snapping Turtle is our largest non-marine turtle here in the Lowcountry. They can exceed 50 pounds in weight and a foot and a half in shell length but are usually closer to 20 pounds and a foot long at maturity. Snapping Turtles are easy to ID at any distance. Their shells are a clayey-gray to murky-brown with three shallow keels down the back and are often coated in a layer of mud or algae. Snapping Turtles always look too big for their britches (and act like it too) with their wrinkly gray skin pouring out of their shell. In my opinion, from the front they look like they’re wearing an oversized wool sweater, turtleneck of course. They have wide webbed feet with long claws, broad shoulders, and the long, scale-studded tail of a dragon.
Snapping Turtles are an aquatic species adapted to shallow waters. They can be found in almost every significant body of standing water. Snappers are omnivorous but preferentially feed on meat and arthropods. They will eat anything and everything small enough that enters the water. Snakes, crayfish, ducklings, fish, worms, frogs, carrion, smaller turtles, you name it, it’s on their menu. Snapping Turtles are rarely seen on land and they hardly ever bask. However like all aquatic turtles, they are most often spotted crossing roads in spring and summer as they move between wetlands or seek nesting habitat.
Snapping Turtles are best known for their bad attitudes. If you’ve ever tried to remove one from a swimming pool or tried to help a little old turtle cross the road, you know what I’m talking about. It’s an event that most often involves a shovel, a bucket, an audience, and a lot of hollering. When approached, a Snapping Turtle out of water will assume a bulldog stance, turn to face you, and then proceed to mercilessly bite anything that gets within 6 inches of its face. As mentioned before, they’re too big for their britches. So they can’t retreat into their shell like a normal turtle. In order to compensate for their excess of heft, they’ve become violent little buggers.
However, there’s a trick to safely and efficiently moving a Snapping Turtle. If they’re small enough, you can stick your hands above their hind legs, palm up, and pick them up by the shell. If they’re a biggun, you have to run around the back of them, put your hands the same as before, but then walk them like a wheelbarrow out of the way. Alternatively, you can try to sandwich their back-half between two hands to lift them. However, never pick up an adult Snapping Turtle by its tail, you can damage their spinal cord that way. Also a word of caution, don’t try to pick up a Common Snapping Turtle in the chainsaw hold that folks use on Alligator Snapping Turtles. Common Snappers can, and will, still bite you.
This week for Flora and Fauna Friday is an herb with musical morphology: Lyre-leaf Sage (Salvia lyrata).
Lyre-leaf Sage is a short perennial in the mint family, Lamiaceae. Like most mints it has a square stem and fused, symmetrical flowers. Our Sage grows as a flat rosette in shady clearings and lawns. This minute presence is suited for a life lived in fear of the mower. The stem it constructs is just a rack to hang its flowers from. Those flowers are long and weeping. A pastel-violet that borders on blue and stacked in rings upon its short stem, held limply against the pull of the Earth. Lyre-leaf Sage gets its name from its leaves. As you could surmise those leaves are shaped much like a lyre, with a wide, round tip that narrows as it retreats before flaring again with an embellishing set of lobes. Yet that embellishment begets a neck and its name may be better said as the Guitar-leaf Sage. Those leaves themselves are dark green with spreading veins of burgundy between.
Lyre-leaf Sage is one of those weedy wildflowers that comes to dominate the roadside scenery of Edisto Island with a certain color a certain season every year. Like others I’ve spotlighted, it flavors the landscape and sets the mood for a month. For Lyre-leaf Sage that month is April. It blooms in shaggy strips of pastel-purple that season the shoulders of the highway. Pockets of spring displayed on the backdrop of the black top. A dose of nature doled out by our diminutive docent as we drive the artery of our Island.
This week for Flora and Fauna Friday we have a ruddy little shorebird with a taste for roe and a pension for long-distance travel: the Red Knot (Calidris canutus).
The Red Knot is a smaller shorebird but the largest member of the Peep Sandpipers, genus Calidris, found in the United States. They measure out at about nine inches long with a compact build. In winter they’re among our drabbest shorebirds. Their beach-sand-gray back and surf-foam-white belly blends them in perfectly to their surroundings. Yet, a medium length bill that’s not too long but not too short, a white stripe above the eye, legs an unappetizing shade of green-yellow, and their intermediate stature make them an easy ID even during this bleakest season. When spring springs and summer creeps closer they begin to molt into their breeding plumage. The washed-out feathers of winter are slowly shed to make way for a blouse of ruddy threads. Like an unsupervised toddler on an April-shower slickened piedmont farm, these birds show up stained from nostrils to nethers in a deep rust-red attire. Knots are rarely seen alone and can be found in flocks of hundreds to thousands as they move through Edisto each spring.
