Biodiverse Gardens

Keep Off the Certified Wildlife Habitat

2012-01-27T02:50:00.000-05:00

How am I supposed to do both?

Okay I guess you could use stepping stones to get around but a lot of the chemicals used to keep grass looking golf course green year round aren't very environmentally friendly. Which is why it comes as something of a shock to find out the National Wildlife Federation has partnered with Scott/Monsanto.

For whatever reason most of the Wildlife Gardening community seems to be outraged. Normally these two signs above would be featured on two different lawns. Typically both are used to explain the madness in landscaping aesthetic. The Wildlife Habitat sign is ideal for explaining why there's a tall-grass meadow in the front yard, and the Keep Off Grass sign is ideal for explaining why the home owner's water bill is so high. Now we can have both!

To be honest though, I think some of the best landscapes are when these two elements work best together. Lawns look nice, they typically hold up to foot traffic, we're getting Eco friendly no mow varieties now, and the green tends to look better than bare ground. Prairies and small Meadow plantings are ideal garden plants whether they're in a wild densely planted patch, or each plant is spread out to have its own individual space around it. The "sins" of applying chemicals, mowing, and over watering lawns are on the home owner, not the Scott/Monsanto.

To talk about the National Wildlife Federation now, I've never been a huge fan of them. Just looking through their website and catalogs clearly their ideal customer is a female over the age of 35, who likes to wear nature sweaters, collects plush toys, and probably shops at the Hallmark once a month. They could really stand to widen their audience a little with the products they sell. Does anyone honestly want to Adopt a Moose or buy a Horseshoe Crab Plush Toy?

There was even a TV show at one point where they'd landscape a home to make it a Certified Wildlife Habitat. My memory of the show was them doing the bare minimum to satisfy their criteria. I get they were trying to show how easy it is, but at the same time I got the feeling they were just trying to sell signs. Planting butterfly weed, including a bird's bath, and making a pile of stones is hardly saving anything. In the episode they devoted around 5 minutes about the 1 butterfly weed plant they put in the garden and kept emphasizing "ALL THOSE BUTTERFLIES THAT ARE GOING TO GO NUTS FOR THIS!" which comes off being really stupid, and even more so that I can't recall there being any butterflies in the episode. Do these people know what they're doing at all? Imagen if the show was all like "Move That Bus!" and there was just one milkweed plant there. I feel like there was more effort put into hanging the Certified Wildlife Habitat sign than actually building the habitat itself. Canceling this show was the right thing to do becuase it sure wasn't doing them any favors.

Honey Bee Health

2012-01-20T21:59:00.000-05:00

With the exception of showing the wrong species at 1:19, (Apis dorsata), this is the most intelligent and informative video on CCD out there.

The Importance of "Organic"

2012-01-19T23:52:00.000-05:00

A friend of mine posted this on facebook and I thought I'd share it here. It's a fairly popular video on youtube that has over 300,000 views. I actually had no idea these plants were sprayed with chemicals like this. We eat potatoes with almost every night. This seems like something I should look into and the experiment certainly seems easy enough to recreate.

As to her question: Which potato would you rather eat? My answer would be organic of course. However, once the potato has started growing the insides turn green, harden, and the potato shrivels up as it starts using it's stored energy (the white starch which we normally eat). Among the usual parts potato plants make, nicotine is also produced and found throughout the plant. It's no where near as high a concentration as a Tobacco plant but enough of it is there to make you sick. So really it's organic potatoes that aren't growing. When you find green parts inside potatoes they've only just started trying to grow, so it's easy enough to eat around these parts.

Farming Games

2012-01-18T19:21:00.000-05:00

So there's a computer game that simulates farming called Farming Simulator 2011. Which looks like a worthy successor to Sim Farm in that you run a farm. From the game play that I've seen though it doesn't look like you get pick what you grow, and driving around is all you do. You can't even own a shot gun to point at unwanted solicitors and be like, "Get off my lawn."

I would love for there to be an updated version of this game. 3D or not though it would be great if they incorporate modern ideas such as dealing with invasive species, plant diseases, using Genetically Modified Crops, pollination, and even prairie restoration. The point wouldn't be to say one is better or worse but rather let the player get informed and take a side. Maybe even play it out to it's ultimate goal, even if it is a deluded fantasy.

Highly favoring GM crops might lead society to a world where everything is naturally trimmed to perfection. Lawns naturally stop growing after they reach 4 inches tall, trees look proper to an ascetic and naturally grow into topiary shapes, Oh and corn cures cancer now.

Highly favoring conservation might lead to a society where permaculture farms are in everyone's back yards, or "environmental corridors" as our city architects now design housing developments around. The seed bank is over flowing with heirloom varieties. And the people are richer in a different way.

And of course there's all the fun stuff in between. Getting Hemp legalized and having it used as clothing, and printing money or whatever. Importing exotic species or unlocking native ones that are currently not on the market.

Ant Chat: Episode 36 Camponotus castaneus Over the Winter

2012-01-09T01:32:00.000-05:00

More Doug Tallamy

2012-01-06T00:06:00.001-05:00

NETWORKS FOR LIFE - Doug Tallamy 09/13/11

2012-01-04T19:38:00.000-05:00

It's come to my attention that Doug Tallamy has done another talk and it's here on youtube. I recommending turning the volume up a little though as I found him to be very quiet in the talk. This man is a master of talking about biodiversity. Other than the volume issue this is a well edited talk.

I wish he'd write something else because "Bringing Nature Home" is his only real book, that he's been the sole author.

The most recent "The New American Landscape" is something he co-authored with maybe a dozen or so others. I intend to read it at some point.

CCD Media Flood Warning

2012-01-03T21:02:00.000-05:00

Core A, Runckel C, Ivers J, Quock C, Siapno T, et al. (2012) A New Threat to Honey Bees, the Parasitic Phorid Fly Apocephalus borealis. PLoS ONE 7(1): e29639. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0029639

Yet another possible theory to CCD, one that NEEDS TESTING has come up as a possible cause of CCD. A parasitic fly, Apocephalus borealis, which typically uses bumblebees as hosts has been found to also use Honeybees as well. Their life cycles seem to overlap with that of CCD epidemics. Basically the fly injects eggs into the abdomen of the host and a few days later, I read, about 13 new flies burst out of the bee. While infected the host bee will continue flying at night in a daze, thus they don't return to the hive hive.

So there's lots of correlation here. The next step will be to find out how far spread these flies are and whether their populations are great enough to decimate whole fields of hives within their life cycle for the effected areas.

A Year in the Smokies

2011-12-28T17:12:00.000-05:00

The folks who run the Great Smoky Mountains National Park have uploaded a nice little video to sum up the year. I'd like to visit them someday and see all the wildflowers and waterfalls in the spring time.

How My Prairie Did: Year 1

2011-12-17T02:11:00.001-05:00

So earlier this year I started a prairie garden, the wrong way. Generally you're supposed to either suffocate or herbicide everything in the desired location for a full year. Had I taken that seriously I might have simply used the space as a vegetable garden with plastic mulch. I have several family members who use this stuff for their gardens and have great results. There is virtually no weeding.

As this relates to a prairie garden though I read eliminating everything from the site has to be done in order for most seeds to germinate, and for most seedlings to get through their first year.Another thing I've read is that turning the soil over (like I did) disrupts the seed bank and causes a mass germination of weeds. For both of these reasons I decided to lay down a wood mulch, and rather than using seeds I went with plugs.

Plugs are generally plants that have already been growing for a season that typically come in 4' pots. My theory was these plants are more mature and are better able to hold their own against the weeds. Sure enough many of them flowered shortly after planting. This Jacob's Ladder, Polemonium reptans, above was actually flowering in the pot (also a sign of root stress).

Their flowers actually turn blue with age and when mass planted one almost gets a misty cloud effect. They will grow in full sun, full shade, somewhat dry, to somewhat wet, and there are assorted cultivars with all sorts of foliage options. I went with the true species of course.

Western Spiderwort, Tradescantia occidentalis, is for whatever reason listed as Native to New Jersey, and New York and otherwise restricted to the western half of the US. I didn't know what to expect with this plant. I needed something grass-like but wanted it to flower too.

This was a great choice because I love bright colors. And this sure went with the orange of the Butterfly Weed, Asclepias tuberosa.

Things were going nicely at first. Generally the warm season grass that comprises our lawn hadn't taken over yet.

Almost all of the butterfly weed bloomed this year.

As summer got into full swing the grasses started encroaching with root tubers. A sunflower from the adjacent bird feeder started growing from seed as well. Behind this garden against the fence I planted a native dogwood, Cornus florida, and found a spot for some Anise Hyssop, Agastache foeniculum, to go.

From another angle we can see my solution to all the crap laying around in our yard is to plant gardens in front of them. Actually the glider just needs covers or something on them and it will look nicer. The truck cab in the middle there holds straw under it supposidly for wildlife to live but really I could do without it. We've been stacking old PVC pipe and logs on top of it for convenience.

Adjacent Iron Weeds in various gardens started blooming. I noticed this caterpillar that I keep forgetting the name of. Basically they turn the color of whatever type of flower they happen to be eating. I've found them in all sorts of colors.

Come August the Showy Goldenrod, Solidago speciosa, started budding. Now I've herd two opinions about this plant. A source in Missouri from the Shaw Nature Preserve says this plant is down right thuggish, and loves to spread everywhere. The guy who maintains the prairie at the Mt. Cuba Center in Delaware says they've grown a few plants there right next to their meadow garden for years and it's never reseeded. So your local variety and how it reacts to your soil type may vary.

The Monarchs found the milkweed though I noticed none of the caterpillars in the prairie garden made it to adulthood. I suspect it's due to the lack of cover, and having a bird feeder right next to door sure didn't help. Even though they're toxic to eat, birds and spiders will still take bites out of them until they learn not to do so.

You know it's the end of summer when things start falling over. The Showy Goldenrods are pretty much laying down, though it's not entirely displeasing. The Tall Coreopsis, Coreopsis tripteris, (at right) did a great job standing up all by itself. I love tall perennials but hate it when they fall over.

Here you can see the grass encroaching among the other plants. It's a little tough to pull out of the ground, so hopefully next year I can pull it out just as it starts growing. I've noticed some other plants in my other gardens do push that grass right out of their way. So hopefully when things get better established the grass will get shaded out.

Here's the tall Coreopsis, though not as tall as it's supposed to get. I read online they grow to be 5' to 8' tall.

I learned the hard way that Sky Blue Aster and Smooth Blue Aster look exactly the same. The only difference is Smooth Blue has a slightly larger flower, and Sky Blue has extra leaves around the stem. Neither are distinguishable at a glance. The flower color is exactly the same. (You're looking at Smooth Blue Aster in case you were wondering.) Both are pretty but I don't seen the need to own both.

Things I planted but didn't get to see:
Lace Leaf Coreopsis - grew and flowered but not very well.
Stiff Coreopsis - grew but didn't flower. This plant reseeds freely and spreads by root suckers. They're not very big plants but can be a slight problem in mass.
Blue Star - Will probably get to big for this spot but we'll see what happens.
Blue False Indigo - Will probably get to big for this spot but we'll see what happens.
Purple Prairie Clover - Grew, but wildlife kept nibbling off the flower buds before any of them bloomed.
Ozark Coneflower - This went dormant right when I planted it. I'm not even sure they'll come back next year.
Orange Coneflower - which looks exactly like Black Eyed Susan. Supposedly it's longer lived.
Meadow Liatris - Well worth your money if you can grow them. One of the best Monarch nectar plants.
Aromatic Aster - More people should grow this for it's natural dome habit. As for the smell they're only slightly fragrant but it's nothing special.

Backup Plan:
To plant more of what works.

Best of Nature 2011

2011-12-13T19:04:00.001-05:00

This catagory is generally reserved for plants and animals that don't fit in the other areas. This past year was a big one for this group as I decided to install a small prairie and visited the Mt. Cuba Center far more often.

The trees in winter. This is just behind my house.

Crocuses in our lawn provide an early splash of color. They do best in the driest parts that are otherwise bone dry over the summer. They're not native to North America and I'm at a loss to name anything flowering when they do that would work well in a lawn setting.

Bluets, Hedyotis caerulea, would be a nice choice but this is my first year with them. What they need to grow seems to be questionable. Pictured above is the patch at the Mt. Cuba Center which seem to grow great in partial to full shade among the moss. Other sources tell me they need to be bone dry and in full sun. Regardless, they actually don't do that well in areas where grasses will out compete them. I actually don't know what pollinates them.

Hepatica is quickly becoming one of my favorite spring blooms. They're kind of like bluets but the flower is larger. They have semi-evergreen foliage too, where new leaves are produced every spring to replace older ones.

Twinleaf, Jeffersonia diphylla. If I were rich, I'd plant more of these. Of three plants only one flowers, and that flower only lasts 8 hours at most. Online pictures show that multiple plants will all flower on the same day so I'd be curious to find out if different patches of these plants would bloom on different days. That is to what degree do they synchronize their bloom? It's pretty for a day but not something I'd recommend starting out. They're really more of a collector's item.

Spring Beauty, Claytonia virginica, flowering among some bluets. They're not as pink as I expected them to be.

Violets and Trilliums. Violets are supposed to have ants carry their seeds off... clearly the ants aren't doing a good job. All of the small green sprouts in the lower portion of the pictures are violets. Trilliums on the other hand take 5 years before they really get as big. I've found the two can grow well together as most Trilliums are taller than the clumps of violets growing below.

Playing with angles and the Trillium flowers.

Trillium grandiflorum is an excellent spring ephemeral. For the first week of flowering they are all white. Slowly over the second week, depending on age and pollination, the flowers fade pink and magenta.

