Announcer: A production of: Nature Scene is made possible in part by grants from: helping sustain Nature Scene for the past four years.

Santee Cooper where protection and improvement of our environment are equal in importance to providing electric energy.

And by viewers like you members of the ETV Endowment of South Carolina.

♪ Jim: the Shenandoah National Park lies in the heart of the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia.

Established in 1935, the park has 190,420 acres-- most of it wilderness.

Hello, I'm Jim Welch with naturalist Rudy Mancke and today we'll talk about changes and the effect of man on this great range of mountains.

Rudy: Yeah, this is a very, very special place.

Usually when you think of Shenandoah National Park, you think of a very diverse hardwood forest and I think we'll be able, you know, to see that as we walk along today.

The Blue Ridge Mountains are really a part of the Appalachians that run basically north-south, Jim.

So we're going to see some plants that are more typical of the north that have gotten down this far following that chain of mountains and also maybe see some from the south that have made it up this distance, too.

Very special place, though.

Highest point here is a little over 4,000 feet above sea level.

Hawksbill Mountain is the name of it-- off there in the distance, a little bit of haze there.

But not extremely tall mountains and yet there are Northern plants that do very well here that you really kind of don't expect here.

Basically a hardwood forest, but right over in this direction you see balsam fir that's doing just as well here as it is in Vermont or in Canada.

Not common here... Jim: Cold-weather plants.

Rudy: Yes, not common here, but doing well especially on these outcrops of rock.

A little more harsh environment here but you see it's even got cones on it.

So it's settled in and reproducing.

And then as you look on all these cracks and crevices in the rocks you see lots of little plants that seem to be hugging those crevices.

Three-toothed cinquefoil is the common name for it-- a Northern species.

See, it's got white flowers on it three parts to the leaves and three teeth on each one of those little leaflets.

So three-toothed cinquefoil is a common name.

Look at those little hiding places in the cracks.

And then also we've got flowering over here in front of us something called ninebark.

It gets that name because of the bark shredding off in long pieces, and you see it is flowering.

Member of the rose family.

The geology here is also a good story.

We'll get into that as we walk along.

So much to see.

Let's head off in this direction.

♪ Jim: On the Appalachian Trail that runs through the park.

In fact, it's 95 miles of it of the 2,000 miles from Spring Mountain, Georgia, to Mount Katahdin go through the park and right here along the Skyline Drive.

Rudy: Lots of trails here and it gives you good access to this national park.

And you remember we were talking about diversity of hardwoods a moment ago.

This is a good place to stop and just take a look at some of that diversity.

Here's one plant that kind of speaks of the North to me-- Mountain maple is the common name for it.

Maple-like leaves on it pretty distinctly.

But look at the way the fruit is.

Most maples, you know, dangle down.

Jim: This grows up.

Rudy: The fruit actually is up on a little bit of a spike.

And, of course, the flowers are up there, too.

Early fruit forming on it right now.

Good diversity of maples here.

Right behind it, striped maple or moosewood is another name for that maple.

Larger leaves on it.

And the young...

The bark of the young trees are striped so the name striped maple.

But there's the fruit now hanging down like you would expect maple, you know, fruit to be hanging down.

Jim: Hmm.

Rudy: Diversity of hardwoods here.

I also see... Look at the basswood up there.

Big, big leaves, and then those strange flowers that seem attached to a modified leaf.

That's a bract, it's called.

And those are early flowers.

I guess they really haven't opened quite yet.

Bee tree is another name for that, Jim because when the flowers open, they're very, very fragrant and lots of bees come and go.

Linden tree is another name for it-- tilia.

Jim: Great diversity of hardwoods.

Rudy: Any way you look, really, up or down...

I was just noticing over here-- look at the little cluster of trees-- the witch hazel.

And that's one that I think a lot of people are very familiar with the name.

Jim: You get the astringent from it to use for household use.

Rudy: That's right.

This is an interesting one, too.

See the fruit on it?

these things flower in October.

and this is really last year's fruit, so to speak.

And it'll eventually dry out and open and throw seed all over the place.

And look on the leaves.

It almost looks like there's fruit on the leaf which that can't be.

Looks like a little dunce cap sticking up there.

Jim: That's a growth of some kind?

Rudy: Those are galls caused by a little aphid-like animal and specifically zeroing in on witch hazel.

Jim: Some color down below here.

Rudy: Yeah, and again, colorful flowers.

We're going to see a lot of them, I hope, as we walk today.

