♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ (Beryl) This looks like a typical South Carolina marsh, but today we're in a beautiful, not so typical location on the trail to Station Falls in Oconee County where we'll be looking at beaver dams and plants and animals representative of this area.

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

What a perfect day to be here, Beryl.

I don't think we could have picked a better day if we had tried.

Spring has arrived, and the reason we picked the Station Falls area is because spring seems to sneak in here a little earlier than it does elsewhere in the upper part of the state, and I hope the wildflowers will be out, and at the end of this trail is Station Falls, a waterfall that I think is very exciting.

You know why they call this Station Falls?

No, I have no idea.

You probably noticed the old building that we passed coming down the road.

Oconee Station it's called, a place that was built in the 1700s to house troops, or militia, to take care of the Indian problem in the upper part of the state.

This falls is named after the fact that it's very close to Oconee Station, so the name Station Falls.

A lot of flowers, and there are some very close.

This one is a very common one growing out of the bank.

It's in an area that really faces the sun most of the day.

It's called poor Robin's plantain.

You can see pretty clearly that this is one of the composites.

You remember those flowers we said that had instead of one single flower, groups of flowers together?

(Beryl) Um-hmm.

(Rudy) These outer flowers that are white in color are called ray flowers, and those yellow flowers on the center are called disk flowers.

(Beryl) The white things are not petals?

(Rudy) They're really petals, but they're not one petal of a big flower.

They're a single petal on one flower, on a single flower.

(Beryl) So tiny, little flowers attached to those petals.

(Rudy) Exactly.

This is a cluster of little, teeny flowers that when you first look at it, it looks like a single flower.

These things come out very early in the spring, attract lots of insects and really brighten up the little hillside here by the trail.

That's really neat, Rudy.

I'm a little curious about these beaver dams.

Yeah.

This marsh that you mentioned earlier is not typical of this area.

They don't just form like this up here.

What's happened is that a population of beavers have moved into this area and dammed up the creek.

This was once a meadow by a creek.

Now it's a marsh by a creek, and you can hardly see the creek anymore.

We need to get a little closer to that and talk about what the beavers do and how they do it.

Why they do it.

And how they change their world very, very distinctly.

Okay.

Let's head down this way.

♪ (Rudy) These rocks we've been walking over that have been sticking out of the bank are metamorphic rocks that tell us about the fact that these mountains were probably formed by continents bumping together and squeezing rock and pushing them up, and that's the way the Appalachians came to be.

(Beryl) Rudy, what is that pretty pink plant we've seen in bloom all over the place?

(Rudy) Redbud is the common name.

I remember my grandmother always called it Judas tree.

(Beryl) Judas tree?

(Rudy) Because it was believed that Judas Iscariot hanged himself on that kind of tree.

(Beryl) On a redbud tree?

(Rudy) Yes, so Judas tree is another common name for it.

Here's the way to the beaver pond.

I'm going to let you lead the way.

Let's get out to this old meadow and see what we can see.

(Beryl) It looks like a bunch of briars down here.

(Rudy) It has grown up some, hasn't it?

(Beryl) Rudy, I'm going kind of cautiously through here.

Should I be on the lookout for snakes and things?

(Rudy) This is a pretty good place for them with all this honeysuckle.

I'd hate to try to walk through here in the summertime when everything is really out, but it's certainly worth our trouble today to see this.

(Beryl) Oh, look at it.

Somebody's really been busy.

(Rudy) Beavers really change the world, and they do pretty good work with sticks and mud.

(Beryl) Kind of artistic, isn't it?

(Rudy) Yeah, it's ingenious.

One of the things that's very interesting to remember, you simply don't find ponds very often naturally in nature.

You find little oxbow lakes by rivers sometimes.

But beavers have to build them, or people, remember we said on another show, have to build them to create a habitat like this with a lot of standing water.

There are a lot of animals living in that water that wouldn't be here in the fast-moving stream but are here in the standing water besides beavers.

(Beryl) I don't understand very much about beavers.

Why do they build a dam?

(Rudy) Well, to a beaver, life is a very threatening situation, just like to all other animals.

You want to protect yourself.

They're animals that do best really in the water, water that's deep enough for them to dive in and swim in.

You don't normally get that kind of situation up here.

So what do you do?

You dam up a creek, back up the water, and you see that depth is 4 or 5 feet or so, and now they've got room to swim around in.

