DEL.ICIO.USWILD GEORGIA
Plants create blaze of glory as fall approaches
For the Journal-Consitution
Sunday, August 24, 2008
Whoo!! Where did it go? We’ve less than a month of summer left. The dog days of summer, traditionally the hottest part of the year, ended two weeks ago. Now, we’re at that point where normal daily temperatures start dropping slowly toward fall and winter.
The days also are growing noticeably shorter. In one month, we’ve lost a half-hour of daylight. Sunset this evening is 8:13 p.m. A month ago it was 8:44 p.m.
CHARLES SEABROOK / AJC Special
Goldenrod, like this one growing at Panola Mountain State Park, is a signature wildflower of late summer and early fall in Georgia.
AJC Files
Joe-pye weed is another harbinger of cooler autumn days. Its pinkish-to-purple blooms stand tall along roadsides.
Shorter days and longer nights help trigger many of the changes — leaf color, fruit ripening, migration — that start taking place among plants and animals this time of year. Already, several signs of fall are out. Several species of bright yellow goldenrod (Georgia has about 40 species of goldenrod) are blooming profusely in meadows and fields. The leaves of sourwood trees and sumacs along roadsides are turning a deep red-wine tint, adding a rich palette of color to our highways. Dogwood berries already have turned bright red.
Other late summer/early fall wildflowers blooming now include campion, ironweed, joe-pye weed, cardinal flower, black-eyed Susan, boneset, virgin’s-bower, snakeroot (white-flowered), thoroughwort (white-flowered), blazing star, rabbit tobacco, sneezeweed (foul smell) and several aster species.
Here’s a glimpse of other seasonal happenings in Georgia:
Katydids are calling like crazy — a loud racket in the evenings. In the Okefenokee Swamp and other South Georgia wetlands, baby alligators are hatching and may be heard “clucking” to their mothers. Small flocks of blue-winged teal are arriving (the first of some 20 duck species that spend the winter in Georgia). Gnat season also has arrived in South Georgia; the pesky, biting “no-see-ums” usually are worse in August and September.
On barrier island beaches, baby loggerhead sea turtles are hatching at night and hurriedly crawling to the ocean to avoid being snatched up by predators such as ghost crabs. This has been an exceptionally good year for loggerhead nesting on Georgia’s coast — an estimated 1,544 nests.
Fall migration is picking up. Several southbound warbler species and other neotropical migrants can be seen now at birding spots around metro Atlanta, including Kennesaw Mountain National Battlefield Park in Cobb County and the Clyde Shepherd Nature Preserve in Decatur. Purple martins by the thousands are gathering in post-breeding roosts in South Georgia as they prepare to migrate south. Nighthawks frequent the evening sky, scooping insects from the air.
The young of several of Georgia’s oviparous snakes — those that lay eggs — are hatching, including those of the Eastern racer, corn snake, rat snake, indigo snake (endangered) and hognose snake. Venomous copperheads and timber rattlesnakes are giving birth to their live young.
Big Duke’s Pond
Some of South Georgia’s most interesting — and mysterious — wetlands are oval formations known as Carolina bays. Ranging in size from a few acres to more than 1,000 acres, Carolina bays harbor some of the Southeast’s richest variety of plant and animal life.
Carolina bays occur mostly in Georgia and the Carolinas. Despite their name, they have nothing to do with ocean inlets. Rather, their moniker may have come from the bay trees that dominated many of the wet spots.
The other day I tagged along with biologists Lisa Kruse and Shan Cammack with the Department of Natural Resources to one of Georgia’s largest Carolina bays, Big Duke’s Pond in Jenkins County. The state acquired much of Big Duke’s — more than 1,300 acres — for permanent protection in 1999.
Kruse explained that Big Duke’s, like most other Carolina bays, is home to a variety of wildlife habitat, including pond cypress swamp forest, pond cypress savannah, slash pine forest and mixed pine-hardwood forest. Such a diversity of habitat provides a rich assortment of wildlife. The Audubon Society, for instance, has designated Big Duke’s an Important Bird Area. The preserve also harbors several rare and endangered species, such as the wood stork. In particular, it is a haven for the Canby’s dropwort, an endangered white-flowered plant found only in Georgia.
Kruse and Cammack were looking for blooming dropworts (Oxypolis canbyi) when we visited Big Duke’s, but apparently we were too early. None was found. However, when Kruse returned last week, she found 34 dropworts in bloom.
Carolina bays usually are oval, and always with a high, dry ridge of sand along the eastern edge and shallow, swampy interiors fed by rain and groundwater. They all point northwest to southeast.
There are more than 20 theories on how they were formed, but none has been proven. One theory suggests that they were formed by whales when the sea covered South Georgia. A more logical theory says they were formed by prevailing winds kicking up sand as the ancient sea retreated.
In the sky
The moon is a thin crescent in the east just before sunrise. It will be new on Aug. 30, says astronomer David Dundee of the Northwest Georgia Science Museum. Mercury and Venus are very low in the west just after sunset. Mars sets in the northwest just after sunset. Jupiter rises out of the east just before sunset.
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