♪ ♪ (Beryl) Here we are again at one of our favorite sites, Edisto Island, as we take a look at the natural phenomenon, the barrier island.

I'm Beryl Dakers, and with me is our guide and teacher Rudy Mancke, who is the Natural History Curator of the South Carolina Museum Commission.

Rudy, why all the interest in barrier islands?

What are they, and why should we learn more about them?

(Rudy) One of the things that we have to admit up front is that the edge of South Carolina where it borders on the ocean is a very flimsy place, tremendous amounts of change.

The Atlantic is continuing to assault the mainland, taking little bits away.

One of the nice things that happens to protect the main part of the mainland is that piles of sand seem to get pushed up right along the edge of the coast of South Carolina.

These piles of sand, which are fairly large piles, get a lot of vegetation on them, like the vegetation you see around us, that holds the sand in place and creates what is called a barrier island.

It's an island that, in a sense, is a barrier between the mighty Atlantic, that we'll be looking at in a minute, and the mainland.

Usually in between the barrier island and the mainland is another very important part of South Carolina, which we'll also take a quick look at, the salt marshes of the state, extremely important.

It's very apropos that we're here.

This is 1980, the Year of the Coast, and here we are on the coast of South Carolina.

(Beryl) We're at the coast.

(Rudy) On a chilly day, but we'll find a few animals out, and we'll get a chance to look at some plants, like this one.

Do you know what that is?

(Beryl) That's crape myrtle.

(Rudy) Not crape myrtle, but it is one of the myrtles.

It's called wax myrtle.

(Beryl) It looks an awful lot like it.

(Rudy) A lot of people use the fruit on wax myrtle to scent candles with.

It's sort of a myrtley scent.

One of the reasons we call Myrtle Beach "Myrtle Beach," most probably, is because there is a tremendous amount of this plant in that area of the state.

Again, up and down the coast and on inland a good ways we find this wax myrtle.

So many things are down in this forest.

What you call a place like this is a maritime forest.

There are certain plants that really stick up above all the rest, kind of like standing out like sore thumbs.

The palmettos, which we'll see, and we can talk about a little more, the state tree of South Carolina.

(Beryl) Of course.

(Rudy) Maybe we want to talk about why that was picked as the state tree.

There is another plant over here.

Let's just take a quick look at this.

Since there are so many palmettos here, why do you think that's the state tree?

Do you have any idea?

(Beryl) I've heard all of the wartime stories about it, so maybe you better tell us the real story.

(Rudy) During the Revolution, more battles were fought here than any other state.

One of the first battles was at Fort Moultrie, and it just so happened that the wood available to build the fort out of was palmetto logs, and it just so happens that when you shoot a cannon ball without explosives in it at palmetto log structures, they just have a tendency to bounce off because the wood is very, very spongy.

This is a plant that's called a monocot.

Most of the plants we have with flowers on them are dicots, but this has a very squishy trunk to it, and so the cannon balls would hit it and bounce back, and that's most probably the reason that this tree is now the state tree of South Carolina.

The scientific name is Sabal palmetto , and so we've taken that last of the species' name, palmetto, and that's what we call it, and we're the Palmetto State.

It does well on the barrier islands and the lower part of the Coastal Plain.

(Beryl) It is a beautiful tree.

(Rudy) Yeah, and look at the leaves.

It's really a phenomenal leaf, and you can use the leaves to use almost as roofing material or thatching, which quite a few people have done in the past.

Here is a neat group of plants underneath it.

That doesn't look like the plant I'm going to tell you it is.

Do you have any idea about that?

That's real odd.

Look at the fruit.

(Beryl) The fruit looks just like holly berries.

(Rudy) This is a group of plants, one of the hollies again.

The common name for this is yaupon.

The fruit is going to get real red as it gets cooler, like a holly.

The scientific name for this one is Ilex vomitoria , which sounds -- (Beryl) What an awful name.

