It’s April and Phenology Friday is back, which means it is the perfect time to observe yellow trout lilies. Yellow trout lilies are flowering plants that also like to beat the leafy overstory for some early spring sunlight. 

The yellow trout lily earns its moniker from its mottled leaves, resembling brook trout. It is also called dog-tooth violet, not because it is a violet, but because of the shape of its underground swollen stem called a corm.

If you see these bright yellow blooms, don’t take them for granted! New plants can take up to five years to produce flowers. To compensate, the plants can reproduce or spread via their corms. These lilies will still send up leaves even without flowers to produce food for the mainly below-ground plants. 

Image credits from left to right: ohai, kbarylski, and Mel Kelley

The way to tell if trout lily leaves will yield a flower? If there is a single leaf, it is immature, and will not produce a flower. If you see two leaves, the plant is mature and will produce a flower.

Don’t forget to keep observing the other spring ephemerals like Dutchman's breeches, spring beauties, and bloodroot!

Sources and further information:

https://mortonarb.org/plant-and-protect/trees-and-plants/yellow-trout-lily/#overview

https://plants.ces.ncsu.edu/plants/erythronium-americanum/

Hello naturalists!

This is an announcement that we will be posting on select Wednesdays starting in April and continuing through the summer for a feature known as “Wildlife Wednesdays”. Our project target species include flowering plants because they act as excellent bioindicators of climate change. However, we know that every now and then our fuzzy, armored, vibrant, and warty animal community deserves some love too!

And besides, we technically are called “Flowers AND fauna along the AT corridor”.

The focus of introducing these individual animals or groups will be to enlighten their relationship with our target plant species and some querc-y guest plants. From germination to pollination and back again, animals help plants complete their life cycles (cue phenology).

And plants, well, they provide nectar, intrigue, crunchy leaves, and sometimes even slippery slopes you can’t escape. 

So, get bear-y excited for the animals to buzz, hum, and march into our content and your hearts. In the meantime, continue documenting the glamor of a new spring.

The spring ephemerals are continuing their subtle dance across woodland floors and the other hibernators are slowly waking to the promise of more consistent warmth. In April, the eastern forest becomes abuzz with activity. That is why this week we are featuring the bumblebee (Bombus spp.) as our first Wildlife Wednesday guest.

Native bumblebees are important pollinators in the United States. Only the queen will survive by overwintering underground. When she awakes from her stupor, she starts to look for resources that will help her rebuild her monarchy: nectar and pollen. 

Among the plants available for nectar are the spring ephemerals, including Dutchman’s Breeches. For the queen bee it is an attractive choice because of the bright yellow colors. It is even more appealing for queens equipped with a long proboscis (tongue), as they can easily retrieve nectar stored at the flower tip. The plant benefits as the queen brushes up against pollen-producing anthers in the process.

From left to right: Common Eastern Bumblebee (Bombus impatiens) (credit: © funnystuff2495), Dutchman's breeches (credit: © jerrhass), and the two species together (© bev435)

Some species of Bombus have shorter tongues, as do smaller bees (workers), and they will instead chew holes into flowers such as the Dutchman’s Breeches, not providing the same pollination benefit. So the queen is certainly the bee's knees when it comes to pollinating this species!

Sources and further information: 

https://www.fs.usda.gov/wildflowers/pollinators/pollinator-of-the-month/bumblebees.shtml#:~:text=Bumblebees%20(of%20the%20genus%20Bombus,mouse%20nest%20or%20rodent%20burrow.
http://www.restoringthelandscape.com/2013/06/pollination-of-dutchmans-breeches-royal.html 
https://www.fs.usda.gov/wildflowers/pollinators/documents/BumbleBeeGuideEast2011.pdf

 As the early flowering plants continue their northern blooms, along the southern AT they are gearing up for next year, producing seeds that hold the next generation. While plants have evolved many ways of seed dispersal, including wind, water, and gravity, dispersal by animals remains an important evolutionary relationship.

 In eastern forests, it is estimated about 30 percent of plants are myrmecochorous which is a fancy word meaning “dispersed by ants”. The ant is an important insect to the woodland ephemerals.  

Ants are insects of the family Formicidae, and for perspective that’s a big family, containing over 12,000 species. However, one genus is said to account for three-fourths of total seed dispersal in eastern forests: Aphaenogaster spp. This genus is made up of several hard-to-distinguish species that have large, slim bodies and long legs.

Left to right: Winnow Ant (Aphaenogaster rudis) and Tawny Collared Ant (Aphaenogaster fulva) (photo credit: Cecil Smith)

What compels these ants to scatter seeds? Well, the seeds often have a fatty, nutrient-rich segment called an “elaiosome” which is from the Greek for “oil body”! In the process of collection, ants carry seeds back to their nest, and once used for their fatty treat, seeds have a new place to germinate.

So, as you continue to observe the woodland floor for life, take a moment to appreciate the rapid ebb and flow of marching ants- collecting, supporting, and connecting forest ecosystems.

From left to right: Yellow trout lily fruit (photo credit: Gary James), red trillium fruit (photo credit: @friendlyforest), and Dutchman's breeches fruit (photo credit: Jay Heiser)

 Examples of species whose seeds are spread by ants are trilliums, trout lilies, bloodroot, and dutchman's breeches.

Sources and further reading: 

 Ness, J. H., Morin, D.F., Giladi, I. Oikos. November 2009. Uncommon specialization in a mutualism between a temperate herbaceous plant guild and an ant: are Aphaenogaster ants keystone mutualists?

https://www.biologyonline.com/dictionary/elaiosome 

https://www.nwf.org/Educational-Resources/Wildlife-Guide/Invertebrates/Ants#:~:text=There%20are%20more%20than%2012%2C000,leaf%20litter%2C%20or%20decaying%20plants. 

https://mississippientomologicalmuseum.org.msstate.edu/Researchtaxapages/Formicidaepages/genericpages/Aphaenogaster.fulva.htm