♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ > Hello, I'm Jim Welch.

Welcome again to NatureScene .

Our guide and teacher, as always, Rudy Mancke, Curator of Natural History at the State Museum.

Rudy, it's going to be exciting today because it's an area where the Indians once roamed, here along the Catawba.

Rudy> Yeah, and of course, the river behind us just a little ways behind us gets its name from the fact that the Catawba Indians lived here and still do of course, along the Catawba River in South Carolina.

We're at Landsford Canal State Park.

Jim> Which has history of its own.

Rudy> Sure, sure.

The Land Family had owned this property for a long time.

There is an old ford in the river here.

Fords, of course, were used before people were building bridges all over the place.

You'd take your carriage or your horse and go through the shallow part of a river to get across, and you call those areas "fords."

This was owned by the Land family, so Landsford.

Then later on in the eighteen- I guess it was 1820s.

Jim> In 1823, the canal opened.

Rudy> Yeah, the 1820s, people began building canals all over South Carolina to get around rapids in the up-country rivers, especially.

There were four canals built along the Catawba River.

This is really the only one that's in real good shape now, thanks to P.R.T.

taking care of it and now making a state park out of it.

So Landsford Canal State Park is where we are on a beautiful day.

We've had some rain.

I think we should see some mushrooms coming up because of that rain, and there should be a good number of butterflies out.

Jim> There will be excitement in this half hour, so walk with us through the Landsford Canal State Park.

This tree we're standing under is a member of the cedar or the juniper family.

<Right> Jim> It's heavily laden with fruit at this time.

Rudy> And it's kind of hard to believe, I guess, when you look at that, but those are little cones.

This is the most widespread really of the group of plants we call the "conifers."

Some people might want us to pronounce that "cone-if-er" because it's the cones on these trees that really give rise to their name.

These are berry-like cones that you see, and of course, fruit is... female flower that has matured.

It's an ovary that has matured, and so those are where the female flowers were on the- or female parts of the flowers on this tree.

Jim> This tree then gives rebirth.

The birds will come along, eat it, and perhaps deposit it.

Rudy> One of the birds that does a lot of work on this later on, in the year are flocks of cedar waxwings.

Guess why we call them "cedar waxwings?"

They really come to cedar trees and strip them almost bare.

Of course, they get nourishment from it.

It's very sweet tasting.

What else do they do?

They carry away the seed, goes through their digestive system, drops out.

And that's the way- One way cedar trees get spread all over the state.

Jim> They're found all over the state, especially the piedmont.

Rudy> If I'm correct, I believe there are 37 states in the United States that has this tree growing native.

It's the most widespread of the conifers.

It does well all over the place in South Carolina.

I saw one other thing on this one.

Let's reach in and break off this branch.

One of the problems some people have with their cedars- Look at that.

This is a little moth.

Really, it's a cocoon of a moth called the "bagworm moth" I think, for obvious reasons.

It makes something that looks basically like a sleeping bag.

I guess this is a nature-made sleeping bag.

The caterpillar feeds on the leaves on the juniper, or the cedar, behind us and also makes the little cocoon or covering out of it.

One of the moths that feeds on leaves then and makes a case around itself for protection.

It can, in large numbers, you see, strip all the leaves off this tree and possibly kill the tree.

Jim> Just glancing at it, one might think it's just another dead leaf.

Rudy> And that is exactly, you see, what that caterpillar wants the animals that feed on it to feel like.

It camouflages very well, and as you see, though, the leaves do turn brown now and that's one way you can pick them out very, very quickly.

A lot of people simply go around and pull these off the tree.

The female of this moth has no wings.

She stays in that cocoon forever.

The male has wings, hatches out, flies over to her.

They mate, and she basically lays eggs inside that ready-made cocoon.

Jim> You mentioned mushrooms, we're going to be seeing many of those today?

Rudy> I think we're going to see a lot of them.

And one of the things- Just look right underneath here, Jim.

Get down and let me slip underneath.

Here is a whole cluster of them.

These things are a variety of living things called a "saprophyte."

Saprophytes feed on dead material.

They are plant-like things that feed on dead material.

Mushrooms aren't green, they have no chlorophyll.

They can't make their own food, so they're kind of taking food away from decaying material.

Nature is a great recycler.

We've said that many times.

Here on the bottom is dead foliage from the pines behind us and also from the cedars overhead.

And these little mushrooms are basically feeding on that dead material.

Jim> Would these grow much bigger than this, Rudy?

Rudy> This is it, maximum size, And you see, this variety grows in large groups.