Blue False Indigo, Baptisia australis. This flowered much sooner than I expected it to. The flowers are almost exclusively pollinated by bumblebees. Despite this though they are a very stately plant, good as a hedge, a clump of 3 or more, or specimen.

New Jersey Tea, Ceanothus americanus. I have 4 of these small shrubs which are all nowhere near their full size, but I'm happy to see say all of them are flowering this year. This shrub is in something of a nation wide decline and the range to the dozen or so Lepidoptera that depend on it have been suffering for it. Some of these are endangered species. I encourage anyone willing to give this shrub a try. The flower clusters are small but supposidly buzz with insect activity when in abundance. None of my plants are old enough for that activity yet but hopefully I'll get to see it in years to come.

If nothing else, let it be known that this was the year I went nuts with milkweed. I bought a couple dozen plants from either Prairie Moon Nursery or Prairie Nursery. I forget exactly which one provided these plants. (I have an awful habit of spending ~$500 every year on plants.)

Turk's Cap Lily, Lilium superbum. I'm thrilled to see not only are my plants producing more flowers but they also seem to be reproducing a little. Lilies are one of those weird flowers that require a swallowtail butterfly to hang upside down from them in order to pollinate it. This isn't a common sight so having more flowers increases the chances of it happening while I'm around.

I wasn't very successful with sunflowers this year but at the local community garden they've mastered growing them. Most of these flowers are coming off of 3 or 4 plants. Some of them there had 50 flowers open at a time. The structure looked more like a Christmas tree than your typical annual sunflower.

Wild Senna, Senna hebecarpa, growing in front of Joe Pye Weed, which are now in the genus Eutrochium.

Nymph Milkweed Bugs, Oncopeltus fasciatus, huddling together on their host plant. None of my plants seem to get swarmed the way I see some do. I've seen plants that were overrun with these bugs. It got to the point where they were spilling off onto other plants.

Blue Monkshood, Aconitum uncinatum. When people think of monkshood usually they think of an upright perennial. North America has a species or two of it's own though. This species in particular grows as a vine that only reaches 5' tall. They die back to the ground each year so they stay in check. In the absence of anything to climb on they'll grow along the ground. They don't set down roots as they like but the rhizome will send up more and more shoots each year as an expanding clump. For most of the year they're nothing special. When they flower in late summer though they have loads of flowers all over.

Something I noticed with the Mt. Cuba Center, They seem to be going a little nuts with these plants, along with Bugbanes, Cimicifuga species. There aren't a whole lot of flowering perennials for full shade in the summer months so they are almost stock piling these plants in their wooded area. Personally I'd love to include more of both in my garden.

Full sun areas over the summer show a different story. Flowering plants are abundant and in assorted colors.

This was a great year for Monarchs as well as Hummingbirds. Both took to the plants I started growing this year nicely.

As autumn rolls in the asters bloom out. New England Asters, Symphyotrichum novae-angliae, are among the best at getting pollinator activity.

And so is the goldenrod. This is the first year I've ever seen a Monarch on my Tall Goldenrod, Solidago altissima. Normally it blooms to late in the year, just after most of the Monarchs have passed through my part of New Jersey.

The seed heads to Tall Coreopsis, Coreopsis tripteris.

Best of Butterflies 2011

2011-12-11T00:47:00.001-05:00

I've been noticing a trend with the Lepidoptera (Moths and Butterflies) in my area. As the flowers all come out each spring we get an assortment of small tent caterpillars. Their mother moth had attached the eggs to the tree the previous autumn. Once they hatch the caterpillars begin nibbling away at the tender new flower petals to mostly fruit trees. At the same time migrations like the Red Admiral, Painted Lady, and American Lady start up, all of whom fly lightning fast and are easy to miss if you're not looking. Eastern Commas and Mourning Cloaks come out of hibernation and flutter about with the newly emerged Swallowtails, of which there are incredibly few at the start of the year.

After this initial boom we enter something of a drought with butterflies. This all changes come June, July, and August, as things have gotten into full swing. Generally any butterfly worth its salt will be flying around at this time of year. During the heart of summer they almost completely disappear during the hottest part of the day. Come 4:00pm though they'll be back out in full swing. The Monarch for the most part hasn't had its population explosion yet, so this is really the time when Swallowtails steal the show. Giant Silk and Royal Moths can be found around lights at night.

Once we hit August we're overtaken by orange and black. The Monarch population is approaching its peak for the year and their migration south begins. A few others migrate at this time but they're not as well known by the general public.

I often feel that the Monarch gets too much attention in butterfly gardens. It really is the only species the general public seems comfortable enough discussing. This is on par with the Honeybee hogging all the spotlight in the "Save the Bees" movement. Monarchs are almost too easy! You plant milkweed and you're almost assured to get some caterpillars. And not just any caterpillars, ones that are fearless out in the open nibbling away on host plants in the middle of the day. They're a big middle finger to anything trying to eat them, though I guess the 1 in 25 survival rate makes up for it.

By comparison the lengths swallowtail caterpillars go to not get eaten seem extreme. Early on most species are disguised as bird dung, wet bird dung! During the day most of them are not out eating, though a few species are more fearless than others. The cowards are tucked away under leaves or among the bark. After nibbling on a leaf, they will cut that leaf off at the stem to hide evidence of caterpillar nibbling! The spicebush swallowtail is mimicking a snake and even it hides during the day! (Here is a video of this in action where. Those tube like structures on the head along with releasing an odor will rub right into the bird's eyes.)

An excellent second species to go for besides the Monarch would be the Pipevine Swallowtail. Because they're poisonous to eat, just like the Monarch, their caterpillars can afford to be out eating during day light hours. Here is a video demonstrating that.

Anyhow here's how I did this year.

The caterpillar to some kind of Lepidoptera. It might be to a Duskewing skipper or something else. I honestly don't know. I found it nibbling on some type of small weed that I frankly have never paid any attention to until I found this caterpillar on it.

This might be some kind of sawfly larvae or a caterpillar to some moth I've never paid any attention to. What's neat is I learned they all come out at dusk to nibble on a type of grass we have growing all over. And I was a little surprised to find my yard had lots of them munching away.

I finally figured out how to tell the Spicebush Swallowtail, Papilio troilus, apart from other Swallowtails. Note the line of large orange spots under the wing. One of the spots is missing and replaced by a blue streak.

A Duskywing Skipper of some kind.

Imperial Moth, Eacles imperial, is I caught several of these this year. I always keep over night then release them immediately. I know how time sensitive their life cycle is. These giant silk and royal moths are about the size of my hand.

I even tried rearing them in captivity. Sadly my ability to do this successful is lacking and I've yet to raise one to adults.

I finally got a Snowberry Clearwing Moth, Hemaris diffinis, to hold still. Our honeysuckle plants were teaming with these.

Some type Elf or Blue or something. This group of Lepidoptera I'm not very familiar with.

A Cloudless Sulphur, Phoebis sennae. I've been trying my best to make these more common in my yard. There's also a relationship between this species, their host plant, and some ants I hope to someday document.

Fritillaries are another group of Butterfly that I'm just starting to learn about. From what I can gather they don't travel that much at all. People with these in their gardens should feel honored as many species are restricted to only a few fields and are often considered a mark of quality.

A little upside down, but, this is a Red Spotted Purple, Limenitis arthem. And you can see from the smooth curve on the rear wings that it is not swallowtail. It is mimicking a swallowtail as are many other swallowtails, who all strive to look like the Pipevine Swallowtail, Battus philenor.

The Eastern Tiger Swallowtail, Papilio glaucus, (and maybe a few others) don't really try to mimic their Pipevine cousin at all. Only 1/3 females are born black, though when the Pipevine Swallowtail is prescient in the area that number can jump much higher. Males for whatever reason are always yellow and seem to proudly patrol from host plant to host plant, typically tall trees in the Cherry, Ash, Tulip and other genera. I'm not sure how they get away with being so showy and not poisonous. Perhaps their size allows them to break this rule, or perhaps the stripes remind birds of cats?

A skipper in back, and a duskywing in front on some Ironweed.

The Great Spangled Fritillary Butterfly, Speyeria cybele, is slightly larger than a Monarch Butterfly. As with other Fritillaries I read that females haphazardly lay eggs each autumn without any real regard for host plants. The resulting caterpillars are born and over winter without eating for ~7 months. Their host plants are Violets, which can be very common thankfully. Caterpillars that are successful at staying alive will develop quite an appetite and eat two whole plants everyday.

Butterfly season comes to its close here in August as the Monarchs start their migration south. Danaus plexippus.

This year I raised several caterpillars in captivity and made a video of the process.

You may look but don't eat.

Another migration happening at the same time is that of the Common Buckeye, Junonia coenia.

The last of the Lepidoptera for the year was this Yellow-Collared Scape Moth, Cisseps fulvicollis.

Not a bad way to end the year at all.

Best of Bees and Wasps 2011

2011-12-07T01:53:00.000-05:00

I was a little surprised this year that I've only taken 45 pictures total in this catagory. I did do more videos though.

The year starts off with Honeybees bringing in the usual black yellowish green pollen. I suspect it's from Maple trees.

This tiny wasp here is a parasite of aphids. As I recall I witnessed it injecting eggs into multiple aphids that day but was unable to get pictures of the deed in action. I'm not sure whether I tried doing video but I don't seem to have one on hand.

Bees working an apple tree in April.

Each May our Honeybee hives swarm and land nearby to start out. This brownish blob in the tree here is a swarm of ~40,000 bees. They later took off and I never saw them again.

Even in May and June, Bumblebee hives are still starting up. Here a queen is collecting nectar on some Swamp Milkweed, Asclepias incarnata.

Wasps or some Mountain Mint in July.

More wasps on a stunning specimen of Swamp Milkweed, Asclepias incarnata.

An unknown wasp on Swamp Milkweed flowers.

The large white globes of onions provide nectar to lots of bee species.

Colorful Ichneumon wasps emerge in mid to late summer. They're harmless to humans but can often be the cause of bee phobias. Their abdomen contains a long coiled up egg laying syringe (which I forget the name of). When exposed it becomes several times longer than their body, about the length of an average pen, and it's used to drill into trees in search of beetle grubs which are already damaging the tree. Here is a video on youtube showing this aspect off. Some species of Ichneumon wasp specialize in caterpillars, beetles, or mason bees.

Honeybee on Cup Plant flower. Notice how the flowers in the disk are opening from the inside out.

Honeybee on a Cup Plant flower. Notice how the flowers in the disk are opening from the outside in.

Cup Plants are notorious for having flowers that do that even on the same plant, between flowers growing next to one another.

Honeybee on Coneflower.

Bumblebee on Butterfly Weed, Asclepias tuberosa.

Bumblebee on Button Bush flowers.

Bumblebee on a sunflower.

Some Honeybees working Liatris microcephala. This was at a nursery I was touring. The overpowering music was great to drown out the sounds of the tour guide talking.

Bee specimens arranged in a cup.

Bee specimens pinned in a box.

Lastly who could forget the massive goldenrod plant I have. The species is Solidago altissima, Tall Goldenrod, and it's a food source to just about anything that's alive for the first frost later to come. It's also a good nectar source for next years queen bumblebees; one is featured in the video at 2:35.

Best of Ants 2011

2011-12-06T01:02:00.001-05:00

It's that time of year again where I recap the best my photography skills had to offer for the year.

Some Lasius interjectus workers retrieving their root aphid stock which over wintered as eggs from the previous autumn. These herds of insects will nourish the colony in the coming year.

A Prenolepis imparis, Winter Ant, queen and male escorts. Nuptial flights to this species are fairly predictable taking place on the first few warm days (~70F) of the year. Queens take flight in the afternoon and are out numbered by males roughly 200 to 1. Mating happens in swarms low to the ground or otherwise at eye level.

I've always loved how queens are such a robust color. Male ants universally are almost always black for species the world over. Very few deviate away from this standard.

A collection of ant queen from various species. (There is also a worker and half a queen honeybee in the very top left side.)

This isn't a particularly great photo. I just love that I finally got around to taking pictures of my Pyramica specimen. This is a genus comprised of subterranean hunters that specalize in small arthropods and collembolans. Because they're subterranean one has to more or less chance upon them or sift through the right material. Around the world this genus gets quite colorful. Check them out on Ant Web.

The same is true for my Proceratium specimen. These use a different method of hunting. The tip of their abdomen is unusual looking because the tip naturally curls around to point forward. This makes stinging pray items easier while hunting in tight enclosed spaces.

Lasius interjectus workers scrambling to protect the larva after a photographer disturbs the nest.

The perfect shot of the clypeal notch (between the mandibles) to a Formica pergandei worker. Formica is one of the largest genera of ants in North America, though not the world. From your back yard, to the peaks of the Rocky Mountains, there is a species to fit every notch except the arid south. To confuse matters even more it's a genus filled with social parasites and slave makers of other Formica. That notch in the middle of the clypeus means this species is in the Sanguinea subgroup, making identification a choice between 11 species instead of 100.

Another Formica worker. This time Formica subsericea which is the most common and widely distributed of the darker members of the Fusca group. The Fusca species in Formica are the most industrious of the host groups. Their colonies tend aphids and other sap producing insects from multiple trees at a time during the day.

Mixing two of my favorite things, ants and Trilliums. Trillium simile is one of my favorites because the petals come to form a triangle. When grown in a group they have an architectural effect I like, though you'll get that from masses of any Trillium species. The ants are Tapinoma sessile (black) and Nylanderia flavipes (dark orange) which I have found to be notorious for stealing nectar and at the same time eager for seeds to develop.

Crematogaster cerasi workers tending aphids in the sunset.

An insignificant little ant, possibility Temnothorax, roams a Trillium leaf in search for food.

A rather small queen ant in the genus Stenamma. I didn't even know this genus existed in New Jersey let alone my backyard but here it is. Seeing her brings into question all of my identifications of the smaller ants like the Temnothorax above.