(Rudy) -- it sounds pretty ugly.

What happened was, the reason we give it that name, the early Indians here used to take this fruit off and make a potion that they would drink, and it causes vomiting.

Very common plant.

Again, you begin to notice it a lot this time of year because we're finding fruit on it, and again, typical of the barrier islands.

Nice palmettos behind us.

(Beryl) Oh, Rudy, look!

(Rudy) You see that thing?

(Beryl) That is gorgeous!

(Rudy) That is one of the big spiders that you expect to find on the barrier islands.

It's called a golden silk spider, and that's a female, because of her size.

The males are very small and rather puny.

I hate to admit that.

(Beryl) The natural superiority of women, we know.

(Rudy) In this case, the female is dominant, no question about it, in the spiders.

She builds a tremendously large web, very elaborate, very sturdy silk, and if that web were low, it would be hard for us to walk through easily.

It's very, very strong material.

People down in the West Indies used to use the webbing of this kind of spider for fish nets.

So that's pretty tough silk.

Of course, she's not going to make it through the winter.

She's destined to die, but before she does, she'll lay a mass of eggs which will get through the winter, and we'll have a new crop of golden silk spiders next year.

It's amazing when you look at that.

Nobody taught that spider how to do that.

It's built in, and that's almost magical when you think about it.

(Beryl) Really intricate work there.

(Rudy) Unbelievable.

Let's see what we can find further on.

We've been getting sampled by a lot of mosquitos recently.

(Beryl) It's almost as if we entered the breeding grounds or something.

(Rudy) This is a good time of the year for them, and a lot of mosquitos use salt marsh areas, brackish water areas, to lay eggs.

It's interesting that when we're talking about the female spider kind of being dominant, in the mosquitos the female is also dominant in a sense.

She is much more active than the male, and it's only the females that take blood from us.

(Beryl) Why is that?

What does she use the blood for?

(Rudy) Most people believe that in order to lay viable eggs, eggs that will hatch, develop normally, that she needs a good blood meal before the eggs are laid.

There's been a whole lot of research there, because mosquitos are also carriers of malaria, yellow fever, and encephalitis, and other things.

It's really kind of interesting the way parasite-host relationships work.

That insect is a parasite on animals with soft skin, especially mammals like we are.

(Beryl) What kind of egg casing is that?

(Rudy) That's interesting.

Look at this.

It's on that Ilex we were talking about, that holly.

Let's take a look.

A couple of mosquitos have already settled in on me.

Look at those, filling up.

Let me see if I can move them away before they take too much of me.

This is an interesting egg case because it's an egg case of an animal called a Carolina mantid.

Remember, we talked about a praying mantis once?

We said that was an alien, not from South Carolina.

We do have one of the mantises, and it's this one, and this is what the egg case looks like.

The adult is smaller than the praying mantis and usually more of a brown or a gray color.

These eggs are laid, and the young mantids would come out of these holes right here on the top, but there is an interesting story with this egg mass, and that is that Carolina mantids didn't come out of here.

See those holes?

(Beryl) It looks like something else went in.

(Rudy) Parasites.

A little wasp called braconid wasps laid eggs in here, and they ate the eggs, or the developing nymphs, of the Carolina mantid and then came out through those holes themselves.

Nature is full of checks and balances, and parasites are one of those things, one of the checks and balances that work so well in nature, whether it be a mosquito feeding on us or a braconid wasp feeding on a Carolina mantid.

(Beryl) What other kinds of plants will we see today?

(Rudy) I don't know.

There are quite a few things that are so distinctly barrier island, and it's fun to see them, and we've seen a couple already.

Look at the fruit on the holly here.

(Beryl) There is one that's already ripe.

(Rudy) That's spectacular.

This time of year, of course, heading toward Christmas, this would be beautiful on the mantel piece, and it's very obviously a holly now that the fruit is red.

