Making It Grow Minutes

ur native trumpet creeper, Campsis radicans, has been introduced to China and is undermining a portion of the Great Wall.

North Carolina State’s Mountain Crop Improvement Laboratory developed a sterile cultivar of the Campsis vine.

With its long orange trumpet-shaped flowers, trumpet creeper is a hummingbird magnet.

Campsis radicans, has been known as “cow itch,” but, there is no evidence that it bothers cows at all.

The native vine Campsis radicans, trumpet creeper, is described as extremely vigorous – if it were non-native, it would be described as rampantly invasive. It doesn’t creep – it leaps and can cover a tall chain link fence and anything else it finds to climb by aerial roots and twining in and out of openings.

At Goodale State Park John Nelson and I examined the plant community growing on the swollen bases of pond cypress trees, Taxodium ascendens, rather than the better-known bald cypress, Taxodium disitichum.

A canoe trip in Goodale State Park is a great way to see the mini ecosystems that form around the bases of cypress trees.

Visit all forty-seven state parks and you can become a member of a special group eligible for programs offered just for super dedicated park visitors.

Elderberry stems are semi-woody, the interior is filled with pith. The late John Fairey, renowned botany professor at Clemson, told students that this pith was used to pack delicate scientific instruments and still used by repairmen to hold tiny parts of jewelry and such. Mason bees and other insects, however, have long used the older hollow stems as places to construct egg-laying or brood chambers. So if you have elderberries in your yard, cut a few stems half way down every year to expose that pith-filled interior to cavity nesting bees. Another option is to put stems and other small branches or rotting wood in a mulch pile. Then you can order a Pollinator Friendly Habitat sign from the Xerces Society. Read their page about building a better mulch pile for more ideas about making your yard pollinator friendly.

Professor Greg Reighard, Clemson researcher and international fruit specialist, explained that elderberries are primarily wind-pollinated. Although the flowers are extraordinarily showy, which you think would be a sign that they are attracting all sorts of pollinators, they don’t produce nectar so insect visitors are only collecting pollen. Still, their value to wildlife is high as the hundreds of dark purple fruits that each flower head produces are devoured by over 45 species of birds and racoons among others -- the Missouri Department of Conservation reports that a sharp-eyed naturalist even saw a box turtle eating fruits. But for people the entire plant contains compounds toxic to us, so this is one plant that grazers should not eat in the field. But properly prepared with heat, their berries have long been safely used for pies, wines and jellies.

All parts of the plants have compounds that are toxic to humans (not native wildlife). Fortunately, heat destroys the dangerous chemicals the seeds in the ripe fruit contain so you can make delicious wine or pies with them.

Elderberry bushes with their bold, textured leaves are now topped with broad flower heads filled with hundreds of small white blossoms, destined to become tasty dark purple fruits.

To discover where prothonotary warblers spend their winters, Beidler staff devised an ingenious system. Several birds, weighing about half an ounce, have been fitted with tiny backpacks that record information about where they go. The devices don’t transmit coordinates, they would be too heavy. This system is dependent on having some of the birds, with their site fidelity, successfully making the trip south and returning to the place of their birth. Then they’re trapped, the backpacks removed, and information retrieved.

Prothonotary warblers have strong site fidelity. Although they have a large nesting area in the US, individual birds return to the place of their birth.

The Prothonotary warbler is sometimes called the swamp canary. These small birds are a brilliant yellow with bluish-grey green wings and a black eye that’s very striking on the yellow head. Males are a more intense yellow than females.

Team MIG spent a wonderful day at the Audubon Center Beidler Forest. On the one and three-quarter mile long boardwalk, you may sometimes find a cluster of photographers with lenses all focused on a small cavity in a bald cypress knee, hoping to get pictures of Prothonotary warbler parents flying in and out with insects for their babies. Sometimes called swamp canaries, these birds are one of the only two warblers that nest in holes in dead wood, in Beidler most often a hole in a cypress knee slightly above water. In other parts of the state and country they nest in swamps, flooded bottomlands, or other places near water, mostly in dead tree holes sometimes first excavated by other birds, although they will use provided nesting boxes. Their breeding grounds extend to the Mississippi and as far north as Wisconsin.

The original purchase of eighteen hundred acres of virgin cypress and tupelo gum swampland is the heart of Beidler Forest. Imagine a place where several cypress trees are documented as being over one thousand years old. Cypress trees are well adapted to withstanding hurricanes; they are, compared to pines, flexible, and their extensive knees that develop when growing in wetlands probably provides extra stability. But this virgin forest does not look all that old – there are mostly large but not huge trees and many small ones, as well. Hurricanes and other natural forces change even woodlands not disturbed by man. At Beidler, they leave trees as they age and as they fall (unless they are a danger to visitors on the boardwalk). We saw standing dead trees full of holes from pileated woodpeckers – they’re fond of carpenter ants that eat rotten wood.

Beidler Forest Audubon Center’s manager Matt Johnson said this is red-letter year for the larvae of the Eastern Tent Caterpillar. They were everywhere, the boardwalk was covered in frass, the polite word for insect poop, they were even falling on us from the trees! Although they covered with seta, hair-like bristles that sometimes cause serious skin irritation, these caterpillars are harmless to touch. Among the one hundred forty birds that spend all of part of their life at Beidler, are the yellow cuckoos. They sit by the nests of these caterpillars and gleefully strip the bristles off, devouring up to one hundred at a time. When startled by loud noises, such as thunder, they make a croaking sound, giving rise to the nickname rain crows. They lay eggs over a relatively long period of time; often depositing them in the nests of other birds.

On our visit to the Beidler Forest manager Matt Johnson spotted five snakes – three water moccasins and two banded water snakes. To distinguish between them, see if the eyeball is round and therefore a non-venomous water snake rather than the moccasins’ slit-eyed pupil. But that means using binoculars or getting too close for safety!

Much of the Beidler Forest is a swamp – a flooded forest where the water level fluctuates rather dramatically, some areas may occasionally be completely dry. The water doesn’t come from streams or springs but from rainfall draining from the four hundred and thirty thousand acres watershed above Four Holes Swamp, of which Beidler is a part. Think of a swamp as a massive porous surface – rainwater can slowly infiltrate the soil and pollutants – fertilizers, motor oil from roadways, industrial waste, sewage -- are broken down by soil organisms into non-toxic substances. The water level fluctuates with rainfall but inexorably slowly flows across the land, from wetter to drier sites before ending in the Edisto River. After excess rainfall events, that slow passage mitigates flooding of that River and adds cleansed water for the backup supply of Charleston’s drinking water.