♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ We are on the Coastal Plain of South Carolina in lovely Horry County, an area that often conjures up images of lush vegetation.

With me is our guide and teacher, Rudy Mancke, natural history curator with the South Carolina Museum Commission.

We're going to see a lot of interesting sites, but it's really hot here!

It is...we're coming earlier in the day, so we'll catch some animals that won't be out late afternoon.

Quite a few animals come out just after sunrise and up until noon.

Maybe we can catch a few.

We've already gotten a couple here.

Once it gets terribly hot in the afternoon, not many animals can put up with it.

I don't blame the animals!

Most people on the highway over there are hurrying toward Myrtle Beach, and they're passing a very exciting area... to me, in many ways, more exciting than the ocean.

We'll have a chance to see some rare things today that, once you understand a little about them, you'd want to stop and appreciate.

What makes it special?

What about this area should attract us?

One thing that we're going to notice today is Carolina Bays.

They're little depressions in the ground, elliptical-shaped.

They're named Carolina Bays because they're found mainly in the two Carolinas, North and South Carolina.

They are also in Virginia, Florida, and Georgia a bit.

These low depressions cause an interesting thing to happen.

Water stands there more than in flat areas, so vegetation there is quite different from vegetation even a foot or two away.

We used to believe they were meteorite impact craters, which was a very exciting story.

We now think they're simply little lakes pushed into an elliptical shape by wind.

But why the elliptical shape?

It seems strange that that would be constant.

When wind blows over the surface of the water, the currents it sets up eventually produce, if the wind is blowing basically one way, an ellipse.

This can be proved experimentally, and quite a bit of work just recently has been done on this.

Wind had the real great effect on these depressions that ended up making them elliptical in shape.

Most of them have lost the water.

The Carolina Bay that we're skirting here is now pretty well filled in.

It's wet out there, but not a lot of standing water.

You see the vegetational difference between all of this shrubby stuff with a few pines as opposed to all the pines there.

How would somebody recognize this?

How would you know that you're passing a bay area instead of just some plain that has a lot of vegetation?

The name is a clue.

One of the reasons we call it Carolina Bays is because the prominent plants in bays are bays... loblolly-bay, sweetbay, redbay.

All three of these bays are found commonly packed together in bays.

Bays were really not appreciated very well until the 1940s when we began taking aerial photographs.

People started seeing these ellipses all over-- Always covered with the same plant.

--always aligned in one direction.

You go and investigate them, and they have the same kind of plants, plants you don't generally find commonly anywhere else.

Then we began to ask the question, Why?

There's been tremendous study on the formation of these bays.

It is easier to pass them by, but look at the vegetational pattern over here-- a few pines, lots of that shrubby stuff-- and look over here.

The pine woods are wide open.

There are a few shrubs, but not nearly the amount in the Carolina Bay.

Probably water is the big difference, the amount of water available.

I want to look at the Bays.

We'll look along the edge, but we better look at these and release them.

You have been chasing butterflies while we were setting up!

Yeah...let's look at these two different swallowtails.

Are these swallowtails we've seen before?

One we saw in a previous show.

Another one is a close relative found on the Coastal Plain.

I don't want to keep them too long, and I don't want to injure them, of course.

Just grab that net there.

Don't handle the wings very much on this animal.

This is a rather tattered-- he's been flying for a while-- tiger swallowtail, one of the swallowtails we've seen.

The swallowtails on the hind wings are broken off.

This one is old and has been flying so long.

This one's called tiger swallowtail because of the fusion of yellow on the wing with black stripes, giving it a tiger-looking effect.

These animals are totally nectar feeders.

They feed on liquids.

They don't feed on any solid material.

You can probably see that little, curled-up tongue that he uncurls and sticks down and sucks up nectar from plants.

These butterflies go around refueling.

There's plenty of fuel for these.

Energy is stored in that nectar.

They burn it up and fly, fly, and fly.

This one is a male.

Almost all female tiger swallowtails in our state are black all over instead of yellow.

Let me reach in for this other one.

This is new for viewers, isn't it?

Yes...it's not found anywhere except on the Coastal Plain.

This one does have one of the tails left.

This one is known as the palamedes swallowtail.

It's found only on the Coastal Plain of South Carolina.

It's about the same size as this one, but the pattern on the wings is very distinctively different.

This tiger swallowtail... statewide.

Palamedes...only found on the Coastal Plain.

They were feeding on some pepperbush flowers back there, getting nectar together to fly.

Different color antennae... one is black on the tiger swallowtail, and one is orangish.

That tongue is fantastic!