A Camponotus castaneus queen I caught earlier this year. I love this species because it's the only solid orange ant around here in that genus.

Prenolepis imparis colonies slowdown once summer hits. Their workers inflate with food and are put to work digging tunnels to make the nest deeper. They'll retreat to the damper parts over the summer and move back towards the surface as the rains come back again. Before winter hits they'll eventually be the only species out foraging long after other species have gone into hibernation. They're not called the winter ant for nothing.

An ominous black stain in the late spring/summer time is more than likely a battle between two colonies of pavement ant, Tetramorium species E. (The E is thanks to their taxonomic limbo at the moment... I wish they'd made it stand for something at least like erecta.

Alex Wild who is a very well respected insect photographer featured this image on his blog. Though he color corrected it to make a better image. This species is normally black in color but a few colonies around here tend towards being dark brown or slightly bicolored.

While baiting the yard with honey here and there it's easy for anyone to check the ant diversity hanging about. Here some Crematogaster cerasi workers sip at a small pool of honey.

While having a friend over one day I mentioned I have random workers to a species that seems to be starting up in my yard. As luck would have it we moved an old log in the garden to look under, but it broke open in the process and revealed the nest chamber and queen to the ants I'd just mentioned to him. Camponotus chromaiodes is very common in the Pine Barrens and I'm thrilled they've decided to nest here. They differ from Camponotus novaeboracinsis in the amount of hair on the gaster/abdomen and the amount of red on the mesosoma. C. chromaiodes always has black shoulders while C. novaeboracinsis is solid red. These traits vary somewhat within the colony but are the standards among the largest workers in the colony.The color patterns of queens is another matter. C. chromaiodes is as seen above, with a little bit of red under the mesosoma and somewhat on the gaster. C. nobaeboracinsis queens tend to have more red on the mesosoma and less on the gaster.

A Crematogaster cerasi workers and male posed on a leaf.

A successful experiment I did where I documented and allowed 4 colonies of Prenolepis imparis to combine. The colony is still together to this day.

An Aphaenogaster rudis workers walking among the Trillium seeds.

Yellow Jackets stealing Trillium seeds and potentially planting or dispersing them perhaps?

Hordes of Nylanderia flavipes eating the elaiosome off of the Trillium seeds. Because these ants are too small to carry the seeds they simply remove the ant food in place. Sadly this negates the purpose of the elaiosome which is intended to get the ants to carry the seed into their underground nest, effectively planting the seed.

Nylanderia flavipes polishing off the fleshy material where the Trillium seed pod once stood.

This just says it all about what scavengers ants are; they're finding nourishment in what amounts to connective tissue on the plant.

A massive Camponotus castaneus worker has no trouble carrying a Trillium seed home single handed. It's one of the few species that are both willing to carry the seeds away from the plant and are bigger than the seed itself.

Of course if the thing had a handle it might be easier to carry.

Lastly we have my colony of Formica pergandei and their host Formica pallidefulva and F. incerta workers. F. pergandei colonies can not maintain themselves using their own workforce. They have specialized in stealing cocoons from other Formica species which are then raised as workers of their own nest. There is some evidence though these devoted slave makers weren't always this way. Note the tiny worker in the middle left. Callow castes are often the first ants new queens produce; they are cheaper to make and smaller than the average worker of an adult colony. Their job is to help the queen produce the next generation of workers. Eventually callows are never produced again in favor of larger more standardized workers. True slave makers would never have any use for such a caste and yet here it is. At the very least they seem to help the colony transition into devoted slave makers, though I would be surprised if they were produced beyond the first few broods by the queen.

Hopefully I can keep this colony alive and report more on them in later posts. I may even try to setup a fragment colony of host workers and brood so I can document them raiding it someday.

Lee Reich has a blogs

2011-12-01T12:32:00.000-05:00

I've just learned that Gardening Author, Lee Reich, has a blog. And he was recently interviewed by the folks over at Growing a Greener World.

I've actually gone and seen Lee give a lecture in person. The topic was on native food crops and was the first time I learned about Persimmons, Paw Paws, and Lingon Berries. Also I had no idea we had native varieties of Strawberries, and Raspberries.

A Brief CCD Update

2011-11-25T21:22:00.001-05:00

Minus some off comments by the narrator right at the beginning this was well put together. And best of all it doesn't mention Cell Phones.

Here is the full article.

Forgive Me Native Plant Gardeners For I Have Sinned

2011-11-22T19:53:00.000-05:00

Please forgive me fellow native plant gardeners for I have sinned. In the outdoor gardening section at Lowes Home Improvement I noticed they'd started selling native plants. You can buy Milkweed, Goldenrod, Geraniums, all in nice wonderful 3 gallon pots right alongside the nonnative, ... we'll call them "trash" plants, like Butterfly Bush, and Rose of Sharon. I call these trash plants because I'd never buy most of them. I have been taking advantage of their natives they offer and I praise them for even labeling them as native. Take a step inside though and it's a different story.

Trilliums, Mayapple, Hepatica, Bloodroot, Native Irises, Assorted Ferns, and so on all sold in tiny packets for $2.48. There is little doubt in my mind that they're from questionable sources who probably dig them up from the woods trying to make a quick buck. I did a post about these earlier in the year, about how I'm never going to buy these again.

Look closely thought and you'll see they're all marked down on clearance for .25 cents each. I asked the clerk about this and he said "They're on clearance to make way for holiday stock. They're going to be thrown away if no one buys them."

So I thought why not? I'd hate to let native plants go to waste. And for .25 cents it sounds more like I'm wasting the time of whoever went out into the woods and dug them up.

The most shocking plant they offered was this, Trillium catesbaei. Supposedly it's hardy here but New Jersey is well out of it's native range. The Mt. Cuba Center in Delaware, roughly one hour south of me, has one (just one) they planted as part of a trial garden. They found that it's hardy but not happy. In the 20+ years it's grown there it's only in the past few years that it's finally sent up a second shoot.

As much as I'd like to call these black market plants, I honestly don't know. I don't think anyone knows for sure. All attempts to contact the company to my knowledge have resulted in dead ends. From what I can tell from the packets, the Mayapples seem to be root cuttings. The Rhizomes to everything else look incredibly small. I'm on the fence as to weather they're growing them from seed and selling them ASAP, or only digging up new plants.

Whatever the case I assure you my backyard is better for these plants than the trash can.

(As a side note. When I went to buy these, the poor casher had to change the price on each item individually which took up a lot more time than it should have. I went back a second time and snagged a manager to tell warn them of the coming doom I was about to impose on some casher. They opened a register specifically for me and were able to scan one of each type of plant and change the quantity as well as price. This required a manager's key card to get scanned multiple times and went by so much smoother.)

Nerds and Nature

2011-11-21T02:01:00.002-05:00

Starting Native Plants From Seed

2011-11-19T22:47:00.004-05:00

Yet again I spontaneously signed up for a class at the Mt. Cuba Center and drove to Delaware at the last minute. This time the class was on starting native plants from seed, a class I wanted to take and thankfully my schedule allowed.

In the past I have been able to get milkweed seeds to germinate simply by keeping them damp. I'd always wondered why though after about two months I'd find them already germinated, and poking out some shoots. Well this class answered my questions and more and I'd like to share what I learned.

Bare in mind, a three hour course is anything but comprehensive. It was very instructive and inspirational enough that I'd like to explore the topic more seriously. Until then, here's the basics of what I learned.

When to Collect
Collecting seeds should be done on a dry day. Seed heads can otherwise be mushy and plants that produce compartments full of seeds don't release them when it's wet. The water gets everywhere and collecting is so much easier when things are dry.

While collecting it's important to sort and label out in the field. Use paper or plastic bag and label everything. Plants that have tiny dots for seeds all look the same.

Seeds that are spread by the wind typically have fluff or down attached to them. Here you can see milkweed seeds in the lower left. There is no need to wait until they've all fluffed out to collect. If the pod has opened it's perfectly fine to pull them all out while they're neat and orderly. This also makes cleaning them easier. A fun fact about milkweed: their seeds will tolerate being burned, but this is not needed for germination. So even if they do puff out you can take a lighter to them in a controlled space and burn off the fluff.

Here we have Wild Monkshood, Aconitum uncinatum. The seed heads form hollow pods with the seeds hanging freely inside. Columbines, Rhododendrons, and many other plants produce seed pods like this. Collecting and sorting is a simple matter of shaking the seeds out.

By sifting seeds on sheets of paper and or shaking them over screens and filters they can eventually be separated by from the more annoying bits of debris.

How to Clean
There are "Dry Seeds" and there are "Wet Seeds." Dry seeds are seeds that have developed without any sort of exterior edible parts to them. I use the word edible loosely as many seeds are themselves edible. Generally Wet seeds differ from dry because they developed inside a fruit or otherwise have external food pockets attached to them such as elaiosome.

Trillium seeds don't need to be removed from their elaiosome packet. However there is always a slight risk of mold feeding growing around it and eventually killing off the seed. Thankfully ants are great about finding such seeds and more than willing to eat the elaiosome food right off.

Highbush Cranberry, Viburnum opulus, is another example of a "wet seed." The berries are edible to humans, and birds find them tasty too. In nature the outer coating of flesh would be digested off after being eaten and eventually leave the seed in a nice clump of fertilizer.

Removing the seed from the flesh is best done by putting all the berries in plastic bags and popping them individually. This frees the fairly large seeds from each berry. From there water can be added and removed and repeated to help rinse away excess material. The whole process can take a day to a week. It's okay to let it ferment but you really want to get that stuff off of the seeds, especially if it starts rotting. Should mold appear you can still remove it and it should be find as long as the mold hasn't totally consumed the seed.

The massive seeds the Pawpaw, Asimina triloba, developed inside of larger fruits. I think they're technically considered wet seed because of this, but seed removal and clean up is as easy as removing those of an apple, pumpkin or watermelon. Clean off and allow to dry before storage.

Checking for Viability
The easiest method is to place the seeds in a bowl of water and maybe shake out all the air bubbles for a few minutes. Room temp is fine, nothing to hot or cold though. Bad seed typically floats, unless you're dealing with a wetland species who's seeds are intended to float. In that case this test is unreliable. For everything else though, bad seeds float because they are hollow. And yes seeds that look good can in fact be bad. It's one of those things you'll never know for sure unless you crack one open or do this test. Good seed typically sinks or is otherwise botany just under the surface.

Here we have seed heads to White False Indigo, Baptisia alba.

Bad seeds are obvious looking. Even here though some of these could potentially be salvaged by removing the mold. Even then though the smaller ones might not be savable.

Good seeds are obvious looking too, but even some of these may have developed hollow.

An issue with the soaking test and member of the pea family is that the seeds need to expand in order to germinate. When checking for viability don't leave these seeds in the water for more than a half hour or so. Maybe don't risk doing it at all even.

For storage leaving them this way is fine. When it comes time to germinate though, this species needs to be soaked in very warm (not scolding) water for 24 hours. They should expand about 3 times bigger and look more pea-like. They can be planted immediately from there and germinate with warmer weather.

How to Store
Moisture is the factors here. Some seed needs to be stored dry or else risk early germination. Others benefit in mortality rate by being kept moist and are triggered to germinate more from periods of hot and cold. For seeds that need to be stored wet, the absolute bare minimum of water is all that's required.

An example the instructor gave was when you take a paper towel and drench it in water, then squeeze out every last drop... that is still too wet! They recommend placing the seeds in a dry paper towel and spraying it twice with a squirt bottle. From there they can be placed in a cheap zip lock bag. Cheap as in nothing fancy, you're not worried about freezer burn, you want the air to circulate and breath somewhat. Leaving the bag open can make them dry out quickly.

Storage can be done at room temperature and in a dark place, however, it's recommended they be kept cool. Once the seed gets the trigger to germinate, some won't hesitate to do so.

How to Germinate
There are many triggers for germination. Just add water being the most common, and most important. Many species require at least a 90 day period of being Cold and Moist as the trigger. For species that don't germinate on cue, being exposed to warmer temps is all that's needed to germinate. More touchy species will require multiple cycles of 90 days of cold, and 90 days of warm to trigger.

Feel free to experiment with methods but also remember to collect enough seeds to experiment with. There are a fair amount of books on the topic of seed germination. Some of them contradict one another. But also some seeds don't care if they're stored in dry or wet conditions. And likewise the need for multiple cycles of hot and cold might not be true for 100% of a population, even if all the seeds came from one plant.

Jewelweed, Impatiens capensis, is an annual who's seeds require multiple hot and cold cycles before they germinate. The result of planting them by seed is they'll reappear once every 3 years. In nature though not every seed gets the memo and a small percent will germinate a year or two later! For a more consistent population in one spot you can put them through periods of hot and cold over the summer and get some to germinate prematurely.

There are a few cases where seeds need Scarification in order to germinate. In nature this would mostly be frozen then thawed, or burned. Gardeners sometimes use acid, sandpaper, or lightly scoring the seed coat to break dormancy.

Once the method of germination has been figured out they recommend placing them in a plastic bag with equal parts medium to seeds. So a light airy seed starting mix is what's required. Mix to combine, then give them just a squirt of water. When they germinate they can carefully be moved to a flat. The idea of adding the soil is to maximize moisture contact.

At this point a small minority of seeds demand sunlight in order to germinate. Such is the case for Black Eyed Susans, Rudbecia fulgida. In nature, If there's too much organic matter laying around, their seeds won't germinate. Instead they go dormant and wait for sunlight to finally reach them. Plants like this are known to appear in great numbers after disturbances such as fires, or trees falling over in the woods. Species like this tend to be annuals, biannual, or short lived perennials at most. Their populations booms until once again the amount of organic matter prevents their spread. Ungerminated seeds lay dormant in the seed bank below the leaves.