In this part of the world, they generally, instead of building a lodge out in the middle-- I don't see any lodge here-- dig holes under the bank very much like a muskrat, and that's where they spend the daytime.

(Beryl) So they could be literally underneath us right now?

(Rudy) They could be.

Probably a little closer to that pond, the water over there, and late in the afternoon, early evening and early in the morning, they're out doing some work.

It looks like they need to do some work here because you see a couple of places where the water is actually coming over the top of the dam.

You don't want that to any great degree in beaver ponds, not in the center of the dam anyway.

Some of it moves around the sides, but you want to make sure that dam holds because that's your protection.

Beavers not only cut wood to build dams out of, they eat the inner lining of the bark, and that's the way they get their food.

(Beryl) Wow!

(Rudy) Let me borrow that net just a minute.

There's a little butterfly right down here before we go on.

I got him!

One of the swallowtails.

Let me see if I can get him out without hurting anything.

(Beryl) Is this a new one for us?

(Rudy) This is a new one.

Oh, boy, yes.

This one is known as the pipevine swallowtail.

(Beryl) Pipevine.

(Rudy) Yeah.

It gets that name because it feeds mainly on a plant up here that's pretty common called the Dutchman's-pipe, and it is one of the vines.

Let me get him in my other hand now.

I want to be careful not to damage his wings.

(Beryl) Oh, he's pretty.

(Rudy) See the sheen on the underside of the wing, very, very distinct.

(Beryl) Sort of bluish.

(Rudy) Also, the tail-like projections off the tip of the hind wing which gives it the swallowtail name.

Pipevine swallowtails are found around the state.

They seem to be more abundant here because there's a little more Dutchman's-pipe here.

There are other plants that it feeds on, too, all relatives of the Dutchman's-pipe, though.

Swallowtails are out already flying around.

This one's not terribly large but a beautiful specimen.

Isn't that unbelievable?

(Beryl) Um-hmm, and the distinctive orange dots.

(Rudy) Oh, yes!

I don't want to injure-- oh, boy, he didn't take very long, did he?

(Beryl) He was anxious to get away.

(Rudy) Springtime really causes a lot of things to begin to stir.

We heard spring peepers calling a minute ago, not very clearly, but they're beginning to come to places like this and lay eggs, and those eggs will hopefully develop into more spring peepers.

Spring is the time when a young man's fancy turns to love, and the fancy of lots of different animals turn to love.

(Beryl) There's something to be said for that.

Let's keep going.

(Rudy) There's a little dam further on that we need to look at.

Let's head on.

(Rudy) This trail we're walking along probably was first made by the beaver, leaving the pond to get some wood for a meal.

(Beryl) Are they heavy enough to make depressions like this?

(Rudy) Oh, yes.

They get to be pretty good-sized animals with a pretty good amount of weight.

That's why they need a pretty good depth of water to cover their bodies.

Let me walk ahead of you and get one stick over here.

You see that little depression right there?

(Beryl) Um-hmm.

(Rudy) That's where the animals actually come straight out of the water and walk on out and cut down trees a good distance away from the pond.

(Beryl) I have this image of an army of beavers walking across the dam.

(Rudy) Well, that's basically what's going on.

This one here's a piece of the dam that floated down.

You see the way the branches have been snipped off.

No bark on this because you strip that off and eat the inner lining of the bark, the cambium layer it's called.

You can see pretty clearly that those chisel-like front teeth leave their mark on the wood, and you can tell this was beaver cut, not cut by a man with an ax.

Little fly landing on there.

You know what he's there for?

(Beryl) Huh-mm.

(Rudy) Picking up a little moisture.

We all need it.

The little fly is taking advantage of me.

Look at that thing!

(Beryl) Without the risk of getting in the water.

(Rudy) That's right.

Look at him lapping it up with that interesting tongue of his.

These beavers are amazing animals for a number of reasons.

We used to have them all over our state.

Then in the early 1800s, we had trapped them out of existence.

Now they're coming back in.

All along the Savannah River area of our state, Oconee County all the way down to Beaufort County, you're getting beavers now coming back, building dams.

(Beryl) Would we often find two dams in a row like this, Rudy?

(Rudy) Well, when you've got a couple of families of beavers involved, yes.

What happens usually is that a couple of beavers will build a pond like this.

They'll have young.

They take care of the young for a while, as most mammals do, but then they finally push them out.