He's getting sweat I'm producing.

That's liquid... he can slurp that up.

He takes off.

Yeah...I don't blame him.

I wish I could do that!

Let's walk on and see what we can see.

I'm getting excited about this!

[no dialogue] Beryl, take a look at this flower, because it's very common throughout the state.

This variety is often found in low, wet meadow areas.

It's very beautiful, and the common name is meadow beauty.

It's found all over South Carolina, but we've seen it extremely common today.

One of the interesting things about flowers is, of course, they are beautiful, and that's very important, but flowers are extremely important to the plant because this is the way plants reproduce.

It's sexual reproduction.

Male and female flower parts are very distinctive here because on the meadow beauty, these stamens-- these yellowish things sticking out here-- are the male reproductive parts that produce the pollen.

This little, teeny thing in the center sticking out is part of the female part of the flower.

It receives the pollen which sends a little tube down into the ovary and fertilizes the eggs.

This is the way flowers reproduce.

These things use insects to help transport the pollen from one flower to another and cross-pollinate.

But it wouldn't need insects to fertilize itself?

Not really, although you see that the female part is sticking a bit away from the male part, so it might be nice to have some insect carry the pollen and not let just wind blow it.

This pollen is carried... it's insect-pollinated.

Some flowers are wind-pollinated.

They produce tons of pollen.

Pines do that...that's why we have so much trouble with pine pollen all over.

Pollen is male material that is transferring information and fertilizing an egg eventually and forming a new plant.

Meadow beauty...a lot of people collect the dried vases-- these look like vases here, the bases of these flowers-- in the wintertime as dried arrangements.

They're pretty even without the petals.

A very exciting plant!

Why don't we walk down the ditch.

There's some water standing there, and there'll be interesting plants along the way.

Rudy, what kind of plant life can we expect in a ditch like this?

If there's any water, and most ditches have a little, some mosses are going to be there... sedges, rushes, things like that that need their feet in the water.

That's basically what we've got here.

Do you know what kind of moss that is?

Sphagnum moss.

Sphagnum moss is really interesting because it produces enough acid to actually kill bacteria and was used as a dressing for wounds in the War Between the States and World War I and II.

So it's a real folk remedy?

Yeah, one that works very well, as a packing and other things.

There's really not very much water here.

This is stressful on plants that require it.

Those in the ditches generally require more water.

That's why they're there.

I see little plants that I'm not familiar with, but they're really pretty!

This is one of the plants that really excites me because it's one of the carnivorous plants.

That little plant is carnivorous?

Yeah...luckily it's not any bigger.

I wouldn't be so close if it was larger!

This is one of the plants that has turned the tables on animals.

You very rarely think of plants eating animals.

This is a sundew.

It gets that name because in the sunlight you can see tiny drops that look like dew on the leaves.

That is not really dew.

It's material that the plant exudes.

It's sugary and attracts insects.

The insects will fly down to that modified leaf and get stuck in that material.

Look...it sticks to me.

They get stuck in that material, and then the leaf folds up slowly on the insect.

The insect cannot fly away because it's stuck to it.

Eventually, it will digest the insect and open back up.

Carnivorous plants live in areas where there's not a lot of nitrogen.

The protein from the animal's body is where they get nitrogen.

They only need small amounts.

These things also have chlorophyll... green at the base of the leaves.

Is it unusual to find them flowering?

Yeah...those flowers are not going to be open much longer because the heat of the sun generally causes them to close.

The carnivorous plants that we have in our state are all flowering plants.

You see beautiful, little white flowers, delicate like that, and quite a few.

All don't open at once.

They begin to open low and work their way up one at a time, probably one a day.

Those are bi g sundews.

Now that we've begun to look, you see them sprinkled around.

When you're walking down a road or wherever, you need to slow down to see things.

Stop and look at what's around you.

The world is so exciting!

A lot of folks think to see something exotic you've got to go somewhere else--not home-- but here it is in South Carolina.

A very interesting plant.

There's another carnivorous plant a little further on.

Why don't we just continue along the ditch.

Boy, it's dry today!

That doesn't really affect the plants, though.

They're continuing to survive, yeah.

Here's one of the animals that's in the shade this time of day.

I wish I was able to join it!

It's one of the spiders found throughout the state.

It builds a web that's flattened for the most part.

In the back, it tapers into a funnel.

You can see the spider, probably a female because of her size, sitting in the tube, waiting for an animal.

We call these funnel web spiders because of the web.

Spiders are our good friends.

We've only got a couple that are problems to people.