You can skip the soil in bag method and just plant seeds directly into flats. When you do, make sure soil is up to the rim of each chamber. Lightly water before you plant the seeds. NOTE: it is physically imposable for a plant to absorb more than it's mass in water in one day. Watering with an eye dropper is perfectly fine! Adding too much water is the easiest way to kill all of your plants. Over watering causes the soil in each compartment to form a dense layer on top which is ideal for mold and fungi to cling onto and eventually nibble the narrow shoot of each seedling. Also don't pat the soil down! You want nice even airflow but some mild tampering is okay.

Seeds that demand sunlight to germinate can be sprinkled on the surface. There are special tools sold for this purpose and some mail order places even provide them with orders. Otherwise the general rule is to plant each seed 3 to 4 times deep as the seed is wide.

Heating pads and seed germinating products are also okay to use. In the case of heating pads though they really aren't needed after germination. Especially in a green house setting you can end up cooking your plants. They do benefit some plants such as tomatoes though which don't grow until the soil is over 60F. As your plants grow bigger and bigger their water demands will be greater and greater.

Mold Gnats will be a problem. These are those annoying flies that always seem to show up around potted plants. They are slow moving compared to the typical house fly and fairly easy to swat. The trouble is by the time you see the adults they've more than likely laid eggs for the next generation. These are typically an indoor problem and quickly disperse in an opened green house or outdoor setting. Pesticides can kill them easy but are also harsh on young seedlings, so don't use them! Nematodes are an easy solution but have to be reapplied every few weeks.

Rambunctious Garden: Things I Disagree With

2011-11-17T16:48:00.001-05:00

In my review of "Rambunctious Garden" by Emma Marris I got a comment by user Skr and I've decided to give this more attention as my reply started fleshing out into a small book. Overall I feel like everyone is enjoying this book but me so maybe I'm just stubborn. I don't mean this to single anyone out but I feel it's worthy of a topic in itself.

First off to Skr only: If you have a blog, or website (Flickr album?) you'd like me to list I'd be more than happy to include it. Also if you find you have a reply to this that turns into a short story of it's own I'd be happy to post it as a guest post. Should either be the case e-mail me at MrILoveTheAnts @ yahoo.com

Skr said...

Marris argues that invasives generally cause very little damage and extinctions from invasives are rare. She cites studied that show that even on islands the biodiversity increases after the introduction of invasive plant species.

I know I've changed the title of my blog to Biodiverse gardens but I feel like the term gets thrown around as though more of it is a mark of success. Incorporating species that cannot be digested, let alone recognized as food, by indigenous animals is counterproductive. Nonnatives often do nothing but take up space and can ruin the sense of place. Most herbivores are generalists and will give anything a nibble at least once. Marris focuses entirely on these larger animals to support her claims, but she completely ignores insect life though and they are fundamental to the food web. Without them they render non fruiting shade trees useless. There are 285 species of caterpillar that eat our native Maples, the imported Norway Maple only hosts significantly fewer. Among those mentioned are Leaf Rollers, Cankerworm, and Tent Caterpillars, all of whom are generalists eating a wide variety of tree species and have a preference for our native species. We can argue that 286 species of caterpillar are simply speeding up the process of mulch production but at least they double as bird food.

Pound per pound insects have twice as much protein in them as other animal meats. They are the number one food item fed to baby birds, and are a favorite among reptiles, amphibians, fish, and so on. If you don't have an abundance of insects, it can send ripples through the food web.

I like to compare this to eating at the mall food court. Here we have an assortment of food cuisines to pick from but the average person doesn't eat them all. Personally I can't stomach most Mexican food, I'm afraid to try anything Asian, and I've never given Indian food any thought. Insects who typically only have a few weeks to get it right before they die have to lay their eggs in the right spot, or on the right plant, and they have to eat the correct diet for the simple fact that they can't eat anything else. In most cases this is only a hand full of plants, that are almost always in genera that they've closely evolved with.

An example Emma gives to support the benefit of nonnatives is Rodrigues island, found about 350 miles east of Mauritius island off the coast of Madagascar. It is in her book on page 97-98.

View Larger Map
This massive island was supposidly logged, and then supposidly replanted? To be perfectly honest I don't see how either could be done effectively. We're not talking about just an island so much as a small city. She might as well be talking about Hawaii again. Had her book included pictures it might have been apparent to everyone that she was talking about an island inhabited by people.

There are paved roads, houses, air ports, farms, mountains, what look to be beach side resorts. None of this was mentioned in her book. So this is no longer a simple matter of adding and subtracting trees. How many of these people have bird feeders? How many put out bird houses? When she talks about replanting does she mean the bustling agricultural farms scattered all over the island? Are these nonnative trees simply common landscaping plants I can find at my local nursery? She might as well be talking about where I live in New Jersey. We have fragmented forests of native trees, and all the clearings are landscaped with mostly nonnative plants. I even doubt the people who planted them put any thought into their origin.

Wikipedia seems to think the bird issue she mentions was due to over hunting and overgrazing by livestock, not so much logging. Regardless, the issue was habitat lose and we don't regain that with alien species. Emma doesn't seem to mention anything about their conservation efforts to maintain some of their remaining threatened species. Or the captive breeding program for her bat species she mentions. They were eating the fruit to some of the nonnatives such as rose apple, which these birds and bats were likely helping to spread around the island. She just assumes because the bat was eating the nonnative fruits that that's what saved the species. It's a fruit bat, I doubt it cars what it's eating so long as it's fruit.

She ends by saying, "The exotics turned out to help rather than hinder, but prejudice against them was so strong that instead of thanks, they are getting the ax." Correct, god forbid a society try to learn from it's mistakes and give conservation a chance in some attempt at a more predictable wilderness. Had they not over logged the forests to begin with they wouldn't have had any problems. Was that breeding program doing nothing for the bat population? For her to suggest that these nonnative trees were the only factor is misleading.

Further more, I would love to know the exact kind of efforts are being made to control the nonnatives. Because Rose Apple is a food crop I find it hard to believe that they'd totally ban it from the island, unless they've become an island of die hard conservationists, which is a theme she has been quoted as saying. What would make sense to me is that they clear it out from specific areas meant for conservation and still grow it as a viable crop, perhaps even make efforts to hinder it's spread by the animals somehow. You restore habitat by establishing and promoting what has historically grown and worked there to reestablish the norms that sustained it. Fruit and Nectar don't mean nearly as much as the indigenous insect populations and you get that by promoting the native food plants they evolved with.

She eventually follows up by talking about Pyura praeputialis, some sort of sea mussel from what I can gather, and how it's displacing Perumytilus purpuratus. However indigenous starfish and such have already taken a liking to the nonnative and it's looking like things are slowly coming back into balance. This is a 10 times better an example than what's going on in Rodrigues. The trouble I doubt the starfish and such that eat them care which mussel species they feed upon. Everything that supports her claim tend to be generalists who eat a broad range of foods.

In other chapters she talks about how cats and rats and sometimes snakes are awful on islands because they cause mass extinctions of bird populations.

So what is she talking about now? Nonnatives are good and bad sometimes? I really don't get what she's trying to say with this issue other than it's confusing.

You completely missed the point of the first chapter.

I don't deny I missed the point of the first chapter. As I wrote in my review I was ready to throw her book in the trash until chapter 2 or 3 came along and things took a dramatic up turn.

She was setting up the invasive argument by highlighting that species distribution is by chance and it's a matter of which species gets there first and these distributions can change radically over geologic timescales this making any baseline attribution completely arbitrary and without intrinsic value.

I loved hearing about different conservation efforts around the world. For me that's the only real highlight and saving grace of this book. She kept concluding though that it's all a waste of time in the grand scheme of things. It really got annoying. If a nose fell off Mt. Rushmore I'd like to think someone would fix it.

Baselines at least give someone an idea of what standards need to be upheld. Every gardener has them even if their goals are short term and change from year to year. National parks happen to be more strict about them.

Since you stopped halfway through the last chapter, you apparently missed the fact that she advocates for protection of biodiversity and native species, argues for increased plantings of native species especially through the elimination of lawns. She just thinks that becoming apoplectic because someone planted Pennisetum setaceum is a waste of valuable resources.

Picking the book back up now I found that I'd left off at her suggested goal #6 of 7. So I wasn't that far from the end, it's just that chapter reads like an appendix. Encouraging people to plant native was an afterthought at best. She should have had more to say on it sooner in the meat of the book.

I am for a more generalized view of what's native but the idea of including plants that didn't evolve on the same continent is a silly idea. The only exception I make to this rule is with food plants I know I'm going to control and eat. I feel like if the whole world followed this rule we'd be in a lot better shape.

I don't scoff when people plant nonnative plants, but I feel something should be done about people who actively import them without permits.

Illegal Ant Smuggling?

2011-11-12T14:39:00.001-05:00

Yesterday the news started circulating about Gerhard Kalytta getting caught for "Ant Smuggling." The headlines read German fined for Aussie smuggling ants from Perth.

On September 7th Kalytta tried to smuggle some 3000 ants of 50 different species in about 153 plastic containers out of Australia. While the news article points out these included Bulldog ants which have a violently painful, sometimes lethal, sting, I can't help but wonder if this was the real issue.

About a year ago it seems they started offering plants on their website. "Now Offering Plants" dated August 22, 2010. That's more than a year old but has now became part of their regular inventory.

Native plants such as lichen, native moss, hornworts, liverworts and an orchid species listed under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) were also seized.

That orchid to me is the red flag of the story. And the fact he only got a $3,000 fine when the maximum is 10 years in jail and or a fine of $110,000, just screams how lucky he is. It's safe to say he got off easy.

It is really easy to just ship ants through the mail. The only downside is if they pass through an X-Ray it will cause spontaneous abortion. In other words queen ants who fertile and able to produce female workers lose this ability! They can only produce males. The other issue is constant shaking will cause water to leak through materials. Typically ants need to be kept in high humidity, which means they need a water basin. This works okay locally but I don't trust it. If they live that close, I'd rather go to their house or meet them halfway. But if we live that close, then why don't we just go anting and help each other find our own?

As you may have guessed, I've shipped ants before. I've never done it for money, and I don't do it anymore. I've found the kind of person who needs ants that badly that they want you to send them a colony is an idiot. Plane and simple. Catching queen ants is easy, but takes time and patience and efforts to explore locations need to be made. The person (customer?) who wants to get (pay?) someone for a colony of ants has no patience and isn't willing to learn. On the few occasions that I've mailed colonies to friends the always report back how much they screwed up and the colony died. Maybe it's more a sign of how young or uncommon the hobby is.

International shipping typically takes 3 weeks for anything to arrive anywhere and that's a long time and a lot of stress to put on a colony.

Sensitive plants can be a different issue and I don't know too much about their care, especially tropical species. When I've bought native bare root plants though they're typically wrapped in damp newspaper or medium, and tightly bound in a plastic bag. Three weeks worth of shipping would be murder on some species, especially tropical plants which are more sensitive about temperature.

Going back to our topic. I feel like "Ant Smuggling" just made a catchy headline. Granted he had 153 containers of them. I don't understand how someone shows up to an air port with that and doesn't expect someone to raise an eyebrow. In fact when I first read the story I assumed the ant containers were hidden among the plants, but then we read about the endangered species of orchid which would raise several eyebrows on it's own.

Assuming I'm wrong though and it was the ants initially that got this man fined, then that's just a sign of how rampant the ant keeping hobby has become.

Fall Color Around the Prairie

2011-11-06T19:43:00.000-05:00

I happened to be off last Saturday which happened to be the last day the Mt. Cuba Center was offering the Meadow Studies class for the year. I figured I wasn't doing anything so why not drive an hour to Delaware (after registering online of course).

They offer Meadow Studies as a one day course 5 times a year. I went to the first two, missed the next two, so this is my third. Overall I'm happy with them but they weren't what I had expected. Emphasis is more on how they maintain it each year and what plants are showy at the particular time of year. The second half of the class is a nice tour mostly of the meadow itself but also other plants they have elsewhere on the property that might fit the theme of a meadow setting.

The autumn is easily the peak of a grassland meadow's grandeur. The fall colors are setting in, the seed heads glinting in the sun, and gusts of wind create visible waves of movement. It's not the largest prairie in the world, but it's still impressive in it's own right.

Their meadow is mostly composed of Little Bluestem, Big Bluestem, and Yellow Indian Grass. Before the tour began we were give the option to collect seeds in a paper bag. I thought this was a great idea, but if only the course were focused more on installing a meadow. This would have been a great starting point.

Hair Awn Murhly, Muhlenbergia capillaris, features fluffy pink stalks which seem to float over the plant.

Prairie Dropseed, Sporobolus heterolepis, slowly transitions into it's fall color. It ends up being a brighter yellow than most other grasses, but in the mean time it puts on an almost tie-dyed effect.

Most of the wildflowers have finished their show for the year and take a back seat to the grasses which now tower over most of them.

Rose Hips to one of our native roses are hidden in clumps of grass. Birds will likely eat them over the winter.

A few years back, the Mt. Cuba Center did a study on Asters species and cultivars to see which were garden appropriate, disease resistant, had nice form, long bloom period and such. The eastern Silver Aster, Symphyotrichum concolor, was one they tried out. I don't think it's one they recommend thought. I could be wrong but it certainly wasn't doing much for me. Generally anything flowering at this time of year is a plus but the plant is a little unimpressive.

I noticed how Liatris-like it is with all it's flowering coming out so close to the stem. The full plant was actually several stalks, just like a clump of Liatris, all coming out of the ground. It was very neat but I was mostly disappointed nothing was pollinating it.