Red Knots are a strongly migratory and cosmopolitan species, meaning they’re found across the globe. There are a half dozen subspecies of Red Knot that each have their own unique breeding grounds, flyways, and summer ranges. All Red Knots breed in the Arctic Circle but not all winter at the same latitude. The subspecies found in South Carolina, Calidris canutus rufa, boasts one of the most impressive round-trips of any bird. Birds will winter in Tierra del Fuego at the tip of South America and breed in the northeast corner of Canada and Greenland! As the birds funnel up the coast, with their sights set on Canada, they must feed continuously to survive the journey. Here on the Atlantic coast, a critical component of their diet is Horseshoe Crab eggs. Horseshoe Crabs spawn on the beach in spring, just before the arrival of the Red Knots. Knots scarf up as much of this crabby caviar as they can as they hopscotch up the coastline. It’s important to remember to leave migratory shorebirds, like Red Knots, alone and give them some space when you’re on the beach. They were recently listed as federally threatened. This was due to ever increasing loses of feeding and resting habitat along their migration route. Migration is a critical time for them each year and, with how few undeveloped beaches are left on our coast, they need all the rest and relaxation they can get.
When they arrive in Canada, Knots pair up, hatch some eggs, and then vamoose as soon as their chicks fledge. Interestingly, recent research in the Southeast shows that our local Knots are not as athletically inclined as the others. Historically, ornithologists thought that all Knots wintered in South America and passed through Delaware Bay on their northward flight. However, it turns out a decent number gorge themselves on South Carolina beaches before flying over the Appalachians to hop the Canadian border. Then, each winter, about 1500 Red Knots snowbird in South Carolina. Here they dine on small clams and other critters over winter until the horseshoe crabs arrive. We also have a contingent of immature birds who get cold feet their first year and end up spending the summer on the Southeast coast instead of heading to the breeding grounds. So Red Knots can actually be seen on Edisto Island almost any day of the year!
This week for Flora and Fauna Friday we have spring’s climbing coral choir: Crossvine (Bignonia capreolata).
Crossvine is a high climbing native vine that can snake its way to the tops of even the tallest canopies. It adheres to the trunks of trees with tendrils that wriggle and wedge their way into the crevices of bark or wrap around any tiny projection. Crossvine has a remarkably thin stem for the length it grows. When cut, this stem reveals the cross of its namesake, four pithy rays extending into the wood of the stem in a cross-pattern. Crossvine has large evergreen leaves. Each leaf is split into two separate leaflets and paired oppositely with another leaf, giving the plant the appearance of four pendulous leaves per node.
Crossvine’s best known character is its flowers. Blossoms of coral pink with orange accents, a deep bugle shape, and wide mouth rimmed with five petals. Crossvine blooms in early April right as Ruby-throated Hummingbirds begin to arrive in droves. Crossvine is a species of plant specially adapted for pollination by Hummingbirds. Its deep, wide flowers are the perfect shape to fit a Hummingbird head, dusting it with pollen. This pollination route is a common one for high-climbing vines like both Crossvine and Trumpet Vine. Hummingbirds have a much easier time finding and accessing these high-flying flowers than bees and butterflies. That skyward bloom is advantageous because Crossvine has wind dispersed seeds. The higher it can bear flowers, and subsequently fruit, the farther it can expect its seeds to scatter on the wind.
This week for Flora and Fauna Friday we have an insect you can’t possibly miss, the Cloudless Sulphur (Phoebis sennae).
The Cloudless Sulphur is a large butterfly and a member of the White family, Pieridae. Members of this family are most often white, yellow, orange, or a combination of the above in color. They’re strong fliers, perch with their wings closed, and have a roughly circular silhouette. The Cloudless Sulphur is no exception.
They’re a common species found throughout the eastern half of North America and one of those few insect species that everyone is aware of, no matter how disinterested they may be in the subject. With their safety-vest-yellow wings and three-inch wingspan these butterflies are just screaming for attention. Males have cleaner hindwing coloration than females, who typically sport more obvious brown accents as well as noticeable wing-spots. Males will incessantly patrol a territory, back and forth, over and over, in search of females and warding off competing males. Cloudless Sulphurs are a common sight along roadsides and field edges where they search for nectar. They are one of the least picky butterfly species when it comes to nectar sources. They’re known for sipping from any and every species of flower they can find, especially those that other butterflies refuse to touch. Their caterpillars feed on Sicklepod and Partridge Peas, common weeds in fallow fields and road shoulders.
Although present from spring into winter, Cloudless Sulphur populations peak in late summer. This is not just because their local population has returned to where it was before. Their numbers have been bolstered by out-of-towners. Cloudless Sulphurs migrate just like Monarchs. In spring they head north to breed in more temperate areas. As the days begin to shorten, they start fluttering south. By late August their numbers explode in the Lowcountry as a chartreuse wash paints our roadways. Tumbling winds of lime butterflies funnel down our southwest bound highways and byways. Their ultimate destination is Florida, the Caribbean, and Central America, where they ride out the winter.