That's the wild columbine.

Isn't that pretty?

Really nice hanging down the flowers hanging down, in the buttercup family.

And then look at the mass of ferns looks like hay-scented ferns there behind it-- really nice.

Another plant here, too, while we're looking.

Look at the fruit on it.

It's right against the leaf there.

Looks almost like hops.

That's one of the hornbeams that gets the name hop hornbeam-- Ostrya Virginiana.

We're in Virginia.

So there were many plants first described from this part of the united states.

Hop hornbeam.

Jim: Different from the American hornbeam?

Rudy: Different from the American hornbeam even a different genus, but both called hornbeams.

I notice something else just as I turn.

Jim: Beautiful.

Rudy: Talk about beautiful flowers.

There's one of the orchid-- large purple-fringed orchid.

Isn't that gorgeous?

And look at... Look at the lower lip on that thing.

It's divided, really, into three parts and you can see that beautiful fringing.

Orchids are always amazing plants really a pretty widespread family of plants.

Jim: This is the time of year, Rudy, you'd see it?

Rudy: That's the time of year you see it and oftentimes along moist, sort of sloping hillsides like this.

And that's what we've got.

Lot of rock sticking out here.

Look at the lichens that have come and kind of taken over the rock.

Jim: Chunks of, um, granite or volcanic-like rock.

Rudy: Well, this is volcanic material.

You're absolutely...

Absolutely right.

This stuff probably was injected in oh, around 570 million years ago with the dates put on these things.

There had been a continental collision here.

Those mountains that were pushed up back then are gone.

And as continents were separating, there were big gaps and this basaltic material came in.

And you see it came in as a liquid.

And look up on the hill here.

Actually, this stuff was squirted in not at the surface but a little bit below.

It cooled slowly and as it did... As the rock was shrinking it formed columnar joints in the rock.

Look at that thing!

Jim: Column looks like it was carved out.

Rudy: Looks like man has come here and carved it out.

And, of course, the Indians that were here had nothing to do with that carving.

That was done a long time before they were here-- again, about 570 million years ago.

The Catoctin Formation is what the name is for this.

And that's a modified basalt, because it was squeezed.

Again, metabasalt is the common name for it.

That's the same kind of stuff that oozes out on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge now.

Jim: Something to look for when hiking this portion of the Appalachian Trail.

Rudy: Yeah, and it kind of has a greenish look to it when you get the lichens away.

I noticed one of those lichens down here.

You see it's really crusty almost peeling away from the rock.

Rock tripe is the common name for that.

And, you know, that's an edible lichen.

It looks like it wouldn't be all that delectable right now but that is an edible lichen doing very well on the rock here.

Let's head on.

There's plenty more to see.

♪ This is some more of that igneous rock that was squirted in a long time ago, Jim.

Been changed a little bit through time but basically still the same thing pushed up when continents collided.

Push came from the east there.

Nice view of... Look at the talus slope, it's called.

see the big pieces of rock weathered away?

Jim: Chunks of... Chunks of the greenstone?

Rudy: Yeah, most of it is.

Yeah, broken off, again, by weathering and dropped to the ground.

Lots of animals and plants do very well on a talus slope.

Trees that really dominate this forest are the... the oaks.

We've got really two varieties that are pretty obvious there.

Northern red oak is really one of the most common trees in the park.

Down there, doing fairly well, and I guess a little extra moist up along the edge of the outcrop here.

And then chestnut oak here below us.

Really one of the white oak group.

That old red oak over there is one of the red oaks.

Sharp, pointed edges on the leaf.

Edges on the chestnut oak kind of rounded.

Both of them doing very well here.

And then right over here, mountain ash.

Look at that compound leaf.

Sort of a reddish stem on the leaf there.

And it looks like it's getting early fruit on it there.

Looks almost like an ash so mountain ash is the common name even though it really isn't a true ash.

Northern species again, coming on down the appalachians.

Jim: Covered up again with trees.

At one point all this was cut over.

Rudy: Yeah, there's been a lot of cutting here.

Man has had a major impact on the forest here.

Now, we were talking about chestnut oak being one of the white oaks.

There is actually the oak known as white oak.

Again, smoothly rounded lobes on the leaves ing best back in more of a forest-like situation.

And then the flowers.

Look at those.

Big petals on that rose.

And I believe that one is the one usually called Carolina rose.

And one other one-- again, pretty scrubby-looking little old thing.

It's got flowers on it.

Lots of insects coming.

One of the sumacs.