There are others that you generally find singly.

That helps you in identification, to some degree.

Remember now, these things that stand up that we call "mushrooms, or toadstools," are really the reproductive parts of this living thing.

Most of the body, that's surviving daily is underground, little threadlike structures that we don't usually see.

Jim> Behind us, Rudy, I see two more large mushrooms.

And let's find out if they're poisonous or nonpoisonous.

Rudy> Yeah, let's take a look at them for a minute.

Here's a little butterfly here.

He's flittering right up above me.

Let's see if he'll land a second.

Gone away.

That was an interesting one I'd love to have taken a look at.

Let's go take a look at these things real quickly.

Jim> These are beautiful mushrooms.

Rudy> They are pretty.

I think it's one thing that, you need to remind yourself of all the time though, is that these are extremely hard to identify.

And when you begin to talk about what's edible and what isn't, Jim, I stop, because it's extremely hard to tell which is which.

This is one of the Boletus mushrooms.

I'm going to take this fruiting body off to show that really when you look underneath, see, instead of gills like you expect on most mushrooms, these have pores, or little tubes.

And of course, what comes out of that is spores.

They fall to the ground and make more of those threads we talked about a minute ago.

A lot of this variety are edible, but some of them are not.

And really, I think, the best way, to identify edible mushrooms is if they've got a tin can wrapped around them on the grocery shelf.

You feel like those are edible.

But it's best to leave the rest alone and really not even to handle them any more than necessary.

Jim> Parents should be encouraged when they're out in the wilds with their children to advise them.

It looks pretty, especially this one.

Rudy> Look how pretty that one is, sure.

Jim> A child could come up and say, "Gee, that looks so good," and take a bite.

That's all it would take.

Rudy> This is one of the more deadly of our mushrooms.

One of the common names for it is "death angel."

That's a good name.

Amanita is the genus name, and a lot of people refer to these as the amanitas.

There are quite a number of varieties.

This one is going to probably come up to this height.

So they're big, they're pretty obvious.

They'll grow in your backyard, as well as in the woods.

You'll notice they have a little cup at the base.

You see that?

<Right> Interesting little cup at the base.

This thing comes up and has a little ring around the stalk, and then of course, the cap which has gills underneath it.

I'm not going to handle this mushroom because I'm going to eat lunch in a little while, and I'd rather not have any of this on me because it takes only a small amount to cause real problems in people.

Jim> The lay person should be advised not to pick the mushrooms and certainly to encourage their children to leave them alone.

Rudy> If you're an expert, that's fine.

If you want to get a book and try to become an expert, that's your business, but I don't think we ought to be telling people too much about edible mushrooms because many of them are extremely hard to identify.

Just because a squirrel would come down here and eat this doesn't mean people can.

I was told if you're in the woods and an animal eats a fruit or a mushroom or something, that means it's all right for people.

That's not necessarily so, because many times poisons that might not hurt a deer or squirrel will hurt people.

Jim> Should we head down toward the river?

Rudy> Yeah, let's a little bit on down toward the canal, anyway and see what we can see.

Here's that little butterfly back again.

Jim> There he is.

This time you didn't miss, or did you?

Rudy> No, I got him.

(laughter) I didn't even come close last time.

He flew away too rapidly.

You see what I see here though?

Jim> I see that, Rudy.

As we approach, it looked dry, but as you get closer, it's a beautiful flower.

Rudy> Yeah, and that's one of the orchids, Jim.

You remember, we've said on a number of occasions that we've got about 50 varieties of orchids in the state.

A lot of them live in people's backyards, and they don't realize it.

The delicate little flowers there on that one give it its name, crane-fly orchid.

Crane fly is a delicate little fly, and so it kind of resembles those delicate flowers.

In the wintertime, there would be one green leaf here that would be purple on the underside.

That's all you see.

You can go through your woods and see those in the winter and know that this time of year, next summer, you expect to see a flower stalk.

If these are fertilized, if these flowers have eggs that are fertilized, they'll form fruit, which will again, be something that you see standing up.

Jim> It's very easy to miss if you're walking too fast.

Rudy> Sure is.

And, you know, we didn't even see it until the sun was on it just right.

Jim> Rudy, close by the orchid, a couple of things on the ground, one alive and one dead.

Rudy> The living thing is one of the varieties of damselflies.

You can see how delicate it is.

Wings are held together over its back, and that makes it quite different from a heavy-bodied dragonfly with the wings always spread.

But again, four wings, and it's one of the insects.