They move a distance, build another dam.

This may happen oftentimes in a valley like this.

Of course, eventually what happens to this water?

Well, this little pond fills in.

Succession begins immediately to fill in the pond, and this pond will again become rich bottomland material.

(Beryl) The beaver will have to move on.

(Rudy) The beaver's going to have to move on.

That's exactly right.

A very interesting way to build a dam.

Look at the level of water, the difference in level there.

(Beryl) Man learns a lot from nature.

(Rudy) Beryl, we do.

We really do, and now we build dams on a little larger scale than this, obviously.

(Beryl) But it's the same principle.

(Rudy) Same basic principle.

Sure is.

It's a little too big for me to carry back with me.

Let's put that back.

Maybe they can use it in the dam.

Let's see what's further on.

♪ (Rudy) You can hear that creek that the beaver's dammed up gurgling on our left, and look at what that moisture does for plants.

(Beryl) That looks like a field of umbrellas.

(Rudy) Let's be very careful and walk out.

I want to show you somethg interesting about these p. They're called May apples, and I see one that I wanto talk about a little furth.

We've got to be careful.

Isn't it unbelievable to e all this beauty around y, right here close to home?

Let's just get right here and talk about these umbrellas just for a minute.

(Beryl) Okay.

(Rudy) You notice how some of them have a single leaf like this one and then others have double leaves.

(Beryl) They're all compound leaves.

(Rudy) Take a look at what's under these double leaves.

(Beryl) There's the flower.

(Rudy) There is the flower.

It hasn't quite opened yet, but very exciting flower that comes only on the May apples with the double leaves, and it's basically right in the base of those two leaves there.

This is one of the plants that's really exciting in the springtime to see.

The fruit on it does look a little bit like an apple, so that's the name, May apple, and often appears in May.

(Beryl) Rudy, isn't this also called the mandrake plant?

(Rudy) Yeah, another common name is the mandrake plant, and this was one of the plants that have been thought to be aphrodisiacs.

(Beryl) An exotic species.

(Rudy) Yes, very exotic species, and you can see how they've come in here and done well.

They're pretty delicate, so we've been careful.

It's best to stay on the trail, but sometimes you need to get close to things to understand what they are.

Again, here's a double one.

You would expect--yes, and I see a flower in place.

Let's get back out on the trail.

There are so many other things to see on the edge.

(Beryl) Look at all the other plants underfoot.

Let's talk about a few of those.

(Rudy) There's a clump of Trilliums.

See the three in a line?

Let's stop there and talk a minute about those plants.

Let me lean out of the sunlight so you can see this a little clearer.

Trilliums, to a lot of people, are the plant that you think of flowering in the springtime.

(Beryl) Really?

(Rudy) The name makes a lot of sense because the parts of this plant come in threes.

Really, you could pronounce try -lium, "tri" for three.

(Beryl) Sure, it's got three leaves.

(Rudy) If we can turn this over, you've got three leaves --one, two, three.

These leaves are mottled.

Don't always have to be but in this variety they are.

Three-- what are those called?

(Beryl) Sepals.

(Rudy) Sepals.

Three maroon petals.

(Beryl) Wow!

(Rudy) The flower parts are hidden down inside.

The reproductive parts of the flower, hidden down inside.

These are one of a number of flowering plants called the monocots.

The monocots have flowers in three parts, and, also, maybe you can see on this leaf the veins of that leaf are parallel.

They all start out at the base and run parallel to one another to the end of the leaf.

So Trillium.

These are, again, common.

We should see two or three varieties today.

Sometimes the petals on this plant are yellow in color instead of the maroon.

(Beryl) They're not always purplish.

(Rudy) Not always that purplish-maroon.

Isn't that a beautiful plant?

Coming up through the leaves on the forest floor to blossom.

(Beryl) Growing naturally in the wild.

(Rudy) Oh, that's phenomenal!

(Beryl) What else do we have here?

(Rudy) I saw something over here.

Let me just walk on through.

I thought I saw one other plant flowering here.

Yeah, here it is!

It's been kind of bumped a little bit, it looks like.

(Beryl) That's a tiny, little flower.

(Rudy) Look at that!

Here's a flower that everybody ought to know.

Its relatives are found all over the state and blooms early in the spring.

It's called chickweed.

I guess it's called that because little chicks peck at it and feed on the soft leaves, but look at those beautiful flowers.

