♪ ♪ Just about everybody dreams about being in the mountains in autumn, and we're no different.

I'm Beryl Dakers, and with me is Rudy Mancke, natural history curator for the South Carolina Museum Commission and our guide and teacher for NatureScene.

It's nice to be here.

What a beautiful day to come to the mountains!

Absolutely... it's hard to believe this is a site that's accessible to everybody.

It's become more accessible recently.

The state has purchased Caesar's Head, and that's where we are today.

It's now a state park.

It opened a couple of weeks ago.

It's available to all people of South Carolina at no charge to come and look from the mountains into the valleys onto the Piedmont of South Carolina.

(Beryl) Look at all the things you can see.

(Rudy) The big landmark to me is another state park across the way.

You can see it clearly... Table Rock State Park, another massive amount of granite, exposed distinctly.

Little vegetation grows on some of these outcrops.

That lake below it is the Greenville Reservoir.

It's easy to key into where you are.

We're in the upper part of Greenville County, near the North Carolina line.

Just looking out, one would get the impression we were in a mountainous area.

This is one of three mountain counties of South Carolina.

The Appalachians tippy-toe through the state.

We don't have much of them, but enough to be spectacular.

One of the interesting things we'll be noticing is how plants and animals here are getting ready for the winter.

You can see leaf color change in the valley.

(Rudy) I hope we can take a close look at what causes those colors later in the show.

(Beryl) They're just beginning to change.

We're going to get a chance to look closely at some pigmentation.

We've got a few things behind us to look at.

(Rudy) One of the quick ones is at the top with red color.

Come on up.

(Beryl) What is this plant?

This is one of the common plants on the Piedmont and mountains in South Carolina known as sourwood.

People who walk a long time and get thirsty can chew on this leaf, and it keeps them from being so thirsty, supposedly.

It doesn't work well for me, but it works for some.

It's a good example of the fall color change.

Yeah, and it's an example of one of four different pigments we need to talk about today that plants produce and store in leaves.

The most common pigment we'll get to secondly...chlorophyll.

This pigment is known as anthocyanin.

It's a pigment that's not always in the leaf.

It's produced about this time of year when day lengths get shorter.

That seems to be what triggers leaf-color changes and leaves falling.

This red material usually forms in leaves exposed to bright sunlight.

That's helpful in the formation of this pigment.

Also leaves that have stored up a lot of sugar.

These leaves, seemingly, have a lot of sugar stored.

It's obviously exposed to sunlight.

I'll remember that if I ever get stranded!

Underneath we have something familiar from a previous show, and that's hemlock isn't it?

Yeah...this is a small one.

On these rock outcrops, vegetation is stunted and almost shaped by the wind that is constantly blowing over the face of the rock.

This is a small hemlock, one we refer to as being evergreen, even though nothing's forever in nature, as we've mentioned on an earlier show.

We call it evergreen because it does keep its leaves-- or needles, in this case-- throughout the winter when most other trees have shed them.

You remember the shrub below?

I do...it looks like mountain laurel, but this one is smaller than ones we've seen.

Well, again, a harsh environment.

This rock outcrop is harsh because it's extra cold here.

The wind blowing over stunts the growth of the plant and also changes the leaves.

Mountain laurel is another one of those leaves that has one pigment now, especially powerfully-- the green pigment known as?

Chlorophyll.

Sure...without chlorophyll, we would not be here as animals.

Plants wouldn't be here either.

They trap energy from the sunlight.

Chlorophyll--we don't fully understand--stores it as sugar.

If a leaf builds up lots of sugar and is exposed to sunlight a lot, chances are it'll turn red in the winter.

This one stays green because it is one of the evergreen plants.

Shorter day length doesn't change the leaves on this plant.

I'd like to look at some other mountain magic, so why don't we move back up the rock.

Let's go to this clump of material, Beryl, because it's really an interesting plant that's found on rock outcrops and basically nowhere else.