This is one of our friends, catching and keeping down insect populations like the sundews are doing.

Let's see what we can find further down the ditch.

♪ What makes this really interesting is finding things in an area that looks so ordinary.

It looks like an overgrown wilderness.

♪ ♪ Before this is over, I might actually start recognizing trees.

Rudy, I've been noticing, too, we seem to be passing a lot of seashells.

The ocean was once here, and it's not far away today.

Many of those are fossils that have been left behind from an ocean floor.

That's why this Coastal Plain is so different from the Piedmont, because the ocean was once here.

Tall grasses here.

They like moisture, and this pond is nice.

I see a lot of dragonflies!

Let's just get one reddish one.

I think I got him.

Let's look at this one and then take a closer look at the pond.

He's a nice one!

I'll let you hold that net because this one is quite a flier.

I don't think he's thrilled about being captured either!

No, I'm sure he isn't.

We won't keep him but a little while.

Look at this animal!

How could you make a better flying device than this?

The wings are gorgeous, and the color!

The color at the base of the hind wings is what gives it the common name, saddlebag dragonfly.

A marking on each hind wing looks like, in flight, that they're carrying a pair of saddlebags.

The large compound eyes, and it looks like a little purplish color on the face.

These dragonflies are common at pools like this because in the water is where they spend most of their lives.

Most of their lives are spent underwater as a little nymph.

Then they come up on some stalks like the plant in the water, shed that old skin, grow wings, gain lungs, fly away, and live in the air.

Dragonflies seem to come in all different colors.

Tremendous variety of colors, and there are sexual differences, male and female, in the same variety of dragonfly.

This one is a male.

The male has male reproductive organs way up at the front end of the body.

Often at a pond, you'll see two dragonflies flying together, and it looks like one is hanging on behind and turning its abdomen forward.

That's the female being held by the male.

She turns her abdomen up here to receive sperm from the male reproductive organs.

I doubt if this thing's going to sit there.

There we go!

You can see the saddlebags very distinctively there.

It's a much deeper color than we thought!

Saddlebag dragonfly.

You've got to reach out and touch nature sometimes to really appreciate it.

Looking into those compound eyes, I wish I could just question the dragonfly, What's the world as you see it?

Mainly his world is spent hunting and seeking mates in places much like this.

This one just wants to ride.

Let's see if we can get it to fly.

Goodbye to him.

Just walk through this Sphagnum moss and some of these rushes on down close, Beryl, and take a look at these clumps of-- grasses, I guess, would be a common name for these.

The plant with the long stem and the unopened flowers is known as yellow-eyed grass.

The petals, when they're out, are yellow in color, very distinctive.

The thing that has really gotten me interested is this thing attached to the leaf.

It looks like a grasshopper or something.

This is a chrysalis, one of the things produced by a butterfly when he's going to change from a caterpillar into an adult.

Metamorphosis is an unbelievable thing!

The caterpillar first forms a little suspension wire here and then eventually forms this little shell around itself, sheds its skin in here, and most of the body of the caterpillar dissolves and then is put back together again as an adult.

It changes from an animal without wings to an animal with wings, an animal without a reproductive system to an animal with a reproductive system.

The magic occurs in this little chrysalis.

The shape of it...

I would imagine palamedes swallowtail would be a pretty good guess for it.

How long will he live there?

Probably before the summer is gone, this thing will hatch out into an adult.

Some of them overwinter in the chrysalis.

Moths form cocoons with lots of silk all over the place.

This doesn't really have silk, although I guess that suspension wire is silk.

It's a little more stiff than that.

What nourishes them in the chrysalis?

The only thing that nourishes them is food they've stored up in their bodies as caterpillars.

The caterpillar in the butterfly and moth is the feeding agent.

The only thing it does is eat.

Then it forms a chrysalis or cocoon, depending on the kind of animal, hatches out into an adult.

Some adults don't even feed, although the butterfly adults do feed.

We saw the little tube for sucking up nectar.

Metamorphosis is just an unbelievable event!

It's almost miraculous or magical.

You go in looking one way and come out totally different!

The dragonfly spends its time in the water for a while-- looking ugly-- comes out here, climbs up, sheds his skin, and all of the sudden he's beautiful!

Of course, those terms are just in our mind.

One other thing is just super, and we need to take a close look at it.

While we're talking about grasses, though, this is an interesting looking plant that I don't think we've seen.

What do we call this?

This is a plant more commonly found on the Coastal Plain.

It's called a running club moss.

It grows flat on the ground.

You just pull this right off the surface of the ground.

An extremely primitive plant.