Turn it around, and you can actually see the different colors of the fruit there and, of course, eventually becoming ripe and ready, and then quite a few birds take advantage of it, and other animals -- a very, very interesting holly, and, again, I think we've proved already it's abundant on barrier islands as an understory tree.

Why don't we put this down and see what we can find further on?

(Beryl) Rudy, I've been noticing the trees here are very strange.

Some of them, like that one, look almost horizontal instead of growing straight up.

(Rudy) Well, remember now, Beryl, this is a very harsh environment.

It's not so bad today, but when Hurricane David was offshore, these barrier islands took the brunt of the force of that wind.

Not only is there wind affecting what plants can grow here and how they grow, but also the salt spray.

Salt in the air really does affect what kind of plants are here.

This tree right here that's knocked down is called a hackberry tree.

It's kind of interesting to see the galls on the thing.

They are very, very distinctive.

These are formed by little aphid-like animals that feed on the inside of the gall, drink the juices of the plant.

This thing was knocked down, I would suppose, by either wind or erosion from the base down there, probably caused by water coming up this far.

Again, these barrier islands are really interesting because the plants that live here in this maritime forest have to be able to put up with these harsh conditions or they will not be able to survive here.

It's always neat to just come to a place like this and see what makes it, because any barrier island in the state has basically the same vegetation.

That's kind of interesting.

You can even see little palmettos coming out.

(Beryl) Those shoots look like they are just stuck in the ground.

(Rudy) They're doing pretty well.

We ought to see some fruit on the palmettos in a minute.

This is the right time of the year.

It's a nice place to stop because here is a very typical plant of barrier islands.

It's, of course, elsewhere, too, but typical here, the live oak.

(Beryl) A magnificent tree.

(Rudy) Fabulous, fabulous living thing.

Notice where it begins to branch very, very low on the trunk, and that's typical of the live oaks, and, of course, the branches lay down close to the ground oftentimes.

(Beryl) Look at the vines going up with it.

(Rudy) That's trumpet creeper.

Another name for it is cow itch because some people are allergic to the leaves.

The sap of that causes an irritation on the skin.

You can see it going up in that tree, twining around so tightly it's hard to tell the difference between the vine and the tree.

The hollies close down, and these little shoots down here are -- (Beryl) Is that a palmetto tree?

(Rudy) -- palmettos.

(Beryl) Is that the way it grows?

(Rudy) Uh-huh.

They just begin looking like nothing almost and then coming on along.

Do you see what I see in that?

(Beryl) It's a snake.

(Rudy) Do you know what kind that is?

(Beryl) A copperhead?

(Rudy) That is a copperhead, coppery-colored head.

This is a nice one because it's the most common poisonous snake we've got, and people ought to know how to identify it.

It's found everywhere, the mountains to the seashore.

I've seen it on the beach.

(Beryl) Say that again, it is poisonous.

(Rudy) It is poisonous.

It bites more people probably than any poisonous snake in the East.

It kills less than 1 percent of the people it bites, so it's not extremely poisonous, thank goodness, but it is common.

If you're bitten by it, you need to treat it as a medical emergency.

Look at the markings.

Wide on the side, narrow in the middle, and wide on the other side.

It's one of the snakes that really does camouflage well.

(Beryl) It does.

We wouldn't have seen it.

(Rudy) We almost walked right by.

(Beryl) He looks so alert.

His head is just poised.

Is he listening to us?

(Rudy) Not listening, because they don't have ears.

(Beryl) He can't hear, that's right.

(Rudy) They can feel vibrations.

He felt us coming up, and that's why he's frozen, or she is frozen, in place.

Since you brought the stick, -- (Beryl) My protection here.

(Rudy) -- let's see if I can lift up this snake without too much trouble and take a close look.

(Beryl) Oh, the underside is gorgeous.

(Rudy) One of the things about these snakes that's amazing is they will hang onto the end of an L-stick like this, and you can see those markings very, very distinctively, and you see the snake's fairly quiet.