The Georgia Aster, Symphyotrichum georgianmum, was another one blooming now, though clearly a few days past it's peak on most plants. I'm sure this is closer to being a species they'd recommend. Though I don't think it's native to Delaware it's surprisingly hardy.

Georgia Asters that were growing in full sun were absolutely loaded with bees and flower flies (seen above) which mimic bees. The one above is doing a great job.

Narrowleaf Sunflower, sometimes called Swamp Sunflower, or Helianthus angustifolius, was also flowering. They favored the narrowleaf common name because it grows fine in non swampy conditions along side several species of Joe Pye Weed, Wild Senna, Prairie Onion, and so on. The leaves have a very rough feel to them.

This is actually the cultivar 'Mellow Yellow' which has paler yellow flowers. The true species is as bright as the sun and impossible to miss from across a field.

The plant has a slightly messy look to it, but I've found that's the case with most perennial sunflowers. Lord only knows how the annual varieties keep from falling down. I guess when you only have one year to live it pays to get it right the first time.

Lastly they had multiple specimens of Arkansas Blue Star, Amsonia hubrichtii, showing off their fall color.

This particular species has very thin Pine-like leaves. Common Blue Star, Amsonia tabernaemontana, has more normal looking leaves but the same fall color. I think people prefer Arkansas Blue Star more because they look puffy and cloud-like. While I don't recommend sleeping on one, maybe plant something prone to falling over right next to it.

While walking back up to the house I noticed a Hawthorn Tree that probably had more berries than leaves on it. The birds will be well fed this year.

Before leaving everyone was given a plant of Tufted Hair Grass, Deschampsia cespitosa, which is a nice cold season grass that can be planted at this time of year. Warm season grasses do all of their growing over the summer and aren't very successful when planted after soil temperatures get below 60F. So I understand why they gave us a cold season species.

One Saturday well spent.

Worst Lasius claviger Flight Ever

2011-11-03T14:15:00.000-04:00

Well I was holding onto these in favor of a more noticeable flight but it seems the heat of summer hindered the alate development some and now we have the snow. What is typically several dozen colonies in my yard sending out alates was only one this year, and it wasn't impressive at all.

Lasius claviger holds their nuptial flights at this time of year. Normally they have huge flights in the afternoon which are very noticeable. Their wings catch the afternoon sun in such a way that it becomes very apparent that they're flying around. Occasionally, when standing just in the shade if you were to look into the sun the effect of glowing wings can sometimes be viewed high above in the air.

As I said though weather conditions seem to be forcing these ants into either holding off on their flights or canceling them all together. It wouldn't surprise me to learn there was a rise of flights happening indoors as they sometimes do over the winter.

Happy Halloween

2011-10-30T21:35:00.000-04:00

I feel sorry for some areas of the country which have gotten something like 5 inches of snow unseasonably early. One shouldn't have to rake leaves and shovel snow at the same time; it's clearly a sign of the end of days. I suspect dressing as a Canadian will be a popular costume this year.

Anyhow, I felt like sharing this with all of you. The Hercule Poirot series has only risen in quality over the years. What started as a series of hour long episodes have turned into mini movies in more recent years. Often they do great justice to the novels they're based though sometimes they do miss the mark. For example "Taken at the Flood" is supposed to be about a murderer taking advantage of a natural disaster. For whatever reason this fact was ignored in the series production. Occasionally they'd improve on the novels though. For example in the novel "Cards on the Table" two of the four main suspects are killed off rather than proven innocent. The series changed this and otherwise stayed fairly true to the novel.

So I present Agatha Christie's "Hallowe'en Party." It's a good mystery. It's one of Christie's ones that can be solved early on if you're paying attention. If you miss the detail that solves it all it will leave you gasping that you missed it. Or at least that's how I felt. The motive though is a little melodramatic, and they don't really play up the macabre aspects of what's going on.

Native Bee Class

2011-10-29T16:47:00.001-04:00

Sorry for not blogging anything for the past week. Basically the weather here has been miserable and in fact it's snowing right now. Hopefully the following post makes it up to you all.

I spent the day at the Mt. Cuba Center for their class on Native Bees. I can't recommend courses at the Mt. Cuba Center highly enough. That place should be a national treasure. That said though I felt today's course could have been structured slightly better. The first half was done well enough the instructor started going into common bee genera and it wasn't very apparent that they were in any logical order, or at least as logical as it should have been. The real issue I think was that the class and material he usually gives takes 5 days to complete, and he had to sum it all up in 3 hours.

He didn't go over different nesting type or habitats. Most surprisingly of all, he suggested that it might be bad to put out mason bee nest blocks because it helps the spread of an two invasive species. Putting out the nesting blocks is like a double edged sword. He didn't really go into it as much as I'd have liked. Though personally I'd need the 5 day version of the course to learn all the taxonomy.

What he did cover was excellent and mostly focused on how flower shape and color have shaped their pollinator bee counterparts. He mentioned studies that show getting rid of the pollinator doesn't cause the plant to vanish typically, but getting rid of the plant can get cause the specialist bee to vanish.

North American is not a very species rich continent, but when it comes to bees, we're one of the top continents in the world. Because of these specialist relationships with plants, especially in the south west where mountain ranges keep lots of arid micro-habitats isolated. The diversity of plant species there have greatly increased the diversity of bees who pollinate them.

The focus on the class was on species found in Maryland and Delaware area. I noted though some specimens were collected from New Jersey, and New York.

Dissecting scopes and microscopes were on hand to view these up close. All the species present were common enough that anyone attending the class was allowed to take some home.

Despite a lot of these being repeats of the same species, there certainly are a lot of them here. Of the 10 or so trays (medium sized pizza boxes with foam in the bottom) there were about 75 species represented.

One species not prescient went back to the association with specific plants. There's an alien species of Centaurea (Bachelor Buttons) which is spreading along rail road tracks and highway mediums. An introduced pollinator is spreading along with it, but the trouble is it's a carpenter bee without a preference for soft wood. Wooden houses where the plant and bee are present get riddled with holes on the outside more severely than any of our native and introduced carpenter bees. It just goes to show why native plants are important. What's more, it's neat to think this bee can be controlled simply by weeding out the introduced alien plants.

The Amazing Goldenrod

2011-10-18T22:00:00.000-04:00

Well the Solidago altissima, Tall Goldenrod, is back in bloom. It doesn't quite make it to our first frost but it's late enough that ... frankly I don't think anything else that's native is flowering! We have a white flowering Chrysanthemum that blooms a little later but I've never seen any bees on that plant.

The canes are once again reaching 13' tall and Bumblebee queens (left) are showing up slowly as they did last year. Workers and possibly males (right) are also showing up and more diligently working the flowers.

All manner of pollinator seem to be swarming over this plant. There are even swarms of tiny sweat bees who all seem to work flowers next to one another.

Droves of Flower Flies which mimic both bumblebees and wasps are all over this plant.

Atteva aurea, The Ailanthus Webworm, is an attractive little moth that's easily identified as it's the only member of the genus in North America. The common name refers to the host plant's genus, The Tree of Heaven, a fast growing invasive tree.

Ctenucha fulvicollis, Yellow-Collared Scape Moth, are commonly seen on Goldenrods throughout the autumn.

Shortly after I'd recorded the video way above, a Monarch came fluttering bye. It didn't land very long and was quick to take off. Much like honeybees I find Monarchs seem to prefer Asters when given the choice.

Movie Review: The Big Year

2011-10-16T00:20:00.000-04:00

"The Big Year" stars Jack Black, Owen Wilson, and the amazing Steve Martin. I found this to be a nice little film but the caste would lead you to believe this is a comedy. IMDB even has it mislabeled as such. I strain to think of a more accurate genera for it though. It's really more of a light hearted drama than full on comedy. Most of the "jokes" you can see in the trailer to give you an idea how light humored they went. It's all situational but believable enough that it's not really that funny. John Cleese is credited as the Historical Montage Narrator, which sounds impressive but really he has one line of dialog the whole movie and he says it in the first 2 minutes of the film. He's unnecessary and they could have casted anyone for that par. I kept hoping he's show up as a zany tour guide or something but he never did. :(

The topic of birding is treated with respect and there are a lot featured in this movie. Which brings me to my biggest complaint with the film. As soon as the credits start rolling the audience is Assaulted! by 755 bird pictures which all flash on the screen at a nauseating pace. This is completely out of character with the pacing and attitude of movie preceding it, and down right distracting from the people names of people who made the movie. I couldn't tell you who directed, who the writer was, weather or not it was based on a true story. I had to look away a couple of times because I was getting flashed by so many birds. I felt like a nun stuck in the middle of a naked marathon.

The bottom line is the general public will hate this movie. For people who are into birds or have an appreciation of taxonomy (not taxidermy! though they might like it too,) you'll get more out of this film. If you plan to see it in theaters, do so A.S.A.P! It's opening weekend and I saw a 9:30 showing in a theater with only 3 other people. That is an awful opening week for any film. I wouldn't be surprised if it was out of theaters by next Friday. Visually speaking the landscapes aren't that impressive so it may be just as well to wait for it to come out on DVD.

The Goldenrod Monster Returns!

2011-10-11T14:08:00.000-04:00

Solidago altissima, Tall Goldenrod, is one weed I've come to love over the years. This plant originally sprung up in the middle of a small butterfly bush I used to have. My views on what plants to keep in the garden and what not changed so I got rid of the butterfly bush but kept the goldenrod. Never in my wildest dreams did I expect it to get 13' tall. In a way though that's a good thing. Even when the canes fall over they still stand 4' off the ground (left).

Because of it's height I find it's best viewed from a ladder or second story window. I could see even placing it next to a shed for some close up action. The greenhouse there is not strong enough for my weight sadly.

This isn't really one plant per-say. There's no massive rhizome in the middle of all this that I know of. Really those are all canes coming up from the root system. They're easy enough to simply pull out of the ground where annoying. Canes that fall in the way of the path can simply be cut, there are plenty of them after all, and allowed to flower from offshoots that form below.

Each year it tries to spread out in farther but I find it easy enough to pull those canes out or stab them with a shovel. People who work on prairie restorations typically don't like goldenrods, that is to say to many of them, because they have a habit of taking over. I'm not sure what effects fire or grazing having on goldenrods but I'm sure something must keep it in check.

S. altissima blooms much later than most other plants. It would be the latest flowering thing in my garden if not for a single white flowering Chrysanthemum that keeps coming back.

New England Asters seem to be a richer nectar source and all the honeybees are favoring that over the goldenrod. That's going to change tough by the end of the week when the asters all stop blooming. This goldenrod will be flowering into November before it's done.

For now thought it's all you can eat for the bumblebees and butterflies.

This is the first year I've noticed Monarchs going for the goldenrod. It's not one that I raised and released. They certainly favor the New England Asters too but like I said that will be done blooming by the end of the week.

One bad thing about this goldenrod is it's height makes taking pictures a little tricky.

More Buckeye Butterflies

2011-10-06T02:06:00.000-04:00

I still have some Buckeyes fluttering around the New England Aster. I'm seeing lots of honeybees too but I feel like I've photographed them to death to a point. Buckeyes are pretty in that their wing patterns almost look like they're fake. It's almost an imitation of a butterfly, like something a child would draw on paper and make into origami.

Their pattern reminds me of those fake butterflies gardening catalogs sometimes use to promote plants as "butterfly friendly!" They're pretty all the same.

Book Review: "Rambunctious Garden" by Emma Marris

2011-10-05T02:58:00.000-04:00

"Rambunctious Garden" by Emma Marris starts out as an excellent read on conservation issues around the world, but then takes an odd turn halfway through that sadly never returns to it's former greatness. Leave it to a chapter on invasive species to ruin a good thing. I wish the format of the book were laid out somewhat differently. For starters there are no pictures, which is a real issue considering the author traveled around the world. Did she really not bring a camera? Images would have helped when she talks about some of these invasive plants from foreign places. Plants are otherwise only mentioned by common name, and I consider that to be a serious no no when writing to an informed audience. Also she presents information in an odd way, her voice is more of a reporter and I get the feeling this was intended to be a documentary at one point because it doesn't always work in a novel format. This laid back reporter tone only makes the abrupt switch in tone more noticeable come chapter 6.

So Here's How it Went:
By the end of chapter one I honestly wanted to throw this book in the trash. Her argument that conservation is an arbitrary thing is interesting but lacks sufficient evidence early on to be taken seriously. She comes off more as someone attending a tour of a nature preserve who raises their hand and goes, "Well a million years ago there was ice a mile high where we're standing ... what's that say about your conservation efforts?" She's almost rude about it. I'll admit I never thought about conservation in as broad an historic sense as she talks about, but why bring it up at all? She might as well have elaborated that in dinosaurs once walked the earth, or even further and said the earth used to not exist. What is your point?

Following the old librarian rule that you have to read at least to page 50 before you can stop reading, I pressed on. Halfway though chapter two things started falling into place. I was getting it. Her argument is hard to talk about without a few examples, and to my delight it feels like she gives you 100 of them all while telling the history of the conservationist movement. Chapters 2 through 5 are an absolute delight to read. She tells the formation of Yellow Stone, she travels around the world looking at different ideas and concepts of conservation, all of which is fascinating and each one worthy of it's own book. She talks about issues facing conservation, why picking some date out of the history books is arbitrary given the history of the earth so far, and she makes each point beautify.

To elaborate, in North America the general definition of what we consider to be native. Most conservationists agree anything living in North America before Christopher Columbus first stepped food here is native. However, at the time North America was currently inhabited by more Native Americans than there were people living in Europe. Smallpox devastated 95% of their population in the first 100 years of interaction with European settlers! During the time prior to European colonization, Native Americans were setting fires across the continuant to make prairie land to boost game populations, and had already driven several large mammals into extinction. These large mammals interacted with the plant life here differently, distributing seeds, shaping the land, and functioning in ecosystems in ways now lost to history. In essence some of our native trees aren't as abundant today as they should be because the beast eating and distributing their seeds have gone extinct. Generally humans have had their hands in everything, everywhere on earth, and this idea of a pristine wilderness is a delusion at best. When Yellow Stone was first formed they had to relocate people off the park land, not just Native Americans, small towns worth of people were kicked out of their homes!

