Making It Grow Minutes

Rattlesnake master's slender flower stalks, topped with inch-wide inflorescences, makes a great contrast to other flowers in an arrangement and can be left tall and still be graceful.

Another of its pollinators are the predatory wasps who capture insects to line soil cavities or stems as paralyzed, but living , food for their young. Most are solitary wasps who are not especially aggressive to us.

Many people get most excited about butterflies on their pollinator plants, but Eryngium yuccafolium, flowering late summer, perhaps attracts a larger diversity of visitors than almost any other insect magnet. According to the Xerces society website --bumble bees, yellow-faced bees, sweet bees, multiple beetles and dozens of fly species.

By collecting the plant leaves' tough long fibrous veins, indigenous people could weave them to make moccasins and baskets, a better use than relying on the sap or root concoctions to treat snake bites.

This common name comes from the belief that the roots could cure rattlesnake bites - don’t try it!

The dried wood of osage orange is prized for firewood as it has the highest BTU on charts that rank that property among native trees.

The spread of Maclura pomifera, aka osage orange or bodark tree, from the relatively small Red River drainage system to 48 states was due not just it’s importance to native Americans.

Common names can be fascinating and puzzling.

An inspection by a certified arborist can help prevent losing your shade trees and perhaps having one fall on your house,

Trees react to tsevere internal pruning by adding lots of small leaf covered shoots at the ends of branches. New research reveals this actually makes the trees become susceptible to damage from strong winds

The University of Georgia Warnell School of Forestry predicts that tropical storms and hurricanes will now be slower moving by 20 percent, and have 24 percent more rainfall. Your trees will be experiencing stronger winds and saturated soils, increasing the chances of their being blown over.

Future storms will have up to six percent stronger wind loads.

The range of black vultures is expanding rapidly across the south and creating problems for homes and also for parked automobiles.

You can easily distinguish between our two local vultures if you see them in flight. The slightly larger turkey vulture has a V-shaped wing pattern when soaring; the black vulture’s wings are held out straight and have white feathers at the tips.

Our native turkey vulture has almost no negative consequences associated with its behavior. Due to its amazing sense of smell, it can locate decaying animal remains from a mile away, even under trees.

These birds in flight have a V-shaped wing structure easy to spot as they are usually seen soaring in the sky, teetering slightly. The turkey vulture is truly nature’s vacuum cleaner.

Nature’s evolutionarily perfect scavengers, our vultures, are Johnny on the spot to deal with roadkill.

I have an uplifting ride to work as I pass the Fort Motte Garden Club Garden Spot, the Pollinator Friendly Garden maintained by Nina Mack, Julia Wolfe and friends, and then I go down a hill to cross the Congaree River and check out its water flow.

In the United States we have vultures – the black and turkey vultures in the southeast and the California condor out in the Golden State, each in a different genus but the same family.

The annual Sunbelt Ag expo in Moultrie, Georgia, allows growers to see the most up-to-date farming technology in the country. In addition to acres of exhibits, the organizers also select the Swisher Farmers of the Year for Southeastern states.

One of the features at U S C’s A C Moore Herbarium that I find fascinating is at their website.

Another of the native orchids Herrick Brown, curator of the A C Moore Herbarium at U S C talked about when he joined us for a program was the rattlesnake plantain.

Orchids in South Carolina? Yes, we do have orchids although they have their own special charm which is more subtle than some of the drop dead gorgeous tropical species.

Dr. Herrick Brown, the curator at the A. C. Moore Herbarium, will help identify plants for you...

It may be that fireflies first started glowing to warn off predators that they contain a toxin and taste horrible.