One thing we need to realize about snakes is that they're at least as afraid of us as we are of them because we're too big to eat, and so the only thing that we are to them is an enemy.

If he can freeze like that one did, then that's great.

You notice it didn't try to move rapidly.

He allowed me to pick it up.

I'm handling it on the end of the stick and not in my hands.

Now, poisonous snakes are simply not easily handled, and nobody ought to try to handle them unless they really know what they're doing.

(Beryl) You won't get any argument from me.

(Rudy) This snake eats almost anything.

It's a predator, feeding on mice and small birds, crabs.

Down here it will eat fiddler crabs and such, large insects and other things, but a beautiful animal.

I've always been intrigued by snakes.

I think they are the most misunderstood group of large animals that we've got.

Why don't we just set it down here and head on down the trail and see what else we can find that's interesting here on Edisto Island.

(Rudy) This is an interesting day.

(Beryl) It's nice.

(Rudy) Eww .

(Beryl) What is that?

(Rudy) Got a bit of spider web on me.

I got the spider here.

Let's take a look at it.

(Beryl) It's got to be the weirdest looking spider I've ever seen.

(Rudy) It's one called a spiny-bodied spider.

You can see the name does makes sense.

(Beryl) Look at the spines.

(Rudy) The abdomen has long projections on it, the female has much larger than the male, and you can see the projections.

This was in a web, and she is a lot happier in the web than she is on my finger, so I'm going to go ahead and let her go here.

A really interesting animal and, again, found all over South Carolina.

(Beryl) It looks like a hard shell.

(Rudy) It is fairly hard compared to the rest of the body and probably is some protection.

Very few animals really feed on spiders in their web, but there are some insects that actually do feed on the spider.

She's upside down here.

I'll just let her down over here.

There she goes to the grass.

You know, we mentioned the fruit on the palmetto trees.

Beryl, do you see it?

(Beryl) Oh, they're really out in profusion.

(Rudy) A lot of times you can see the stalk that the fruit is on.

That falls to the ground and looks kind of interesting.

Of course, from those seed come the young palmettos that we saw a little while ago.

(Beryl) This is not edible for humans?

(Rudy) No, huh-uh.

(Beryl) What are all those singe marks?

(Rudy) We've seen a lot of that.

What happens here, and in lots of places in the Low Country especially, is that in spring or during the wintertime they burn off vegetation that's low to the ground.

This opens the area up for more wildlife, especially game birds, and that's done quite a bit.

That's probably what's happened here.

(Beryl) I've noticed that on several trees.

(Rudy) I see hopping here.

Hold still.

I think I can get this one without much trouble.

Yeah, I got it.

Let's take a look at it.

This is a nice animal, Beryl.

(Beryl) Is that a cricket, Rudy?

(Rudy) It's one of the katydids.

It's called a shield-backed katydid because of this large shield-shaped projection on the back.

That area is called a pronotum, and usually it's very short, but here it's really expanded.

It's a female again.

You can tell pretty easily by that egg-laying device, the depositor.

She can inject eggs into the ground, and they'll overwinter very well, when she probably won't make it.

One of the things that I can't believe, you see that little red dot there?

(Beryl) I sure do.

(Rudy) That's a little parasite.

It's taking fluid from this animal's body even as we watch her.

The parasites are out today for some reason.

We've noticed quite a few of them.

(Beryl) The cricket doesn't seem to be aware of it.

(Rudy) Again, the parasites rarely, if ever, kill their host because if you kill the host -- (Beryl) You don't have any food supply.

(Rudy) -- you kill yourself.

That's exactly right.

(Beryl) It's a nice specimen.

(Rudy) I'm going to ease her down.

I'm sure she's glad to get back.

(Beryl) Back in her natural habitat.

(Rudy) I'll take one of those from you.

(Beryl) Okay.

I think that bay is calling.

(Rudy) That's spectacular.

Let's see what we can find on the beach and the salt marsh.