For many examples she's delivering a level of detail that's just shy of being compared to that found in Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies. And one thing she makes clear is preserving this one glimpse of human history is a pipe dream at best. Issues like climate change are changing whole ecosystems, how much rain fall, the average temp, really drive home that at some point compromises have to be made. I wanted to read more about these complex issues facing so called pristine environments around the world! When one looks at the big picture we realize that the earth is still spinning, things are changing. What will the future ecosystem be in a given area? Sadly Chapter 6 comes along.

Chapter 6: Learning to Love Exotic Species. This chapter really breaks up the rhythm. It's 13 pages long and too ambitious. It's also where her dangerously vague definition of what native is severely hurts her integrity. The broad overview of the world only helps to blur the lines even more. If we're talking about plants native to a continent or mountain range, then I'm all for it's introduction, spreading, and incorporation in any environment or ecosystem reasonably adjacent to it's native range. Sadly the author never makes any such claims, and she might as well be talking about the environmental benefits sterile double flowering cultivars would be if planted on the moon. She's trying to say 'nature is all around us and worth exploring and protecting regardless of where we find it, and where it is from,' fine okay I can buy that. But this is so different idea than, 'here are issues facing conservationists today.'

We open with a vague example of an island getting logged, and replanted with nonnative plant somewhat picked at convenience. These faster growing nonnative trees supposidly saved 2 species of bird and 1 species of bad, hallelujah. But that is all the information we're given, end of story, moving on, stop asking questions, nonnatives are great, thank you, okay you really want to know... magic beans, moving on. There isn't any citation for this example at all. Could the bats and birds fly off of the island? If that's the case then really I don't think anyone would have cared had the island simply eroded away. Where those three species the only thing worth studying on the island?

She addresses invasive species in such an idiotic way. She mentions several of them in a single paragraph, giving a sentance worth of them to each. And she writes they're really not that big a deal because: trying to weed them out is a waste of money. And that Invasive species only cause extinctions on islands, in lakes, or in fragmented forests. The rest is mostly a series of success stories where fast growing aggressive introduced species benefiting the environment or were a waste of money to get rid of in the first place ... by which she means birds nest in trees, and don't care what kind of trees they are. The problem here is that birds will also nest along sky scrapers in New York City. All her examples lack sufficient evidence that nonnatives are superior to natives. She directly sites examples in Doug Tallamy's "Bringing Nature Home" as success stories for her claim. Nonnatives being imported simply as erosion control. The problem being ignored here is not enough people are growing/supplying or using the native plants that were preventing the hillside from eroding in the first place. (Prairie Moon Nursery sells a variety of native seed mixes that could be used as opposed to planting nothing but nonnative Scotch Broom.)

From here we find a series of examples where compromise turned out to be beneficial. Drilling nest holes into the sides of a cliff for birds so they have more places to reproduce and hopefully out compete the rats, for example. This is the kind of success story I don't mind becuase it's a cheap way to ignore (fix?) the problem of invasive rat species on islands. But these types of examples lack the sense of value and history conservationists try to preserve.

She goes on to support assisted migration. This is an interesting parallel here between intentionally introducing nonnative species. But that is hardly evidence that introduced species overall are beneficial to the environment. It's one thing to do it to save an endangered or threatened species, and quite another for mass marketed landscaping plants. The illegal pet trade and accidental introduction through human commerce are mixed in here someplace but not really addressed fully. Not that she needs to. Take your pick of life form and you can be sure someone's imported it.

Chapter 9: I think this is supposed to be read as an enlightening kayak trip down a river teaming with introduced species, factories polluting the waters, and conservation projects all going on at once. Besides reflecting the world as it is, I don't think this chapter had it's intended impact on me. Basically she comes to the conclusion that we have to incorporate nature into our lives.

The last chapter reads as a laundry list of goals one can have towards plants. I thought it was a waste of paper, got bored after goal #6 and stopped reading after that.

Forests are fragmented to the point that their ecosystems are islands. That's why invasive species are bad and people should be doing more to fight them, not ignore them! When someone tracks mud through your house you don't throw up your arms and never clean the mess. Perhaps comparing invasives would be better compared to a hotel infested with cockroaches. You'll never be rid of them unless everyone allows their apartment to be sprayed with insecticide. If one person refuses then the cockroaches have a safe harbor and eventually will infest the whole building again, it's hopeless. But this is such a limited view. We should ask, why is this species invasive? The answer is, as the author tries to say, it's because it's doing what it would normally be doing in nature. It's thriving in an environment where it's absolutely flourishing.

The difference between a nature preserve and your front lawn is competition. Your front lawn is doing everything land after a massive forest fire, mud slide, or volcanic eruption would do. It's a disturbed environment with lots of open spaces that need filling. Weather it's native or not, aggressive plant species are going to show up and try and fill those holes. The longterm process of succession is about to commence. As the author points out during the time of the book I liked, some of these trees live for 1,400+ years! Climate change has been found to interrupt some of these species and we find places where the oldest of these tree species are only ~700 years old.

Another issue that the author doesn't address is that there a coloration between the % of species and the % of land available. If we lose 1% of land then we lose 1% of the species there. Condoning nonnative species to establish, weather they're behaving aggressively or not, they eventually kick out other species. Often because native insects don't recognize them as palatable something is lost, weather it's the quantity of the insect, or the insect's prescience there entirely. The author seems to think insects and diseases will eventually catch up with them, either by importation or one of the indigenous species taking a liking to them suddenly. And that's true enough but that doesn't mean we should let it have free reign over the continent for 500 years or more waiting for it to happen. What's more such plants are not worth protecting as the author suggests! To be fair she's talking about trees in general, not aggressive species in particular; basically nature deserves protecting despite it's content of origin. What's lacking with this idea is standards, value, and any real vision. I guess that's what chapter 10's list of goals is trying to get at, but her treatment of nonnatives, and invasive plants especially, really cripples the idea in my mind. Imagine a nature preserve that's comprised of Kudzu blanketing over dead trees it's turned into topiary corpses.

My Monarch Life Cycle Video

2011-10-02T17:49:00.000-04:00

Longterm readers of my blog should recognize a lot of the pictures here as one's I've taken. I've included video and music too!

Buckeye Butterfly Video

2011-09-28T15:59:00.000-04:00

I took this video yesterday afternoon.

Buckeye Butterflies

2011-09-27T19:26:00.000-04:00

Common Buckeye Butterflies, Junonia coenia, have been flying all over the garden. I see them sun bathing where they can, couples are chasing one another intending to mate, and others were setting down among the Skippers and the Bees on the New England Asters.

Their population explosion is normal for New Jersey over the summer and autumn, however neither the caterpillar nor the adult butterfly can withstand a frost. Every year they recolonize the northern part of their range.

They're likely interested in all the Plantain which is a very common weed in my yard. I also have a small patch of penstemon and in the past have grown snapdragons, both of which are also host plants. Though it's hard to justify growing host plants this far north for a butterfly that isn't hardy.

They're actually a little skittish so I was surprised it let me get this close.

Normally eyes are made to scare away birds from a potential meal. So from an evolutionary stand point more eyes is better! Maybe it's trying to mimic a gigantic spider?

I would have gotten in closer if I could but sadly it flew off shortly after this was taken.

Plant Buying Road Trip

2011-09-25T03:50:00.000-04:00

On Thursday I attended a plant buying trip hosted by the Mt. Cuba Center. While at one of the nurseries I found this sight of Honeybees working some Liatris microcephala. I've always ignored this species because of how scraggly it looks. This was my first time seeing it in person though and it's reminded me of Purple Prairie Clover, Dalea purpurea. I'm curious if it's common for them to have so many shoots poking up. Liatris species grow from underground corms and slowly divide, but how fast does this happen with this species? Online photos suggest that multiple flower head stalks are typical, but how long does this take? If it takes 5 years for one corm to reach the size in the video above then is it worth buying? Questions I can't answer, but I'm curious enought that I might buy the species someday.

How was my trip?
Going on these things, I'm something of the odd man out. The general crowd of 16 was comprised of middle aged women, married couples (and or husbands willing to go with their wives) were in the minority, and then there's myself a single 27 year old male. (A friend of mine joked I was there to pick up a cougar.)

As typical for my age I only got 2 hours worth of sleep the night before. I drove an hour from New Jersey to Delaware, where the Mt. Cuba Center is located. From there I got on a bus to be driven back into New Jersey. Somehow I stayed awake but looking back I regret not sleeping.

I'd rather not promote the locations we visited simply because the first two nurseries only sell wholesale to garden centers, and the last place is too expensive to be worth mentioning.

At our first stop, we were given a tour of a nursery and shown what it takes to grow plants wholesale to be shipped out across the state and sold at your local garden center. They focused a little bit to heavily on just showing up plants but I got to see various stages of one I wanted to buy.

Bottlebrush Buckeye, Aesculus parviflora, is fought over by swallowtail butterflies when it blooms in June, through July. Almost no one locally sells it, and I was thrilled to see half a green house full of them! One year seedlings came up to my knees. Second year plants came up to my waist, and they kept getting taller and bigger as we walked farther into the greenhouse. Five Gallon pots were taller than me and if I recall right only take 3 or 4 years to grow that big. In the wild this shrub can get to be 15' tall and form its own groves in full shade to full sun. Hopefully this isn't that big of a weed as I bought one.

Where our tour started going down hill was when we walked by the areas devoted to Butterfly Bush. To my dismay there's no shortage of these in the world but they were at least covered with Monarch butterflies.

Location two was an old dairy farm converted into the nursery trade, and run by the current generation of owners. We were served lunch in an old colonial farmhouse original to the building. Today it's used for weddings and easy to see why. The place is as authentically rustic as they come. The living room wreaked of smoke from decades of wood burning fires keeping the family warm.

What we were served for lunch scared me a little as I'd never had... uhhh, Is that a Tuna Fish Pizza? Taking my first bite I found that I was wrong on the tuna fish and completely in love with it enough to ask the cook for the recipe. The chef was a heavy set, elderly women, who'd probably worked hard every day of her life. She was a sweet old thing and I got the idea she was related somehow to the owner but I never thought to ask. Returning from the kitchen, she handed me a photo copied page for "Tomato, Basil and Cheese Tart" she'd taken from her grandmother's cook book, which dated back to the 1800's. You could somehow taste the decades in the recipe; people just don't cook this kind of food anymore. I would be thrilled to eat this at any wedding.

After lunch we headed out to the fields where armies of Rhododendrons were lined up in formation waiting to be shipped out. We got another brief lessen on how the nursery business works. Cultivars are maintained by cuttings taken in the spring and allowed to root in flats for the next two years. Year three they're finally upgraded to small 1 gallon pots and kept there for another two years, before being upgraded again to a 3 gallon. It takes 5 years for each Rhododendron to hit the market. Christmas trees take 7!

Whole sale prices for some of these cultivars varied from $20 to $25. I'm not sure why at all. Some of these varieties are sold at the last nursery we were going to visit for regular mark up so it was best to get our shopping done here. I've been paying attention to one cultivar in particular which is marked up to $70! Rhododendron 'millie mac' which is very unique looking and pretty, for whatever reason, has been randomly picked for price gouging! Why $70? The whole sale nursery doesn't favor this one cultivar at all, and there's no shortage of it either! Every green house had two types of plant growing in them. Rhododendron 'millie mac' is simply a name on a list to the wholesaler but at the garden center they sell their stock to it's suddenly put on a pedestal simply because they can.

The trip ended pretty much after the last nursery. We road the bus all the way back to Delaware, making my total time spent on a bus close to 7 hours for the day. The truck hauling everyone's plants was 40 minutes late showing up. And it was another hour for me to drive home.

I ate dinner and attempted to watch a TV show before going to bed. I found myself in one of the oddest states of mind I've ever been in. I started passing out in a series of cat naps without realizing it. I'd blink my eyes and suddenly there'd be a different show on the TV, and it took three times before I realized it was happening.

I had fun but I'm not sure buying plants on a bus full of strangers is the best way to go about it.

Last Monarch Released and Plans for Next Year

2011-09-21T16:38:00.000-04:00

It's very important to introduce your young Monarchs to the arts before releasing them into the wild.

Well the summer is pretty much over and I was only able to raise 5 Monarchs from caterpillar to adult. Apparently I could have raised a lot more of them if I used a different method. Basically I was only going after the caterpillars who were a week to days away from forming a chrysalis. Apparently you can collect them as early as the egg stage, I didn't do that because I believed fresh milkweed would be better for them.

A friend of mine said they released at least 40 this year by collecting swatches of milkweed leaves that had eggs on them. The interruption of their flow of sap makes the milkweed safer for young caterpillars to eat starting out. But they said still 1 in 10 caterpillars die their first day, which is still better than out in the wild where 1 in 3 die their first day. Each generation needs to be kept in it's own container, adult caterpillars will eat Monarch eggs so there's no adding to the same container.

I don't know the details on how many leaves per caterpillar are needed each day but this method sounds like it's better than what I was trying. Out in the wild birds and spiders regularly make a meal out of the caterpillars, even if it means spitting them out shortly after.

A Monarch Hatches

2011-09-18T00:47:00.001-04:00

This misleading silhouette is actually a Monarch butterfly emerging from it's chrysalis. It's always hard to imaging how the butterfly fits in the thing in the first place. From what I can gather, immediately after hatching they instantly inflate, while expelling excess liquids and frass over the next hour or so.