Staghorn sumac is the common name.

If you look really carefully at the stem-- look at that fuzz on it that reminded someone, I guess, of the deer or the stag that was in velvet with the skin on the antlers.

Fuzzy look doing quite well.

Jim: 300 square miles of mountainous forest within the park.

Hardwoods, mostly.

In fact, here's another one over here, Rudy.

Rudy: Yeah, but you know really what general group that's in.

Look at the leaves.

Jim: Aspen?

Rudy: Aspen-- one of the poplars.

Large-toothed aspen or big-toothed aspen is the common name.

See those teeth on the edges.

Pretty big and then widely spaced.

Moving like you would expect an aspen to move.

Saw something else moving right in front of me.

Jim: A little snake!

Rudy: A little Northern ring-necked snake.

Jim: Can you get him?

Rudy: I think I can.

Not moving too fast down here.

Oh, yeah.

Quieting down fairly nicely.

One of the most common snakes in Shenandoah National Park.

Jim: You said Northern-- does that differentiate him from the Southern?

Rudy: Yeah, there is a Southern ring-necked snake.

Both of them have rings.

The Northern one has a ring, though, that is complete across the back of the neck-- usually in the Southern it is broken-- and real shiny sort of gray scales.

And then the belly is almost, on this thing kind of an orange color.

See?

With no spots down the center of the belly.

The Southern variety would have little dark half-moons on the bottom of the belly.

Nonpoisonous snake.

It feeds on salamanders and earthworms and soft-bodied insects and such that it finds under rocks.

Very common snake here.

Quietens down pretty well when you get it in hand.

Jim: Very fragile little animal.

Rudy: Yeah, it is.

I'll put him back down here in the shade and hopefully... Hopefully he'll be fine.

Yeah, he's crawling off up in there.

Often seen here.

Small compared to the broad views that you get here.

Shenandoah valley, off in the distance there.

Mainly limestone rocks easily eroded away compared to the hard stuff in the mountains.

The Shenandoah river has worked it.

Jim: And historically speaking Stonewall Jackson's men and troops came up through this valley in 1862.

Rudy: And wooded hillsides coming down.

But, now, look across here.

Something has happened... Jim: Something killed the trees.

Rudy: ...to those deciduous trees.

Well, they're not exactly dead, at least hopefully not but something has defoliated.

There's an alien species that is here that's really changing the world, the gypsy moth and it's interesting to view it from here.

You see the amount of damage that it's done.

Why don't we head from here down into that forest and take a close look?

♪ Jim: Looking into the tops of the hardwoods it gives a wintertime appearance.

Rudy: Yes, and yet this is spring, early summer, see.

And you can see the damage done by the gypsy moths-- specifically the caterpillars here-- taking leaves off of the hardwood trees changing them into caterpillar and really rearranging the forest.

We'll talk about that a little more but look at the flowers here.

Jim: Covered with the laurel.

Rudy: Isn't it gorgeous?

Yeah.

Mountain laurel is really at its peak right now here.

And you see it grows best, it seems under the shade of trees overhead.

And now that they have been defoliated that lets extra sunlight in.

And it'll be interesting to see how mountain laurel is affected by that.

But beautiful flowers on it and, of course, leaves there... Evergreen-- it loves acidic soils.

This is just the right place.

Remember the striped maple we saw earlier-- here it is again.

And look at the gypsy moth caterpillars.

Jim: Large moths all... Rudy: All over the place.

Strange, those things were introduced into the United States 1868 or 1869 by a naturalist in Massachusetts and a few of them escaped.

And 20 years later around Boston they were defoliating trees and people got very worried about them.

Tried to stop their range expansion and it has continued even though some pretty powerful pesticides have been used.

Jim: Why can't they do something in the park to stop the devastation?

Rudy: Well, they're trying to control them a little bit along certain areas but they often believe that it's best to let nature take its course.

There are some diseases that have come in and knocked down the population some.

Problem here, of course, is that they eat hardwood leaves indiscriminately.

I mean, they start off depending on oaks at first-- that seems to be the first larval food plant-- but then they can go to maples and witch hazel and many, many other things stripping them down.

Range, as we've said, is expanding a little bit.

I even see... Look over on the tree there-- you can see the egg masses that were laid last year that have now hatched out.

Caterpillars came out of those little, teeny-weeny holes-- look like about the size of pinholes in the egg masses.

A female lays them there and covers them with a little bit of hair from her abdomen.

And then they hatch n1t, usually the next year and, of course, begin to feed.