You can even see the shrimp boat in the distance.

See that sparkling water?

(Beryl) It looks like a picture.

(Rudy) It's picture-perfect today.

This has just been a fine day.

On the way to the beach, we'll stop and look at the salt marsh, and maybe we can pick up an animal or two on the way.

(Beryl) Okay.

♪ (Rudy) I think I see one more butterfly before we get out on the salt marsh, Beryl.

Let's see if I can... (Beryl) You've got a good aim.

(Rudy) I got this one.

Oh, yes.

This is one of my favorites on these barrier islands.

I'll be real careful.

This one is one of the skippers, and it's known as the long-tailed skipper.

(Beryl) I see why.

(Rudy) I think you can see that the tails on the hind wings are very long.

It looks like someone in a coat and tails, and it flies that way.

This one is probably not going to hold on to my finger, but if it does, it would be nice.

(Beryl) Look at the blue fuzzy stuff on the top.

(Rudy) Isn't that a spectacular animal?

Long-tailed skippers, you can find them flying along the beaches.

But insects don't do well in the ocean.

They can come all the way to the edge and find food, but they do not go into the water.

This animal spends most of its time here, and the larva feeds on plants in the bean family, including beans, themselves.

There are quite a few varieties of legumes that are also here.

(Beryl) That tongue just amazes me.

(Rudy) This is one of the animals that feeds on liquids all the time.

The markings on the wing are very distinct.

Let's see if I can coax him into the air.

(Beryl) No, you didn't have to coax.

He went on by himself.

(Rudy) There are a lot of butterflies.

Let's go on towards the salt marsh.

(Beryl) The water is beckoning.

It's amazing how the environment changes out here.

(Rudy) Unbelievable.

The salt spray really affects this, and this, as we look out, is part of a salt marsh, which is a very important part of South Carolina, and I think we're more and more aware of that.

We've protected salt marshes in this state very nicely.

We have over one-fifth of all the salt marsh on the Atlantic Coast.

(Beryl) More than our share.

(Rudy) Which is unbelievable.

A relatively small state, and yet here it is.

It's extremely important for a number of reasons.

One, it's very productive.

It takes energy from the sun and makes a tremendous amount of food in relation to the weight of all the plants here.

It's a place where shrimp spend parts of their lives, and the shrimping industry -- we've seen shrimp boats already -- is important to South Carolina.

Certain fish live very important parts of their lives in salt marsh areas, so we need to protect them, not fill them, not drain them, and not pollute them.

You see a lot of fiddler crabs running around out there, the males with the large claws that look kind of like fiddles moving.

See them down there?

(Beryl) Just stirring and dipping under the mud, sure.

(Rudy) You can see feeding on some material on the grass is, our little periwinkles, one of the marine snails.

It does well in brackish water.

Views like this, this is just a fabulous place.

(Beryl) It really is.

(Rudy) South Carolina is blessed with lots of exciting things.

There is a Monarch coming through.

We need to slow down and see them.

So many of us pass them by so quickly.

There is the line of maritime forest.

Do you see the palmettos jumping out at us?

Here is the salt marsh and then the barrier beach.

We have to see that beach before we stop.

(Beryl) Let's take a look at some of the plants along here.

(Rudy) All right.

This one is an odd one.

It looks like a cedar.

It's called fire cedar.

That's the common name.

It's not really a cedar, but it grows out here very, very nicely.

It's not native to South Carolina.

It's been introduced and does quite well.

You may not realize this quite yet, but this is a road that's been built up by man.

These oyster shells were used to fill it, and there's probably wooden stakes underneath.

This is to bridge this salt marsh, to get from the maritime forest to the oceanfront.

These things were planted a long time ago -- look at the butterflies -- a long time ago, and they seem to be doing fairly well.

The plant down here that's so common, with the brownish-looking fruit on it, is called sea oxeye.

(Beryl) Sea oxeye.