From another angle we see something more resembling the butterfly so beloved. They hang upside down in order to inflate their wings so they can harden properly. Their wings are otherwise limp and similar to a small swatch of silk someone might use to clean their glasses with. It's very unnatural to observe their wings when they're limp like that.

Within a few minutes they've expanded quite a bit, but are still in need of stiffening up.

After the first hour or so, they're capable of flying a short distance but benefit from more time. If they do fly it's usually to escape a predator or to get a better spot perched higher on a tree.

Pictured above were all males which are slightly smaller than the females.

Here is a female. Her wingspan is slightly greater and she lack two dark marks on the rear wings (not visible in this photo).

Monarch Female: Note the lack of two dark marks on the rear wings.

Monarch Male: Note the two dark marks on the rear wings. Typically these line up with the nearest dark vane.

Weather they are male or female there's just no beating that color. The Monarch butterfly is the color orange of our autumn, and the world is richer for it's existance.

Southern Blue Monkshood, Aconitum uncinatum

2011-09-16T17:30:00.001-04:00

I planted 3 plugs in the spring of Southern Blue Monkshood, Aconitum uncinatum. One kept getting dug up by the wildlife and died. Another is still alive but got nibbled off at the tip, so it's stopped growing. The last impresses me the most though as it's only reach 1' tall and decided to flower.

The flowers have slightly blued up since this photo. Technically this plant is a vine but I'd described it more as a bramble. I've seen mature plants at the Mt. Cuba Center. They send out lots of soft canes that spread and climb up other plants when they can. They don't get taller or spread more than 5' feet before flowering in the late summer. Each winter they die back to the ground, making this a well behaved vine. They grow in partial sun to full shade, like it a little on the wet side I think, and I've seen Monarch butterflies visit the flowers along with bees and hover flies.

Nonnative Monkshoods are more commonly sold. They're not vines or brambles though, but rather up right perennials on par with a snapdragon or lupine. It seems our natives are the only ones that grow to be semi-vines. They're a real treat to have because the foliage stays hidden for most of the year. Our natives are not widely sold but I got mine from Toadshade Wildflower Farm, direct link.

Planned Reading: "Rambunctious Garden" by Emma Marris

2011-09-13T23:13:00.000-04:00

This is my current interest. I'll be buying their book hopefully by the end of the month. The author, Emma Marris, was on KUOW's Greenday Gardening Panel earlier today; here is the direct link. Basically she takes an ecologist's point of view to gardening (and managing wildlife habitats?). She points out calling something native simply because it was growing at date X is arbitrary when we consider the millions of years of history before. Native Americans starting wildfires, driving large mammals to extinction, glaciers rampaging down the continent, etc...

Normally I'd brush this off as a boo hoo argument by the ornamental industry who have been pushing nonnatives on the average home owner since the dawn of time. However, Emma makes some surprisingly well thought out arguments. The problem, for me at least, is she sounds both smart or stupid at the same time. She encourages people to plant natives but also non-historically-native plants as long as they help pursuer a certain goal (look nice, birds, butterflies, pollinators, bugs, other wildlife). And this can be a stupid idea if someone has no idea what's native and what's not. The ornamental industry and most nurseries certainly don't make it easy to tell the difference. So the real beneficial gardens are only going to come from the people who've researched the topic of native plant. This movement could greatly benefit from a little education which might well be in her book, but this also contradicts her earlier point of just planting whatever helps you reach your goal. See what I mean by smart and stupid at the same time, for lack of a better term?

Her point of view seems to be so broad that it's almost impossible for her to be wrong on the top of what's right to plant where. Hopefully her book has lots of substance and personal touches as I'm looking forward to reading it sometime in the near future.

My Backyard Meadow Tour

2011-09-10T16:38:00.000-04:00

I figured I'd do a video tour of this year's meadow garden. These were all plugs so most of the spring and summer flowering species didn't flower well. All the autumn bloomers are doing great though. I plan to at some point weed out the grasses. Mowing will be done sometime next march. And hopefully everything that didn't bloom this year will come back in force next spring.

How I Saved A Plant

2011-09-09T19:02:00.000-04:00

A few years ago I noticed lots of yellow flowers growing along the hill behind my place of work. I'd passed it off as goldenrod until I finally walked up there and found these wonderful Coreopsis flowers. That is, I believe they're a Coreopsis of some sort. I've never identified them to species.

A year later they weren't really around, but the year after that they came back in force. What was odd though is the flowers now all had this red ring in the middle going around on each petal, presumably a genetic variation that skips a generation or perhaps a sign of some nutrient in the soil. Whatever the reason, it seemed like all of them had it that year.

Fast forward to just two years ago I learn they're going to bulldoze the hill to expand the strip mall. The concept of native plant salvaging was in my head at the time, so I got my shovel, went to the hillside and potted up a few Coreopsis plants. Into the garden they went... where sadly they didn't come back the next year.

But then I find this growing behind our shed right next to the garden I'd planted them in. It's in a very disturbed location. I had piles of wood there for years and only recently removed it to reveal bare soil. I'm certain this must be the same species as what was growing along the hillside. From what I can tell these plants must be short lives and run on some kind of biannual cycle. The thing is the adult plants were about 4' tall and this is only a few inches. Perhaps they flower the first year at a short height and come back with more vigor on the second year.

Perhaps it would have been better if I'd collected seeds? Thinking back I wonder if seeds didn't germinate better on slopes where people often sledded in the winter. Hmmm.

Monarch Metamorphosis

2011-09-06T16:27:00.000-04:00

This was more time consuming to photograph than I thought it would be. What I've learned after 6 caterpillars over the past month is weather they're hatching from a chrysalis (left) or about to begin one (right), all major changes take place during the daylight hours.

When ready to morph into a chrysalis the caterpillar will hang upside down for a while and form the letter J (see above). The green lines toward the head tell you they're going to morph, but if it's already getting dark out this isn't going to happen until bright and early the next morning.

The initial change is incredibly quick to start out. I woke up very early this morning to find a caterpillar hanging in the J shape as it had been the night before. Sometime in the next 10 minutes I stopped watching it had turned into this! I believe it shed it's skin off revealing the bright green flesh beneath.

The head is towards the bottom where several yellow-gold dots are forming. The wings also form now and their development will slowly cover most of the body. What remains of it's suction-cup feet dissolve away. Also note the more solid white line in the middle of the body. We'll follow it's progress farther on.

The next hour seems mostly devoted to expanding the wings, and forcing most of the body fat (mass?) towards the top. This is done through a series of wiggles. That white line slowly makes it's way higher and higher as this goes on.

Slowly all the pieces come together and solidify their final resting place.

Note how high up the white line has risen. That was the half way mark in the caterpillar's body when this began. I can only imagine how inside-out the contents of this insect must be in there. It's has reached it's final shape but there's still some smoothing out to do.

This is what they look like two hours in. The chrysalis becomes more opaque over time and turns a beautiful emerald green color with gold trim and spots.

This image is from last year.

I feel like there should be a trend of women gluing these to necklaces to wear as jewelry for the brief time that they look this pretty.

10 to 14 days later they hatch. This also happens in the early morning, but they'll turn transparent the day before.

Meadow Project: September

2011-09-03T21:55:00.000-04:00

Well it's September and my little meadow's fall blooming species have started to become very showy. Everything was started here as a bare root plug. Most of the spring and summer blooming species didn't flower at all, some even went dormant or died. Hopefully they'll all be back in force next year.

Tall Coreopsis, Coreopsis tripteris, is about 3' tall and topped with lots of flowers. Not bad for two bare roots that cost $5 each. I could see going nuts with this plant in the coming years. When they become better established I'm sure they'll reach that 5' to 8' tall I read on the internet.

Showy Goldenrod, Solidago speciosa. This plant gets it's name for being showy. The internet does a better job of showing that off than my blog though. All four of my plants fell over and are sort of slinking along the ground. The orientation of the flowers is somewhat more uniform than on other Solidago's also the really tiny flower petals are slightly larger too, making them look more brightly yellow.

There are a few Asters popping open now too but nothing showy enough to take a picture of.

The butterfly weed, Asclepias tuberosa, flowered well and has now gone to seed. Over the summer that awful grass has come back in force, I'll need to start weeding it out again.

The Ozark Coneflowers, Echinacea paradoxa, have particularly neat leaf clusters. They're nowhere near native to New Jersey but frankly nothing in Echinacea is anyhow. What drew me to it was it's yellow flowers, without having to be a cultivar.

I need to weed out some grass but I'm overall happy with what's out there.

A Monarch is Born

2011-09-02T22:48:00.000-04:00

It's almost a shame that Monarchs hatch out of their chrysalis. They're a really pretty emerald green with gold trim.

Slowly as they start to hatch these colors fade away, slowly revealing the true prize within.

This most recent photo was how it looked this morning. I said to myself, "I'm going to take this to work with me and photograph it there." So I show up and I'm waiting to be let inside. I take a peak down in the container and find it's already hatched and is walking about. The wings are as limp and floppy as a silk handkerchief. Through the course of the day he (it had two dark spots on the middle of the rear wings) inflated and dried his wings. Work is a little bit more dimly lit for my pictures to come out good so there are no photos of this.

Once I got home that afternoon I released him out on the Showy Milkweed in the small meadow garden.

The plant has unfortunately fallen over, but that didn't stop the Monarch at all.

Currently I have two more chrysalises in a screened in cage and several more caterpillars out on the plants. I'll likely have more images of Monarchs in the coming months.

Ant Chat Episode 35: My Formica pergandei Colony

2011-09-02T01:09:00.000-04:00

So I've decided to do another episode. Ants during the summer really take a break, which is a shame because that's when ratings for my show go through the roof. Now that we've had a few hurricanes, err umm, cold spells, more ants are becoming active and I'll be able to post more outdoor things hopefully.

Some images of my Formica pergandei colony and host workers.

Ant Chat Episode 34 Prenolepis imparis Expirament

2011-08-31T02:33:00.000-04:00

Here I took 4 young colonies of Prenolepis imparis, Winter Ants, and allowed them to share the same foraging area. I've had success in the past getting colonies to combine this way and wanted to try it again. Colonies were almost forced to step over a rolled up napkin soaked in 1:1 sugar water. Upon meeting only minor aggression was shown towards the other before they started sharing food. Colonies started exploring one another and began moving into one nest.

They're a little to far into the tube for my camera to take great photos of. Though I'm sure if I tried really hard I could come up with something.

Bustling Milkweed

2011-08-27T03:14:00.000-04:00

We're entering the home stretch as far as milkweeds are concerned, Asclepias species. Plants are slowly being overrun by populations of oleander aphids. By the end of September they'll be glowing orange with so many of these that leaves will grow limp and be unable to support themselves.

Outskirt populations of these aphids are being guarded by ants. This is actually kind of odd as milkweeds are supposed to be covered in hairs that release their milky sap when disturbed. Most ants can't walk over the plants without becoming stuck, though I've never seen this in action. The sap's reaction to the air is turning into a tar-like substance.

Tapinoma sessile, The Odorous House Ant, has no trouble getting past the sap defense and I regularly see them stealing nectar from milkweed flowers. Crematogaster cerasi and Camponotus chromaiodes are two new species this year I'm seeing on milkweeds. Perhaps different milkweed species have better defenses against different species of ants?

All of this is an arms race for the monarch butterfly. Early instars have the classic warning colors, but I don't believe they're poisonous yet. Spiders and wasps make short work of them. As mentioned before milkweed sap turns to tar when exposed to air. Roughly one third of all monarch caterpillars don't survive their first day due to their mouths being fused shut. On the flip side, caterpillars need to eat the plant to gain it's toxicity. That can't happen if the aphids have drained the plants dry. Pictured above is a caterpillar who's taking advantage of the system.

Seedpods are slowly drying up to release their seeds. The flow of sap isn't as strong here so it's safer to eat.

Eventually they grow large enough that the sap isn't an issue, but they'll still cut the main vane that's filling the leaf with sap. (I should mention this caterpillar is eating Purple Milkweed, Asclepias purpurascens, which has thicker leaves. Caterpillars otherwise eat the rim of the leaf too rather than just making a hole.)

As they get older, they become more mobile. Right down to the point where they abandon the plant to turn into a chrysalis somewhere. This way they remove themselves from the tug of war happening on the plants. I know people who've had patches of milkweed and believe that none of the monarch caterpillars they've had on their plants have ever reached adulthood because of this behavior. True enough they are a little illusive.

When they're in their last instar, they're typically nibbling the tops off the milkweed, cutting off the flow of sap to multiple leaves all at once. This is the perfect time to move them to a screened cage (in a secure, sheltered spot outside if you have air conditioning doors). From here simply feed them milkweed cuttings that are free of monarch caterpillars, or eggs, or other things unwanted. They should form a chrysalis within a week, and from there hatch as an adult in the next 10 to 14 days. Usually hatching in the morning before 12noon.

As for the milkweed plants go, I believe young ones are at risk of being eaten to heavily to come back next year. Older ones should rebound better to such attacks. Generally when planting milkweed in the garden it's a good idea to include some sort of autumn companion plant to steal the show away from the milkweed, which can often be left bare of any leaves.

A Friend Starts Blogging

2011-08-24T02:45:00.000-04:00

Hay everyone, I just wanted to mention my friend in Indiana has started a blog. It's called Bumble Bees and Ants of Indiana. Naturally I was the first person to comment "First," of course. I've know him since he was a teenager, and I think it's correct to say I mentored him through ant keeping, and to an extent native plant gardens as well. As he's in the middle of prairie country it was only a matter of time before he surpassed me in some respects. He has access to a lot more remnant prairies than I do here in NJ (where we have old meadows and wetlands at best). He's even branched off and this past year started several bumblebee hives. Next year if all goes well I believe he's starting with honeybees. So hopefully he really takes to blogging and we get some nice posts over there.