It's not one of the flowering plants.

To reproduce, it sends up a stalk from the running stem like this.

It looks like--well, if you'll use your imagination, that would look like the tail of a fox.

This is called foxtail club moss.

Usually in here, it produces spores, which is the way it reproduces.

They fall on the ground, and you have more running club moss.

Loves sandy areas, loves to lay right on the ground, and then sends up that stalk with spores.

Nature's come up with a lot of ways to solve the same kinds of problems.

This way has continued to stay the same even though new inventions have come along.

I'm interested in looking closely at the bay plants we talked about.

I see a clump... let's take a closer look.

Okay.

[no dialogue] This is one of the plants we call bays.

There were three that we had here.

This is called loblolly-bay.

All bays have leaves that are leathery feeling and are on the tree in the wintertime.

Doesn't shed them all at the end of the fall.

This is easily recognized in late July, early August by the flower.

There are no other bays flowering at this time.

They all flower earlier.

It's a nice, floppy flower with white petals and lots of stamens there.

A very interesting thing, loblolly-bays are most often found in Carolina Bay situations.

Perhaps that's one reason we call it Carolina Bay.

There's another bay back here.

Let me just break off a branch...it's harder to see.

This bay is more common around the state than loblolly-bay.

It doesn't have flowers now, but look at the leaves.

The leaves have little swollen areas that look very much like tumors.

In a sense, they are.

These are called galls, g-a-l-l-s.

These are caused by insects.

So this is not common to the plant...it's an invasion.

Right, but these galls are almost always found on redbay.

There are some people who identify redbay because of the galls on it.

The blue ones--the darker ones--are last year's galls.

These are galls on the newer leaves.

The insect lays an egg in there.

When the egg hatches, it causes cells to grow rapidly, like cancer, to form a swelling.

Little insects live inside and do quite well.

A very interesting relationship that doesn't usually kill the tree.

Why is this called a redbay?

The fruit on it is a little reddish, and the bark on the larger trees is reddish.

The underside of the leaves are nice and fuzzy feeling and white in color, as opposed to the green on top.

The other bay is called sweetbay.

It's one of the magnolias and, typical of magnolias, has that funny-looking fruit that magnolias would have.

That should be fruiting this time of the year.

There are two other carnivorous plants I want to show you.

They're just a little further on, so let's take a look at them.

[no dialogue] Rudy, there's a familiar friend.

Yeah...we've seen trumpet pitcher plant before.

It's one of the carnivorous plants that hunts passively.

It just sits there, the insect crawls in, and there are hairs pointing down.

The insect can't get out, and it's digested.

The carnivorous plant that is most exciting in our state are these little fellows down here.

Perhaps we need to just kneel down and take a closer look at the Venus flytrap!

Venus flytraps are so unique.

Most people don't realize they're only found in North and South Carolina in the world...in the world!

We think of them as exotic imports.

They used to be in three Lowcountry counties.

We now only find them in Horry County.

There are no laws protecting these.

We don't protect any plants by law except sea oats.

It's sad that we're letting pieces of our heritage, like these Venus flytraps, be lost.

You can even see right here, somebody's come and dug it up before we came and took it to either keep or sell.

There are things worth more than money in this world.

I think seeing things like this that are exotic and interesting right in your own state is worth more than money.

Venus flytraps are called flytraps because these modified leaves do close up when you poke them a little bit.

A lot of times, the reddish leaf doesn't work as well as the green ones.

This one's been poked a good bit.

You have to rub the little trigger hairs in just the right direction, bending them one way, then the other, and then the trap closes.

That's plant behavior-- stimulus and response-- so this plant is actually be having like an animal.

He traps the insect in there and secretes digestive juices and gets the protein for the nitrogen from him.

It doesn't usually catch flies.

It's low on the ground, so something crawling in like a spider, cricket, or something is probably what gets caught more than flies.

Last year when we talked about carnivorous plants, we suggested that's one link between plant and animal life we'd like to look at more closely.

And we don't understand it.

I don't think we totally understand it.

Now it's closed pretty tightly.

Nothing could get out.

This leaf, if there's nothing inside, doesn't produce digestive juice.

It somehow realizes-- I don't know how, probably chemically-- and opens again, waiting for another.

It can work 3 or 4 times before it drops off.

Maybe our audiences will stop on the way to the beach just to look, listen, and learn about nature.

We'll see you next time on another NatureScene.

Rudy, let's keep looking.

All right...let's go off this way.

♪ ♪ Program captioned by: Co mpuScripts Captioning, Inc. 80 3.988.8438 ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