Jim: And there are billions and billions of them in the park.

Rudy: Yeah, I even see some last year's pupal cases there.

See, on the side of the tree stuck.

Again, they love rough-barked trees and the oaks, of course, are one of the trees here that have very rough bark.

So they use them to lay eggs on and also to pupate on.

Jim: Here it is late June; the caterpillar in a few months-- a few weeks, even-- will be a moth?

Rudy: Yeah, July is when they begin to pupate.

And the moth hatches out pretty soon after that and then flies around and lays eggs all over the place.

Jim: There are so many the droppings sound like rain.

Rudy: Yeah, just listen for a moment.

Sounds like the pitter-patter of raindrops.

( droppings pitter-pattering ) Again, we talk about recycling every now and then.

They're taking these leaves from trees and changing them into a caterpillar that really is supposed to be in Europe, but an alien species that kind of got away from us.

Here's one on the ground.

Here let me just pick it up.

Get a close look at this gypsy moth caterpillar.

Jim: Very fuzzy, lots of fine hairs.

Rudy: Yeah, this is a pretty distinctive little caterpillar.

You can see when they get to be older individuals they've got that reddish color on the back; those dots with a little bit of blue toward the front.

And, again, if anyone sees a caterpillar like this anywhere in the United States they need to report it because we're trying to keep track on the range expansion of this alien species.

They've been found as far south as Florida as far west as Missouri already.

So the range is expanding.

Jim: Innocent-looking but it's done thousands of acres of damage.

Rudy: Billions and billions of individuals can really change a forest very rapidly.

And it's important to make sure we don't carry these away on our cars-- either the caterpillars or the egg masses.

Look down in the trail ahead of us there.

Now, here are a couple of native species of lepidopterans-- not moths, but butterflies.

The biggest one there red-spotted purple is the common name.

And, look, it makes sense, I mean... Jim: Colors give it away.

Rudy: They're the red... Reddish orange spots on the underside of the hind wing.

And then when it spreads those wings out to warm up in the sunlight you see the purple on the back.

Using its tongue, now, unrolling that proboscis-- looks kind of like a tongue-- getting moisture out of the ground here along the wet trail.

Jim: The other butter is very colorful, too.

Rudy: Yes, looks fresh, too.

Jim: Painted lady?

Rudy: One of the painted ladies probably the American painted lady.

And, again, here, warming up in the sunlight unrolling that proboscis getting a little bit of fluid.

Those are fluid feeders.

But, now, the caterpillars of those butterflies feed on leaves, right?

Jim: Right.

Rudy: What happens if you're a butterfly here and these gypsy moth caterpillars have taken away all the leaves?

Jim: You die.

Rudy: That's right.

You lay... Where do you lay your eggs?

They are really having an effect not only on the plants here but also on the animal species.

There's an old forest down the way.

Let's go take a look at it.

♪ Jim: Beautiful, shady, green forest with giant hemlocks thanks pretty much to George Freeman Pollock who had the vision to save much of this.

Rudy: Yeah, this is some of that old forest most of which has been long since cut.

And you see the world is quite different here.

I mean, it's cooler, it's more moist and Eastern hemlock is the dominating tree here.

These that are low enough to us you can actually, you know see the needles on it very clearly-- some of the new, green growth on it.

Tremendous in size.

One of the conifers.

And there's another one over here.

Look at the... Look at the white pine there.

and I'm amazed not only the gypsy moth caterpillars eat deciduous leaves; they're eating the leaves on that conifer, the white pine.

And I'll bet you they'd probably take hemlock if there's no other alternative.

Changing...

The world-- alien species can do that sometimes.

But that's an interesting tree.

And look at the size of the stump right here next to us.

Jim: Could have been a couple hundred years old.

Rudy: Oh, wow, yeah, hollowed out basically in the center.

Look at those...

It's hard to even see the rings anymore.

Movement right there, Jim, little bit.

Very common to find in this kind of situation the red-backed salamander-- abundant here in Shenandoah National Park.

See the line down the back isn't always necessarily red-- it can be kind of a yellowish color.

Moving along slowly.

No lungs in that animal-- lungless animal.

Breathes through the skin... Jim: Through the skin.

Rudy: And linings of the mouth.

Doesn't stay there very long.

You see kind of in a shaded area a little bit more moist.

Jim: Fully mature?

Rudy: Yeah, mm-hmm.

That's an average- size adult.

They feed on earthworms and soft-bodied insects and other things here.