In the summer, they have yellow flowers there that are really, really spectacular.

We better hurry on.

Our time is dear.

Let's see what we can find out on the beach.

(Beryl) That water is calling you.

(Rudy) It is, it is.

(Beryl) You know, it's really incredible to think that nature is doing things every day to change the face of this island.

(Rudy) I think a lot of people feel like things basically remain the same in life, and that's just not true.

(Beryl) No, not here.

(Rudy) It's very obvious here.

This is an extremely changeable place, very dynamic, and as you can see right here, change is taking place right now.

There's been a tide change.

The great amount of water that was pushed in here when the tide was in is now rushing back out.

Of course, that affects the lives of plants and animals, both on the salt marsh and in the woods because many of the animals come out of the woods to feed when the water is down, when they can get the fiddler crabs.

You know what those piles of shells sticking up are?

(Beryl) No, what are those?

(Rudy) Those are oyster beds.

(Beryl) Okay.

(Rudy) Here is one of the resources that are very common in these salt marsh creeks.

(Beryl) What else would we expect to find living here?

(Rudy) A lot of crabs.

(Beryl) A lot of crabs.

(Rudy) People who like blue crabs, this is one place that you can fish for them.

There are quite a few other varieties of crabs in here.

The insects don't do well in the salt water, and many of the jobs insects do on land get done by the crustaceans, the group that the crabs are a part of, in the ocean.

Kind of neat.

(Beryl) It really is.

(Rudy) I could stand here for a long time.

It's such a beautiful view, but why don't we go and see what the Atlantic Ocean looks like today.

(Beryl) Aha, glistening in the sun.

(Rudy) Yes.

The world changes when you get on the open beach.

(Beryl) Oh, it does, but it's so peaceful out here.

(Rudy) It's very nice.

Sandy beach with lots of shells, and that's so typical of the beach in South Carolina, unlike a lot of other beaches.

A lot of this sand is bits and pieces of shell material, but some of it is actually sand grains that wash down from the piedmont and the mountains of the state.

(Beryl) I can't help but thinking that this is the way it was hundreds of thousands of years ago, and maybe early Indians experienced the same feeling we have when we come here.

(Rudy) We know they were here.

They left their signs behind, and the first European settlers to this state, you see, saw it like this.

So it's basically the same except that, of course, as we said, it's dynamic, it's always changing.

Every breeze, every current, of course, every hurricane really modifies this area.

We've had a good day.

(Beryl) We really have, and I've learned a little about barrier islands.

We've got a lot of them, and it's fun to go out and take a close look at them, not just to swim but to actually look at the plants and animals that make it a very, very special part of South Carolina.

You know, Rudy, what was missing?

We didn't see any big animals, with the exception of the copperhead.

Do you have many of those in areas like this?

A lot of deer, lot of raccoons.

The raccoons love the salt marsh.

Remember the fiddler crabs up there; they love to feast on the fiddler crabs and feed on them very, very quickly.

This is an important part of South Carolina.

We've got a great variety of life, big and small things, but usually it's easier to notice the big ones and overlook the small ones.

This is probably the last time this year that we'll be seeing as many butterflies and things of that sort.

Yeah.

Things are changing now.

It's getting cold.

Many of these are migrating south.

Some who are not going to migrate are not going to survive and will overwinter its eggs, and that's part of the scheme of things.

The more you look at nature in South Carolina, the more together it seems.

We're all a part of it.

We're all very closely related to one another and to nature itself.

(Beryl) The only thing we have to figure out is how we fit in.

(Rudy) Yeah, I think everything else seems to fit in fairly well.

We've done a good job of preserving areas, and I encourage people to make themselves aware of what is here so we can protect it properly.

(Beryl) For sure.

Next time we'll look at what winter is going to do to South Carolina, because it will be about winter then.

(Rudy) Right.

(Beryl) I hope that you'll join us then.

Come on, I want to get some seashells.

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