This mass of material is called rock spike moss.

It's one of the primitive plants that grows here.

It's not a flowering plant... never would have a flower.

See the way it kind of clings to the fissures in the rock-- the little cracks in the rock?

If you feel it, it's kind of rough.

It looks a little like a regular moss, but it doesn't reproduce the same way.

It seems to even be more primitive than the moss we've seen on earlier shows.

Like a little pine.

It traces its ancestry back to when the forests that produced coal we're using as one of our fossil fuels were all over the world.

The trees were very large.

Its ancestors were much bigger than today.

It's still doing well in this specific habitat.

It seems to like this over others.

Rudy, you talked about the fissures...

I have never seen anything like this!

Can we talk about the formation of this kind of gap?

One of the things about this rock that you really wouldn't expect to be true is that this stuff used to be liquid.

Liquid, which means hot-- underground, most probably-- and eventually cooled.

When it cools, there are certain areas of weakness that develop as these crystals form and as it cools.

When you expose this material to weathering, things begin to change, especially when you've got an overhang like this.

There's stress to pull off that way.

That stress causes things like this to happen.

Let me see if I can step across.

(Rudy) Hang on there a second.

Look at what has happened.

It looks as if the rock has been pulled apart.

I would guess a lot of it is due to the pull of gravity here.

(Beryl) Nothing like an earthquake or tremor?

I wouldn't think so.

I think this would be a slow thing that takes a long time and probably will continue to slip apart.

Water on these rocks, as we mentioned at Forty Acre Rock, is responsible for a great amount of weathering or decay of the rock.

It's interesting here, but you can see-- if I can ease down without slipping into the fissure-- that quite a few plants grow on the edge of the fissure.

I think you can see these.

Yes!

Those are one of the lichens.

We said lichens were an algae and a fungus that live together, a wonderful kind of mutual, beneficial relationship-- mutually beneficial relationship.

These things can live on the sides of rocks where nothing else can survive.

This is one of the edible lichens.

If we were trapped here alone we could make a meal of this.

It's called rocktripe... common name for it.

It needs nothing else to grow and survive?

It needs a little moisture, which the fungus traps for it.

It needs energy to survive, and the little algae is getting energy from the sun.

These plants have come up with ways to utilize energy that animals like you and I and the snakes and all haven't harnessed yet because they store it.

Then we, as animals, have to steal it from the plants.

Sounds like principles we'll have to adopt soon.

[laughing] That's true!

Let's walk on up here.

I saw another plant we need to look at that's only found in the mountains of South Carolina.

[no dialogue] Let's look at what's left of soil on this rock.

Looks like every other mass eroded away, except for a few clumps held by a variety of plants.

This is one of my favorite plants in the mountains.

What would you name this?

It's not fair...

I know this.

Do you know the name?

It's a bluebell.

Right...bluebells are exciting plants only found in the three mountain counties of the state.

Some parts of the flower stick out beyond the petals.

Bluish in color, blooming this time of year in the mountains.

It adds color to a place that doesn't have a lot of blue.

We're seeing a lot of colors, but not much blue.

Yet bluebells give us that color.

You talked about this mound.

It looks like a wasteland.

This is the only available place now for many plants to grow.

They're competing to survive... this is a harsh environment.

An open rock face is a rough place for most plants to live.

A few seem to enjoy it, but others like this that live in other places actually fight for position here.

The grasses win out, along with a few bluebells, but mainly a good variety of grasses.

That's typical in this sort of situation.

I see some yellow leaves.

I want to take a good look at those.

All right... lead the way.

[no dialogue] Beryl, hang on a minute...

I think I saw movement.

I got it!

Let's take a look.

It's one of the lizards that's common on rock outcrops like this.

That's really a beauty!

This is one of the lizards that frequents rock outcrops like this.

We have said sunlight does affect the plants here.

Sunlight affects animals too... this animal, especially.

