November at Piedmont National Wildlife Refuge: Green, Brown, Red And White

November 24th, 2012. We’ve endured what seems like weeks of gray clouds and rain. Life is shades mostly of the dull green of pine trees and the browns of dead leaves and grasses. Time to look back to late November when there were still leaves on trees and some sun shining between the clouds.
 

We drove into the Piedmont National Wildlife Refuge on Starr Road from GA-83 as we usually do. We spotted a grass…

blooming in the pine forest west of the road. It took a few minutes to process the fact that it wasn’t on of the native grasses – the seed heads were too ‘white’ - but…
 

Pampas Grass (Cortaderia selloana) that had seeded itself in the national forest north of the wildlife refuge.

We drove down to Pond 6A which… 
 

 Is a pretty pond, and a…

good place to see fine examples of Silver Plume Grass (Saccharum alopecuroides) in the distance across the pond, and...

 

up close on the dam.
 

We then drove over to Pond 2A. One the way we spotted a white ‘growth’ on the trunk of a pine tree; about 15 feet above the ground. This proved to be a…

 

 Tooth fungus (unidentified).

My favorite view of the Pond 2A shoreline.

On this occasion, we were surprised to find that a gate to the wildlife refuge just beyond Pond 2A was open and we took the opportunity to explore a new road.

At one bend in the road we found this oak tree with brilliant red leaves, and a…
 

side road bordered by trees still holding onto their browned leaves. And then a stop to examine…
 

a few stalks of grass (in the center of the image) that I had assumed previously to be in immature Broomsedge Bluestem (Andropogon virginicus) but which, clearly, were quite different when mature.

 

A closer view of the seed head. This is Elliot’s Bluestem (Andropogon gyrans).

 Then we made our obligatory stop at the bridge over Little Falling Creek. 

 

The creek had no water flow at all. There was just a lot of dry rock and a few, isolated pools of water.
 

We found several stands of Common Bushy Bluestem (Andropogon glomeratus) at Pond 11a, and the final find of the day…

An Asclepias species seed pod releasing seeds. This is almost certainly the Green Comet Milkweed(Asclepias viridiflora) 

Even when the main wildflower show is over for the year, there are still a lot of interesting finds to be had. 

Click on an image to view a larger image