These are one of those flowers that if you were walking along the trail and not looking closely, you'd miss.

There are lots of things like that.

(Beryl) Look what's landed on my finger.

(Rudy) Oh, my goodness, look at that thing.

A little spring azure butterfly.

I don't know how you attracted him, but there he is sitting there.

Blue on the top of the wings that you see when it flies and sort of gray with the black speckles underneath.

Look, sticking out his tongue a little bit, I guess trying to get some moisture from your skin.

(Beryl) Oh, just a beautiful creature.

(Rudy) Sometimes you have to slow down enough to reach out and touch nature, and people don't do that a lot of times.

Probably along this trail they're in so much of a hurry they don't give a spring azure time to land on them.

(Beryl) In this case, nature's touching me.

(Rudy) That's exactly right.

Really, we're a part of nature, too, and this kind of relationship is exactly what it should be.

What a beautiful animal!

(Beryl) Oh, I hate to see him go.

(Rudy) That was a beautiful animal.

There's no question about that, but I'm sure there are other things down the way.

Before we even go, you can look across there.

See the May apple leaf that just came up?

It looks like it went through a dry leaf on the forest floor, and the leaf hasn't been able to open up normally.

It looks like it's in a straightjacket almost.

(Beryl) I see it.

(Rudy) Interesting things going on.

That shows not everything always works in nature.

There are a lot of things that don't make it very well.

That leaf probably never will unroll normally.

Let's head on down the path toward the falls.

♪ [ water babbling ] (Rudy) Isn't it refreshing by the stream?

(Beryl) It sure is.

(Rudy) I don't think there's anything more beautiful than a good mountain stream, making nice noises, changing the world right before our eyes.

Be careful now.

Can you get down there all right?

(Beryl) I think so.

(Rudy) Okay.

[ water babbling ] (Rudy) Isn't this beautiful?

(Beryl) Ahhh!

(Rudy) When you get close to the water, there are all sorts of things that catch your eye, but look at this.

Look at those violets.

(Beryl) Right on the edge of the water.

(Rudy) You can see that some of them are right in the crevice in that rock where a little soil is built up.

Another one is actually growing out of soil that's been trapped by that moss.

(Beryl) How can they live there?

Don't they die when the stream gets larger?

(Rudy) They're probably washed around a little bit, but they seem to be able to survive and hang on.

They probably get buffeted pretty badly.

Flowering, again, in the spring.

Quite a variety of violets around the state but especially abundant in the mountains.

Liverworts, a very primitive plant, on this side of the rock.

Doesn't even have flowers, you know, the liverworts.

The big tree behind us, what is that?

(Beryl) That's the rhododendron.

(Rudy) Rhododendron.

(Beryl) Typical mountain plant for South Carolina.

(Rudy) That's certainly a mountain plant.

I imagine when it warms up, we might be able to see a few snakes or other animals swimming here.

Why don't we head up toward the waterfall now.

It's not too much further, and there will be a lot of interesting things along the way.

(Beryl) It's really beginning to feel like mountain.

(Rudy) It's getting cool now because of that falling water up the way.

(Beryl) Yes.

[ water babbling ] (Rudy) Let's see if we can step across these rocks.

(Beryl) Okay.

(Rudy) Be a little careful.

(Beryl) It's a little slippery.

(Rudy) Oh, do you see the waterfall?

(Beryl) A magnificent waterfall!

That is something gorgeous.

(Rudy) We've got to get close to that.

That is really something special, and maybe we can see a few animals and plants that are more common there than they are down in this part of the creek.

[ water babbling ] (Rudy) This is almost an "Alice in Wonderland" experience, isn't it?

(Beryl) It sure is.

(Rudy) It's almost like we're in a different world.

Somebody's built a fire there.

I hate to see that in a place like this.

(Beryl) Yeah, not in a forest area.

(Rudy) We need to protect places like this.

Oh, my goodness, gracious.

(Beryl) Rudy, what is this plant?

It looks like the Trillium because it has three leaves, but the flower's entirely different.

(Rudy) That is another variety of Trillium.

It's the same genus as the one we saw earlier but a different species.

Just take a look at this, Beryl.

The flower here is not down there by the leaves but up on the stalk, and when you turn it up and look at it, that is spectacular.

(Beryl) It is lovely.

(Rudy) Three sepals, three petals, six stamens.

