Making It Grow Minutes

If you’re interested in foraging, you might want to look in the old cookbook Charleston Receipts for the cherry bounce recipe.

Our native black cherry, Prunus serotina, is usually defaced this time of year by a large web of silk that houses several hundred leaf-eating Eastern tent caterpillars.

The wood that comes from our native black cherry tree, Prunus serotina, is the most prized in the forestry/timber industry. The wood has the beautiful deep red color valued by furniture makers, is strong, and is easy to work.

In the south, a fungal disease ruins its timber value, but to support wildlife, this tree should be tops on your list.

If you take a botany class, you learn that the leaves or stems of certain plants have aromatic compounds. Some of the aromas are pleasant, some definitely are not.

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.