This forest, though, has changed a lot.

A lot of these hemlocks were cut for tannic acid to tan hides.

Chestnut blight, you remember came and got the chestnuts and now the gypsy moths are changing things.

Here's some more change: look at the.. That's an oak.

Jim: A fungus?

Rudy: Yeah.

One of the mushrooms-- bearded hedgehog mushroom.

Pretty good common name for it-- looks almost like a beard hanging down.

This is the reproductive part, now of that mushroom; most of it's inside.

And it's one of the causes of heartrot in the, uh...in the oaks.

That is an edible mushroom believe it or not.

Jim: Hedgehog... Rudy: The bearded hedgehog mushroom is the common name.

It's a fungus, again changing the tree into a mushroom.

Interesting place here.

Course, totally changes when you get to an open area.

Not many.

Let's head toward big meadows next.

♪ This is quite a different feeling now than we've had.

Shenandoah National Park has so much to offer variety-wise.

Jim: They call this "big meadow."

Rudy: Pretty good name for it because, look, this wide expanse.

Very few trees are growing here.

Indians probably took advantage of this area a good while ago to hunt.

And, of course, the park service I imagine, keeps it back because there are a few tree species trying to get a hold here-- kind of pioneer species.

But you can imagine, a meadow like this... Look up on the road-- toward the road there.

Jim: Ah, a deer.

Rudy: White-tailed deer love situations like this.

I'm surprised we don't see one right here.

Beautiful doe there.

And you can see the big ears and the big, big eyes there.

Probably a couple years old.

Look at it using those... Those hooves to dig a little bit.

I don't know what it's getting.

Jim: Roots and nutrients?

Rudy: It almost looks like it's licking the clay on the side of the road.

But scratching anyway with those front legs.

Runs really on its toes.

Look at those slender legs.

And, again, when you run on your toes you can move rather rapidly.

White tail there-- you can barely see that twitching a little-- gives it the name.

Virginia whitetail.

Virginia white-tailed deer.

Yeah, that's a good name for it-- makes sense here.

Now, what about plants?

Well, certainly something very showy here-- small white flowers.

Rudy: Yeah, in the lily family.

Common name for that is fly poison and it's also something that is really, in fact, poisonous to cattle.

And if they were in this meadow they might have a little bit of a problem with that.

But leaves at the base and then those white flowers coming up on the stalk.

And speaking of flowers kind of on a stalk-- look at the littlellow flowers right here.

See them in front of us there?

Plant with whorls of leaves and then whorls of, you know, flowers coming out at the base of the leaves there.

Loosestrife... Jim: Loosestrife?

Rudy: ...Is the common name for that.

And wet meadows like this are just a great place any season of the year for wild flowers.

And shrubs, too-- blueberries mainly.

I even see some early fruit on the blueberries.

Jim, you're not going to believe this: right down there by the shrubs-- little fawn, this year's young.

Stripe almost down the back white on the sides, big ears.

Again, look at that little thing.

Delicate...

Frightened by us a little, not moving and slowly working its way back down into that vegetation to hide waiting, I guess, for mama to come back.

Could have been the mother up there on the road a minute ago.

Totally different environment and, of course, that affects the plants that live here and that affects the animals.

Jim: All making up a part of Shenandoah National Park.

Rudy: Yeah, great diversity here.

Let's head on.

♪ Jim: 105 miles of skyline drive goes through the park and gives opportunity to look out.

Rudy: Yeah, these pull-offs are nice and safe.

This one's got a few hemlocks down there in the distance a little bit.

So the conifers do well in certain areas especially north-facing slopes.

And then the oak there stripped with those gypsy moths.

Hopefully nature can come up with a way to control it with diseases or predators or maybe parasites.

Blue flowers, and, you know you see them a lot along the roadsides here.

Blueweed is the common name for it and that's European just like the gypsy moth is European.

So many of these nonnative species have become weeds as that name implies.

Jim: Over two million visitors a year come to visit Shenandoah, and we can be thankful it's been set aside for safekeeping.

Rudy: And it's so close to so many people, too.

I hope they'll come take advantage of it.

Nice place.

Jim: We hope you enjoyed your visit to Shenandoah National Park in Virginia and will join us again on the next Nature Scene.

♪ Announcer: Nature Scene is made possible in part by grants from: Helping sustain Nature Scene for the past four years.

Santee Cooper where protection and improvement of our environment are equal in importance to providing electric energy.

And by viewers like you members of the ETV Endowment of South Carolina.