(Beryl) This variety is open while the others are still closed.

(Rudy) Yeah, and really the other Trillium that we saw doesn't ever open up, usually does not open up like that.

That is an unbelievable flower, and there are so many others.

Look at Viola canadensis, the Canadian violet.

A Canada violet, very nice, beautiful white petals.

Oh, what a spectacular flower that is!

(Beryl) I used to think violets were little purple plants.

(Rudy) They don't have to be.

They can be a variety of colors, and you can even see over here the jack-in-the-pulpit.

(Beryl) I sure do.

(Rudy) Again, that is a very odd-looking flower, as you can see, and close to it is a Trillium.

Remember, we said sometimes the petals were yellow; there it is.

There's one other thing we might as well mention.

Do you remember this tree we saw on another show a long time ago?

The leaf has five leaflets.

(Beryl) I can remember the example, but I can't remember the tree.

(Rudy) Good, old buckeye.

(Beryl) Buckeye.

(Rudy) This variety is usually found in the mountains.

There's another variety that's spread all over the state.

Oh, fantastic!

Gee, we could just keep talking.

(Beryl) So many plants grouped here together just growing in the wild.

(Rudy) Let's keep going and see if we can't find a few more.

(Beryl) Okay.

(Rudy) I can't believe those falls.

There are a couple of plants that are here that are really rare in South Carolina, that we want to stop and see.

The first one is a little fern growing up on the rock.

You see it?

(Beryl) I sure do.

What is it?

(Rudy) It's called walking fern, and what basically happens is the frond there falls down, a new plant grows at the end of the frond, and from that a new plant grows, and it looks like it's walking over the rock.

That's the common name for it.

(Beryl) Sort of dovetails on each other.

(Rudy) Oh, yeah.

Beautiful, really spectacular.

You remember on another show we saw round-lobed hepatica, or the common hepatica, spring flower, and here we are with a variety.

I think you can see it actually has acute lobes, or sharp lobes, sharp points.

Only found in the mountain counties of South Carolina, and it's abundant on this hillside, as you can see.

Do you want me to lead the way?

(Beryl) I think so.

(Rudy) All right.

We'll walk out and get a better look at these things.

Station Falls is one of my favorite waterfalls because it's fairly easy to get to.

Let's step across this old dogwood tree that got washed down.

[ water roaring ] I don't think there's anything in the world that's more exciting in the spring than a good waterfall like this because not only is this pretty in itself, the variety of plants that live here because of that extra moisture really makes it very, very special.

(Beryl) No matter how many different waterfalls we visit in South Carolina, and we've been fortunate enough to see quite a few, each one is unique, and each one is equally spectacular in its own way.

(Rudy) It's hard to put into words.

It really does almost take your breath away, and the cool breeze in our faces now and a little bit of moisture in the air, spectacular.

What a way to begin spring, by coming to the mountains and really seeing what water does, because these plants would not be able to exist here if it were not for the large amounts of water.

That's one of the blessings about living in South Carolina.

We've got some water resources that we ought to protect, and this is just a little part of it.

Hard to turn away from that.

(Beryl) I feel like we ought to just sit here and soak it up for a few minutes.

(Rudy) Really, when you think about it, even though we can't appreciate it because our lives aren't long enough, that water is changing the world.

It's taking this rock away, breaking it down, and actually carrying it on down eventually to the lower part of the state.

(Beryl) Yeah.

I felt like we were close to realizing what that was like when I watched the beaver dams in succession.

Maybe somehow our lives roll on in that same kind of succession.

(Rudy) This has been a good day because we started way down at the other end of this creek.

We've worked our way up to the waterfall, and we've gotten a sense of how the plant life changes and the animal life.

We've had a chance to see some of that.

It's been a good day and a good way to start spring off.

(Beryl) Isn't it always a good day when we go out and explore nature, Rudy?

(Rudy) One thing we need to tell people who watch this show is that if you live in South Carolina and you haven't been to places like this, you've missed a fabulous opportunity, and it's something that doesn't cost a lot of money.

Most of these places are fairly close at hand, and really, doggone it, take the family with you.

It ought to be an experience that you share with your kids.

(Beryl) It sure is an experience for us, and we hope it has been for you, as well.

So much so that maybe this weekend you'll get out and have an experience all your own, and then join us again next time for another edition of "NatureScene."

I think I'm going to get back a little bit so I can really look at it from a distance.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