He can't pump himself up, building up enough heat to get him going on a cold morning.

He comes out once he's warmed enough to move, suns on a rock, and picks up enough energy to get his heart and lungs going, get him moving so he can search for food.

It's like his cup of coffee!

This one is called a five-lined skink.

Five yellow lines--a skink is a name for a lizard that has smooth, shiny scales.

This one has smooth, shiny scales, kind of a bluish tail.

Rudy, he turns blue-- Well, when they're young, and this is not a full adult yet, probably, this bluish color is distinctive.

They lose this as they get to be adults.

Some people call these blue tail skinks because of that bluish tail.

Some people in South Carolina believe this is a poisonous animal... they call it a scorpion.

It doesn't look like a scorpion.

It's not a real scorpion.

There's no lizard in South Carolina that's poisonous, so there's no real fear of any of the lizards.

They're good at feeding on insects, which makes them our friends to some degree.

I'm going to let this one go in my hand and see if it'll sit.

Pumping in and out.

Yeah, breathing hard...

I guess we've scared him.

He looks like a snake.

This is a reptile, like a snake, but this one has legs... most lizards do.

And eyelids.

This one has eyelids... snakes don't.

They have that opening for an ear.

Snakes don't have that, either.

This fellow can hear us?

Yeah.

Interesting animal... we'll go release him in the same area we caught him, let him go on his way.

We want to look at the yellows and browns on that tree there.

Get to those leaves yet.

Yeah...let's leave him on the rock, go on down for a moment, and see what we can see.

[no dialogue] Rudy, there really are a few leaves with that familiar fall, yellow coloring.

That's a color that's always there, masked by chlorophyll.

As the chlorophyll begins to die, you begin to see the yellow color.

This bush is found over a good part of South Carolina.

It's known as shadbush.

It usually blooms about the time the shad are running upstream, so the name shadbush.

The leaves are interesting because it does have-- this one even has a little spider on it-- it does have three colors on it.

The green... the chlorophyll.

The yellow... carotenoids.

You name carrots "carrots" because they have a great amount of these pigments, and it's a yellowish orange color.

The brown there are tannins, which are very common pigments, especially in oak leaves.

Many times, the oak leaf turns a solid brown color in the fall of the year after the chlorophyll is gone.

Probably what causes these color changes to become evident is the shortened day length.

Cold has something to do with it, and the moisture, but the triggering device, it seems, is as the day lengths shorten, as the earth tilts away from the sun, then the pigments begin to change in leaves.

Also there's a little layer that builds up at the base of the leaf where it attaches to the stem that eventually causes the connection to be flimsy and the leaf to fall off eventually.

Autumn and fall are two different seasons.

Autumn starts about the 23rd of September every year when the earth tilts away from the sun.

Leaf colors begin to change.

Fall really does come later.

It's literally the falling of leaves.

The falling of the leaves... that's why we call it fall.

You remember that plant?

I do...goldenrod is symbolic for fall.

It is to me.

Composites, like goldenrod, that pack a lot of flowers into one head, are really typical of autumn.

You find them in all different colors, but the most common is gold or yellow.

Attracts quite a few interesting insects.

That's all over the state, right?

All over the state, and there's so many varieties, it's hard to number them all.

Speaking of varieties, let's keep looking.

Let's look off one more time before we leave.

[no dialogue] Be careful getting down here, Beryl.

We ought to take one more look before we leave and go down in the valley and see what we can find downstairs.

That's a beautiful view, isn't it?!

(Beryl) It's gorgeous here!

(Rudy) Look at that!

Look at the critter.

Oh yeah... let's take that leaf and take a close look at the caterpillar on it.

Let me shake it off... there we go.

This is a common caterpillar this time of year.

You usually find him on oak leaves.

He does feed on other varieties of hardwoods too.

They're almost always found late autumn.

He's going to turn into a tiger moth, one of the common varieties.