Jim> Rudy, I've seen these on numerous NatureScenes .

We hear them more often, though.

Rudy> You can hear them right now, above us.

Jim> It's the cicada.

Rudy> One of the cicadas.

[cicadas buzzing] Rudy> When you turn this over, Jim you can actually tell the sex of the animal.

It's a male.

See those little projections, look like little finger-like projections over the abdomen?

Jim> Right.

Rudy> Those cover up little drum-like devices, and that's what allows the male to make the sounds that we hear.

It's only the male, now, that does the screaming.

The female is quiet and comes to the sound.

They mate, she lays eggs, and they die.

They don't live long as adults.

Most of their life is spent in the ground.

Jim> What we hear in the trees above us now- Rudy> Are cicadas, and they're male cicadas.

There is a large wasp called a "cicada killer wasp" that feeds almost exclusively on cicadas and digs a hole in the ground and actually paralyzes cicadas and lays an egg on them.

Guess what sex of cicada it usually picks on?

The male, because he finds them not by smell like most wasps find their food, or by sight, but by sound, picking up sounds.

Jim> The ants are recycling this.

Rudy> Exactly.

The cicada is turning into ant, almost right before our very eyes.

Jim> Rudy, just a few feet away there is a strange-looking moth on that rock.

Rudy> Yeah, Jim, I think the reason that it's so strange is look... it's in the jaws of a jumping spider.

Jim> Get a closer look.

Rudy> Look at that!

Of course, that spider has stabbed it with a pair of fangs, injected in some poison, and that will digest the animal, and then he'll sort of suck up the fluid parts of the moth.

That's another form of recycling.

You take a moth, and you make a jumping spider out of it.

Jim> That's a full-grown spider.

Rudy> That's probably as big as it will get.

We've got a lot of varieties of them.

Of course, most of the spiders are our good friends because they control, as he's doing, insect populations.

This variety doesn't even spin a big web to catch things.

He lies in wait, and when a meal comes by, boom, he's on it.

Jumps on it, literally.

Jim> It may take him 15 to 20 minutes or more to eat that moth.

Rudy> Probably so, and the wings he'll leave behind.

What he's doing is taking the soft parts of the body and carrying them away with him.

Unbelievable!

That's a perfect example of a predator-prey relationship in nature.

Put that down and take a look at this little butterfly that we got on the way over.

Jim> Do you know what kind it is?

Rudy> This one's called a "pearl crescent."

We've seen them a few times on the show.

Hopefully it will sit still in my hand.

Jim> There he is sitting there.

Pretty.

Rudy> Beautiful animal.

Again, you find it all over the state, year round.

By year round, I mean spring-summer.

They fly low to the ground, pretty hard to catch with a net, but we got that one coming by, pretty quickly.

Jim> Can you tell, Rudy, when you see them on the wing what kind they are, or do you need to get them in your hand?

Rudy> There are some that are tough.

There are a few varieties, that you really have to have in your net or in your hand to tell what they are, but this one is pretty easy to identify and one of the most beautiful of our small butterflies.

There he goes, fluttering away.

Let's head on down the trail now, toward the canal and see what we can see.

Jim> I've heard so much about the canal, I want to get a closer look.

Rudy> Well, it's really nice down here, Jim.

Always, places like this, Jim, there are a lot of trees, a lot of varieties of trees.

Here's one over here, a skinny one.

Let's take a look at it because it's a tree that's found throughout the state.

We've taken advantage of this tree for a long time.

Think the bark looks like alligator skin?

Jim> Very rough looking.

It sure does... like an alligator.

Rudy> What kind of tree is that?

Jim> I have persimmons out near my place, but that's a tall one.

Rudy> That's a persimmon tree all right, and it is tall.

But now, again, when you're a small tree competing in these woods for sunlight- You have to have sunlight to make food- You better get up pretty fast.

Persimmons that are found in forests like this generally are long and lean and tall.

This one, I think, is a female tree.

This is one of the plants that actually has female flowers on one tree, male flowers on another tree.

And, of course, the female flowers- Once you've got an ovary that's been fertilized, you get fruit.

This is a very early fruit, of course.

It will change more of a yellowish-orange color later on in the year.

You don't eat persimmons, I think everybody knows, until the fruit is ripe.

But there are quite a few animals that take advantage of this tree, and we've been making heads for golf clubs out of this tree for a long time because it's very, very solid wood, and this is one of the uses for the wood.

That's kind of a neat fruit.

A lot of trees already this time of year that are burdened down with the fruit.