It's found all over South Carolina.

That is a beautiful animal!

I'm glad he moved, though...

I couldn't tell which end was front.

It is hard with the fuzz to tell.

Some caterpillars, you don't want to know what the front end is, but you want to know whether these bristles have stingers in them or not.

Some tiger moths, on these projections, have stinging hairs in them.

You don't want to rub against them.

I thought I saw another caterpillar.

Let me reach back over here.

Here is one of the caterpillars that can cause problems to people.

It is usually found on oak, although you can find it crawling on quite a few different species.

You'd probably miss him-- look at the coloring.

He's one of the slug caterpillars because he's very flat.

Doesn't have the distinctive legs this caterpillar we looked at earlier has, but he has spines and tiny bristles coming off of those projections.

Those are spears with poison in the tip.

When you bump against them, the tip breaks off, the poison gets in the skin and is an irritant.

All slug moth caterpillars generally have stinging cells, so you don't want to bother them at all.

And yet it's such a pretty animal!

It's called the oak slug caterpillar, really an unbelievable animal.

The larvae-- this thing that's feeding-- is more beautiful than the moth.

The moth is blah... the larva is exciting.

What a nice contrast between the two!

Yeah...it's interesting.

This is their time of year.

They're going to overwinter, not as larvae or adults, but as a pupa on the ground, probably hidden in the leaves.

We should put these back and look at this view from a different standpoint.

All right, let's put them back on the oak and wish them well.

They'll probably have an interesting winter up here.

Why don't we walk out on the edge.

Beryl, look at this below us!

This is a view you rarely get...from on top of a hawk.

It's a red-tailed hawk, soaring almost out of sight, not even flapping his wings, riding warm, rising air currents.

Literally gliding!

I wish I could do that!

He gets quite a different view of this world.

He's looking for mainly rodents, squirrels and chipmunks to feed on.

Even though he's high above them, he can still spot them.

Isn't that unbelievable!

This has been a nice morning in the mountains.

It has...I've heard about Caesar's Head, but I had no idea it was as nice as this.

There are a lot of places like this in South Carolina.

Let's go down in the valley.

(Beryl) Sounds like a good idea.

(Rudy) Head up this way.

♪ ♪ ♪ There are feelings worth a lot more than money... the feeling of walking down a road like this in the mountains this time of year is a special one.

I look forward to it every year.

The sense of being able to detect all the aromas.

Smells are nice and other things.

Talking about smells now, look.

(Rudy) Let's stop a minute.

This tree still has a number of leaves on it.

Simple leaves, as you can see.

It's one of the birches found here in the mountains.

Let me scrape off the bark...take a whiff.

Isn't that phenomenal?

(Beryl) Oh, that's super.

You can get this smell all year.

Except in the dead of winter, it's not so nice.

This is called sweet birch because of that smell.

Perhaps you remember having birch beer in your childhood, which was like root beer, basically.

This is the tree it was made from.

Conjures up all sorts of images of liniment and good-smelling things.

When you come to the mountains, especially after a long walk on a hot day, there's nothing more refreshing than a drink of cold water and-- A whiff!

--a nose full of sweet birch.

You can see the trunk of it here.

It's pretty easy to see.

(Rudy) Let me reach into the woods.

In many of the birches the bark does peel off like this.

Paper birch is a good example that the Indians used to make birch bark canoes.

Sweet birch...found in the mountain counties along wet areas like this that lead toward a creek.

Do you know the tree behind you?

(Beryl) No...what is this?

This is a crazy one-- back up.

Let's take a look at these big leaflets.

This tree has a compound leaf.

This whole thing is a leaf.

Usually it has five leaflets.

This one is broken off.

This is one of the hickories.

When you think mountains, you don't think pine trees.

We haven't seen many pines today.

You think of oaks and hickories.

Those are the two dominant trees today... didn't always used to be that way.

Today it's oaks and hickories.

Is this a nut bearer?

Yeah.

The hickory nut tree?

Yeah...these are called leaflets instead of leaves because this whole thing is a leaf.

See how big they are?

This is abnormally large.

What do you think a big leaf like this would do for a tree this size?

I have no idea, Rudy.

Remember talking about sunlight?

You've got to have sunlight to get energy.

The bigger the leaf, the greater amount of sunlight you can trap.

The more you can store energy.

Exactly...a lot of trees cranked up to get bigger, fighting for sunlight, have extra large leaves.

If we'd come to this forest 100 years ago, we would have been impressed by another tree that isn't here.

That is the American chestnut, killed by a blight.

We brought something over inadvertently...an alien.

It escaped and killed almost all chestnuts.

We still have some small ones today.

At least the hickory survived.

The hickories took it without any problem.

I saw a blue flower we need to look at.

Why don't we walk down the trail.

Rudy, that looks like one of the composites.

Beryl, you're right on the money.

We've seen this in other shows, and you're learning as I'm always learning in nature.

This is one of the composites.

It's bluish in color.

It flowers in the fall.

It's one of the asters... fall aster is a common name.

It's extremely popular with insects.

Look at the varieties on there!

A couple or three individuals there, one of the solitary wasps coming to get nectar.

This time of year, the shortening of the day length not only affects the plants, but the animals.

An abundance of food now, but something lets them know it's going to run out.

They begin to store food as much as they can.

Probably these insects will mate, lay eggs, and die.

The eggs will overwinter.

They're not storing for themselves?

Not in that sense, although I'm sure they're not thinking about the next generation.

There's something inside that tells them to fatten up.

This is something, of course-- it's, in the long run, beneficial to that species.

Let's walk down the trail and see what we can see.

I think I saw some orchids.

Let me walk in front of you a minute.

(Rudy) You've got to look carefully to see this.

Those clumps of green with veins on them are the leaves of rattlesnake plantain, one of the orchids in the state.

We've got about 50 species.

This one's found almost statewide and sets off nicely the green against the brown of the leaves.

There's one last plant I want us to look at.

It's a tree, or shrub, by the name of witch-hazel.

(Beryl) Oh, that's a familiar one.

When most trees have fruit-- this is typical of most trees in autumn-- here's a tree that has flowers.

They're kind of ugly-looking.

Weird little flower!

The petals...four little, yellow, shrivelly things.

It seems to do the job for the plant.

This flower is opening for the first time.

Fruit forms on it from last year and is beginning to shed seed this time of year.

Unusual to see a flowering plant with no leaves.

It's interesting...that's one of the few that do it.

Let me get one cricket.

We can stop and talk about things we've seen.

Okay.

Let me remove this tuliptree leaf and show you a common cricket on the forest floor.

It doesn't have distinctive wings, so it can't fly.

It's a hopper, easy to catch.

This is a female... you can tell by that long thing sticking out of her rear end called an ovipositor, an egg-laying device.

It's important to lay eggs because usually adults don't make it over winter.

Take a magnifying glass and look at its face...unbelievable!

Perspective changes with 10 power magnification.

Take a look.

This is the stuff of which monster movies are made!

They just get the spider or grasshopper bigger.

It gives a fascinating look at a creature we take for granted.

Yeah...different perspective.

We've learned so much today, especially about the pigmentation that leads to the change in color of fall leaves.

A lot of people think temperature or moisture changes make the difference.

The more we've studied it, it seems that day-length shortening is what triggers leaf-color changes and the shedding of leaves in autumn.

Of course, chlorophyll, the tannin-- The anthocyanins and the carotenoids are the four pigments present.

We've had our science lesson for the day.

If you haven't made plans to go to the mountains to watch the leaves change, do so.

Rudy, thanks.

Thank you.

As always, let's keep looking.

All right.

♪ ♪ Program captioned by: CompuScripts Captioning, Inc. 803.988.8438 ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