When you see that, you've got a female tree.

If you have a male tree in your backyard, are you ever going to get persimmons off of it?

Jim> No.

Rudy> No, sir.

Jim> And you need a purplish or bluish color before it's ripe.

Rudy> Yeah.

Sort of an orange color really will work, and then it gets a little darker as time goes on.

Great in pies.

Oh, it's nice.

Let's head on down.

♪ ♪ ♪ Rudy> Whenever you approach a place like this, your mind, if you'll let it, sort of drifts back.

What was the world like in the 1820s and '30s and '40s when this thing was active?

A little bridge, you see, even to get across the canal.

Jim> It's a work of art, Rudy.

Rudy> It really is.

The person who really was responsible for drawing up the plans for this was Robert Mills, who felt like this was his greatest achievement.

Even though he did things like the Washington Monument and many, many other buildings, he felt like the canal system was his greatest achievement.

There are people who debate that, of course.

Jim> Think of the cost of what it would cost today to build this and substantially back in 1820.

Rudy> In the 1820s, the state of South Carolina spent over a million dollars on the canal system.

That's unbelievable in those days, and it only worked, only was used, until maybe the 1840s.

Then, basically, it was put out of existence because the trains were going everywhere, and it was a cheaper, easier means of transportation.

Jim> One thing for sure, with stones, granite stones such as this, it's going to be here a long, long time.

Rudy> And the Parks, Recreation and Tourism people have done a great job of cleaning this out so we can get an appreciation for the size.

The thing that always gets me at these canals is how narrow the barges must have been, to fit in.

These are the locks that enabled the boat to be raised up a little bit.

It starts low on the river.

If it was going this way, you'd raise it up, and you can see those successive layers there, to the level of the canal, move on through and then eventually get out in the river.

Jim> Bringing building materials and other goods up to the upcountry.

Rudy> Sure.

This was extremely important, but again the railroads did it cheaper, faster than the canals did, and so the glorious plans never really materialized, Jim.

Let's walk on up this way.

♪ Rudy> Let's head on up to the top here and see what's... Jim> It's the highest point on the canal?

Rudy> I think that's right.

Oh, boy.

Look, snuggled up against the side, Jim.

Here is something you expect in a place like this with all the moisture we've seen.

Look at the copperhead.

Jim> You felt, this is where they would be?

Rudy> We saw one, you remember, dead on the road coming in.

Here is another one.

They like moisture.

They like a little bit of shade.

And boy, that would really blend in well in dry leaves.

Look at the markings.

Jim> One of four deadly snakes in the state.

Rudy> It is a poisonous snake.

It's the most common of our poisonous snakes.

Coppery-colored head, I think, as you can see.

Dumbbell-shaped markings on the back.

Markings that are wide on the side, get narrow in the middle, wide on the other side.

And look at the head, you can see the pit even from here.

See that large hole in the side of his head?

That's the pit, sensitive to 1/1000 of a degree change in temperature and then the cat-eye pupil, which is kind of hard to see from the distance we are.

Jim> Copperhead, of course, comes from the color on his head.

Rudy> Also called "pilot snakes, highland moccasins."

There are many names.

You remember, we saw the poisonous mushroom earlier.

This is one of the poisonous animals in South Carolina.

Bites more people than any poisonous snake we've got.

Really is responsible for very few, if any, deaths, but you don't want to be bitten by a poisonous snake.

If you see a snake like this, you don't know what kind it is, treat it like it's poisonous, which means leave the thing alone.

Jim> Did it feel our presence as we came around this corner?

Rudy> Oh, sure.

I'm sure it did.

Jim> Yet it's not aggressive.

Rudy> Oh, no.

It's not charging over at us, and we can step in a little bit closer.

You can see now that he's not coming at us.

He's very quiet.

We're, you know, pretty close to him, Jim, but again, the snake is not out to get us.

We're too big to eat, and so we're an enemy.

That snake would rather us not approach it, and as long as we don't, he's not going to take any action against us.

Jim> If you didn't see it and stepped quite close, would he have to coil before striking?

Rudy> No.

He could pull his head back just a little bit, in sort of an "S" shape and strike only for a short distance.

But again, chances are real good that, that snake would simply freeze, as he is right now, and we'd step close and walk away.

And that's exactly what we want to do.

Again, handling poisonous snakes- I do that in my business a lot, but I'm not going to do it on the air because I don't want anyone watching to think that somehow it's easy.

It's not.

It's a risk.

And you don't want to be bitten by poisonous snakes, copperheads or any other variety.

Jim> Leave them alone.

Rudy> Yes, that's the smartest way to do it.

Let's just ease on off this way.

And I'm sure there are other interesting things to see.

Jim> Some snake.

Rudy> Real nice.

Beautiful animal.

Too bad he's poisonous, but, of course, most of our snakes are nonpoisonous.

It's good to be aware, though, when the grass is tall if you walk out in there, you better be aware that there may be a snake there and be careful.

A neat place.

Jim> It sure is.

I keep thinking of the history that took place here in terms of the development of South Carolina, even though it didn't work out all that well.

Rudy> Yeah.

I like the way, it's only the areas of the canal where they were raising the water level that you find all of this nice stonework.

And, of course, that's granite that was mined somewhere fairly close to here, most probably.

Jim> We're walking down into the base of the canal itself, and this continued on to the Catawba River.

Rudy> Yeah... What a beautiful view.

A little archway there.

The bridge, again, that we had seen.

This has filled in some, though, Jim.

You've got to take that into consideration.

Continues on down that way.

I just saw a little insect fly in over here.

Let's take a close look- Looks like a wheel bug.

This is one of the true bugs known as an assassin bug because it kills other insects, kind of lies in wait and assassinates them.

We'll pull that out in a minute and look at it.

But I want to show you one other thing.

Look at this.

See the leaflets on that Virginia creeper that looks like something has scooped them out, sort of semicircles?

Jim> Um-hmm, very smoothly.

Rudy> That's done by a variety of bee called a "leaf cutter bee."

He sort of straddles the leaf, three legs on one side, three on the other- Really she does, because the female is the one doing this- Cuts off slivers of the leaf, goes back to a nest that she's dug in soft wood and lines it with that material.

It's a nest, you see- She's going to store pollen in there, lay eggs, and there are going to be some more leaf cutter bees later.

Jim> As neat as a paper puncher.

Rudy> Boy, it is nice, unbelievable.

I'm going to put this net down and see if I can't move that without him flying away, Jim.

I want you to look at one of the most unbelievable designs in this world.

Rudy> Look at that thing!

Jim> It's prehistoric looking.

Rudy> It does look unbelievable, doesn't it?

And see the large hump in the middle of the back which gives it the name wheel bug.

It looks like a cogwheel.

This thing starts off of course, from an egg and then hatches out in a form known as a nymph, and they don't have wings.

They don't have the hump on their back, either.

As they get to be adults, they have wings and can fly and also have that hump develop.

We're not really sure the function of it.

See the little tube pulled under the body up front?

Jim> Mhm.

Rudy> Well, that's what he pulls forward and impales other insects with.

Squirts in digestive juice, sucks them dry.

Jim> It's hollow.

Rudy> Oh, yeah.

If these things got bigger, I wouldn't be taking people for walks through the woods because that is really a big thing to stick into, you know, an average-sized insect.

Let me go ahead and put this down, Jim.

Jim> Do they bite, Rudy?

Rudy> Well, that is one of the true bugs in our state that can cause problems to people.

They don't do it to get blood from us.

Their relatives, the bedbugs, do.

They are notorious for that.

But that one will in self-defense stick that little tube in, inject some poison, and cause some problems.

Jim> To a degree, they could be called poisonous along with the snake, <Yeah> although not of that magnitude.

Rudy> One of the things I guess it's worth realizing is there are some poisonous plants and animals in South Carolina.

No question about that.

But they're not really terribly common, so we need to learn what we can about them and avoid them.

Now, plants, you simply don't have to eat them and don't rub against them, and you're all right.

But animals will, when pressed, defend themselves.

The snake back there- You remember we got close?

Jim> Mhm.

Rudy> He didn't come charging over at us.

He was very quiet.

He uses that venom and those fangs mainly to get food, just like the spider earlier.

Jim> Well, this has been an interesting day here at Landsford Canal, and we're standing in the bottom of the canal itself.

Rudy> Oh, yeah.

Jim> Recapping, you've mentioned the mushrooms, the poisonous mushrooms we looked at, and the copperhead and the butterflies and the wheel bug.

It's been a busy day, for us.

Rudy> It's been a nice one.

I think, it would be nice to walk on down this canal, and one of the things that these folks who watch can do is to come to a place like this and see things that are here today, that's fun.

But taking a trip back in time, we've said it often, it's a lot of fun.

Jim> It's been exciting, and we're glad you were with us.

♪ Rudy> Why don't we head down this way... ♪ and get back up on the trail?

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