Butterflies at Mt. Cube.

2011-08-20T22:56:00.001-04:00

A chrysalis to the Pipevine Swallowtail.

I had another exciting class at the Mt. Cuba Center today. This time the class was on Butterflies in Your Garden, which focused on the most common and showiest Lepidoptera you can see flying in the daylight hours. The lecture was well constructed but had a few omissions like Hummingbird Moths, Mourning Cloak, and Skippers as a whole. They were brought up and talked about as we chanced upon them during the tour though so that's fine. It's hard planning around nature.

The tour started with a bang as we went to the Round Garden. It's a circular pavilion with a rather nice pool in the middle ~~that's just begging to be converted into a hot tub~~. The surrounding gardens are planted with nectar plants that aren't 100% native but get the job done when it comes to attracting butterflies. I saw lots of Tiger Swallowtails flying about, including both the black and yellow form of the female. White Cabbage Moths fluttered around among the bumblebees on Lantana. An Azure or two skipped about along side a Buckeye. It was a really good way to start out the tour.

From there we moved to a little spot next to their Trial Garden. It doesn't actually have a name but it's a nice garden bed. A massive Great Spangled Fritillary, Speyeria cybele, immediately caught my eye. And best of all it was very cooperative for my camera.

These are about the same size as the Monarch butterfly, if not slightly bigger. They use native violets as a host plant, however, females only lay eggs in the autumn and not necessarily anywhere near a violet. The poor caterpillars hatch and over winter with nothing to eat for 5 to 8 months. Barely any of them survive.

So to sustain a population of these it sounds like lots of violets spread around the garden are needed. I read in Caterpillars of Eastern North America: A Guide to Identification and Natural History (Princeton Field Guides) that caterpillars are nocturnal feeders with this species, and are usually found under logs and stones during the day. Be careful, as they're covered in thorns. They're said to be sizable creatures in the last instars and able to eat two whole violets in a day.

The meadow garden had slightly less flying through but I've seen from past visits it can be swarming with butterflies, especially Monarchs. Here we see Virginia Ctenucha, Ctenucha virginica, which wasn't mentioned on the tour. I feel like it's trying to mimic some kind of roach but I've no idea why. This was just something I noticed.

Red-Spotted Purple, Limenitis arthemis. Here's one that was mentioned and I've seen them flying around my garden too. It's hard to tell from the photo but the upper corners of the wings have red spots on them, well more like orange blushing. This is a species that you'll find on rotting fruit, dung, and sipping at tree sap.

Also in their meadow garden was this caterpillar (sawfly larva?) which was on Joe Pye Weed but I've never known that genus to yield many caterpillars to anything interesting. At least nothing that feeds on it during the day.

Here is an inch worm of some sort. I had them identified at one point but I forgot what it's called. Basically they feed on composite flowers and take on the color of the bloom they're nibbling on, in this case Ironweed.

So that was my visit. :)

Solomon's Seal

2011-08-18T16:00:00.001-04:00

Solomon's Seal, Polygonatum commutatum, I think. It's the most common one I think though there are other Polygonatum species around. This was another woodland highlight they had growing at the Mt. Cuba Center. It's well past flowering but unlike other spring ephemerals it stick around longer in the year. I feel like the majority spring ephemerals are pollinated by either flies or beetles, but this is one that's actually geared towards bees.

The fruit are these charming blue cherry-like berries which are eaten mostly by woodland birds

My Monarch Meadow

2011-08-17T11:53:00.000-04:00

Proof, that the Hummingbirds have been visiting my yard all year and aren't just in my head! They've even featured in a short video I made, towards the end.

We open with a variety of carpenter ant tending some aphids. Camponotus chromaiodes is similar to C. pennsylvanicus but has red on 2/3rds of the mesosoma. I have never seen ants tending the aphids on milkweed before. Normally the aphids seem to overrun the plant, eventually causing the stem to turn a brilliant yellow orange from the sheer number. So I thought this was neat to find. Part of the reason might be this is a young colony in my yard that's only recently grown to about 50 workers this past year.

While naming the video I came up with the phrase Monarch Meadow. And I thought wow, that is so catchy that it has to be a real place. Surely some nature preserve somewhere has coined it already. So I googled it and sure enough there is a place named that!

And it's the most boring place on earth. This is The Best example of a place with the wrong name. Perhaps you've driven past an Oak Drive and noticed the lack of oak, or a Poplar terrace that doesn't have any tulip or poplar trees. There's a place near me called The Meadows who's mostly paved apartment complex. What do Monarchs have to do with this place? Sure they could mean it in a sovereignty sense but even then sharing an apartment complex, each with it's own Washer and Dryer (gasp), doesn't exactly scream royalty.

A google image search doesn't yield much better results. In fact you don't need to scroll that far down the results before coming across one of my images.

I'm surprised Prairie Moon Nursery, or Prairie Nursery haven't marketed some kind of garden package with preselected Monarch plants.

The Meadow at Mt. Cuba

2011-08-15T03:38:00.000-04:00

I attended another Meadow Studies class at the Mt. Cuba Center this month. The previous one from last month I found to be a little boring. Their their meadow is primarily grasses, and rather few plants were blooming at the time. To their credit I am bias against grasses, and generally anything wind pollinated. Lush grassy meadows have their place, but during the month of July they look like a lawn in desperate need of mowing. As the year progresses though species like Big Bluestem, Andropogon gerardii, and Yellow Indian Grass, Sorghastrum nutans, come into their own. These tall grasses grow to be 6' high and there's nothing more majestic looking that watching their seed heads flowing with the wind. The whole meadow comes alive swaying with every gust like an ocean of plants. Unfortunately the effect doesn't photograph well, at least not with my camera, and the perspective seems to always be off somehow.

Even here peering through a mossy clearing the grasses barely look 3' tall. As the grasses grow taller they become easier to appreciate.

Before going to the meadow they had patches of Spotted Touch-me-not, Impatiens capensis, flowering. This native Impatient is anything but. Seeds germinate after 2 winters and the resulting plant is an annual. They're fun plants because of their exploding seed pods, but if you're looking for any sort of predictability as to where they'll come up, you need to plant seeds in the same spot 3 years in a row. From there they're a delightful weed, growing in wet spots, and attracting hummingbirds. (Supposedly the sap helps clear up poison ivy but I'm not advocating holistic remedies. I would be willing to try it out though.)

Bottle Gentian, Gentiana andrewsii, was also in bloom. These flowers are fussy and hard for most bees to open. The idea with the tight petioles is to discourage ants from stealing nectar. As you can see, carpenter bees and perhaps others, have little issue just cutting holes right through the flowers to get the nectar. This happens to a lot of tube and bell shaped flowers.

Moving out into the meadow, the real highlights were the Wild Senna, Cassia hebecarpa, and assorted Joe Pye Weeds, Eutrochium fistulosum and Eutrochorium maculatum.

Note: Joe Pye Weed was formerly in the genus Eupatorium. That genus still exists but I believe it consists mostly of the taller white flowering species that aren't Boneset. Eutrochium includes all purple/pink flowering members of Eupatorium now. Personally I think this is a conspiracy concocted by the plant labeling community.

Anyway, I feel like they understated their Wild Senna a bit. It was in full bloom and not really mentioned until I asked. They did this with a number of plants but it's not like it was a bad tour. Actually we got up close and personal with 25 meadow species with lots of other goodies along the way. The instructor was more than happy to talk about all plants in the gardens people asked about.

This is the host plant to the Cloudless Sulphur, Phoebis sennae, which isn't the most common butterfly around, but it's certainly unique enough looking to warrant their host plant in any butterfly garden. The pea-like seeds are also an excellent food source for certain birds.

Brown-Eyed Susan, Rudbeckia triloba. This is also called Thin-leaved Coneflower, but I feel that implies a different genus. It didn't seem to be spreading around like the other Rudbeckia species in their meadow.

Monarchs were all over their milkweed. They have lots of species of milkweed there but most of it is well past flowering. Also an abundance of insects that help nibble the plants to the ground were starting to show up.

I found this skipper on their Ironweed, Vernonia noveboracensis, to be rather attractive. The colors reminded me of a robin or some sort of bird.

Here is a some type of cultivated Coneflower from one of their other gardens. The tube shaped flowers almost imply hummingbirds should drink from them.

There were many other things flowering in their meadow, it's just I'm not into things like Obedient plant, Physostegia virginiana, and some type of perennial sunflower, Helianthus microcephalus. There were some early Goldenrods too.

Mad Plant Catalog?

2011-08-13T20:56:00.000-04:00

Someone thought this mildly offensive image would make a great cover to the Plant Delights Nursery 2011 catalog.

What Grows Around a Community Garden

2011-08-10T15:25:00.000-04:00

Well established community gardens are amazing, especially ones that have been around for years. As each new crop of gardeners go to plant their goods what happens is they typically find seeds and perennial crops from the person before. Unwanted plants seem to have been transplanted to the outskirts along the garden. And over the years a couple of species in particular seem to have flourished here.

There are hedges of cup plant, prairie coneflower, what I'm guessing is fennel in flower, a yellow flowering yarrow, and they had the most amazing sunflowers I've ever seen. It's like someone loved the color yellow and planted everything they could get to grow 5' or taller.

Most of this is one sunflower! The one stem was about 6" thick and had branches coming out of each node, where the leaves are formed. There were leaves on the lower ones at one point but they slowly die off over the year. So this massive sunflower had branches of other sunflowers coming out of it. It's amazing to think earlier in the year this was just a 1cm seed.

There weren't as many bees flying around as you might think. There were lots of bumblebees around but nothing I hadn't seen before.

There were a bunch of goldfinches flying around too but they were doing their best to dodge me at every turn.

I'm actually not doing this place justice because they were growing lots of other goodies, like Corn and just about everything else someone can grow.

More Butterflies of Summer

2011-08-09T17:09:00.001-04:00

There is something like 250+ species of Skipper in North America. These are all rather small butterflies that get their name for their sort of hopping habit. Lots of species hang out in groups and all fly together making the garden bustling with activity. They're often ignored though for their assorted brown and orange color scheme. Caterpillars only feed at night and are almost never seen either. Most species use native grasses as host plants but a few dabble in Oak and Legumes as well. This rather dark species above I've only started noticing this year. I'm hoping it's the Wild Indigo Duskywing, Erynnis baptisiae, which uses Blue False Indigo, Baptisia australis, as a host plant.

Here's a better picture of what might be the same species. (I'm also glad they found a use for the ironweed.)

Other skippers have started showing up as well. This one is smaller and more of the standard when I think of skippers. It's slightly unusual in how pale beige it is, as most species seem to be dark brown. The only species I can really identify at a glance is the Silver-Spotted Skipper, Epargyreum clarus. It's larger than most skippers, brown, and with a bold white and orange stripe crossing it's wings.

Here on the Joe Pye Weed is the black form of the Eastern Tiger Swallowtail, Papilio glaucus, and a rather beat up one at that. The light reflecting under the wings is creating a slight yellow appearance.

A new species I've started seeing is the Spicebush Swallowtail, Papilio troilus. The wings are always lined with white or yellow spots, but there's also this large area of either blue, green, or teal to the rear of the wings. I took this picture at a nursery which sells an unidentified species of Spicebush. I never buy plants when they're not identified to species level. However, in this case identifying to genus level is all that's needed. As it turns out there are only 3 species of Spicebush in the US and all of them are native. I'm probably going to go back and buy a shrub.

1 Queen, 2 Queen, 3 Queen, 4

2011-08-06T18:10:00.000-04:00

Colonies of Tapinoma sessile, Odorous House Ant, normally stay outside. They thrive in places where there's lots of grass, and debris laying around. I've also found then nesting in hollow cavities in logs, and mason bee tubes. They're opportunistic and will nest anywhere they can. The common name comes from their habit of nesting in homes. The odor only occurs from crushing them so it might be better to discourage them than to fight back. They don't do a whole lot of nest building so sealing up where they're coming in from is an easy option if applicable. The smell is nothing unbearable I'm told.

Shortly after their mating season, April to June, (occasionally July), queen number for each colony jumps drastically. Presumably they are either inbreeding within the nest, or colonies generally accept queens they come across into the nest.

This leads to a lot more queens suddenly appearing into the nest and fuels budding behavior. At some point in the year colonies will divide as needed to setup new nesting sites elsewhere. Once divided colonies typically don't want anything to do with one another. The more urban the location though, it seems the more connected these colonies remain and they end up getting much larger than they would out in a suburban or rural area. There's something about city life that encourages colonies to stay connected in a series of sub-colonies as opposed to setting up new ones. What's neat though is that individual queens are fully capable of starting a colony on their own.

This kind of variation within a single species I've learned is more common in ants than previously thought. I've seen this in Monomorium minimum, both queen inbreeding, and loan queen colony founding. The Red Imported Fire Ant, Solenopsis invicta, do this too. With fire ants it's more genetically divided. Monogynic (one queen) colonies produce monogynic colony founding queens while polygynic (more than one queen) reproduce by queen adoption and budding. What's really neat about fire ants is their reaction to water. When floods come, all the members of the colony form a living raft and float away, but while adrift there's nothing stopping two colonies from bumping into one another. Floating for survival is no time for war, so the two colonies may merge into one floating raft, and upon reaching land they remain as one colony regardless of mono or polygynic status before the flood. Perhaps this is how polygynic colonies got their start with this species.

I've seen colonies of Temnothorax sometimes combine to better survive the winter. The following spring they disperse and go their separate ways, though it's unclear if the workers are pared with their genetic mother or just going with the flow. Camponotus pennsylvanicus colonies are strictly monogynic but they still produce sub-colonies as extensions of their nest and territory. Each autumn these satellite locations are abandoned to better overwinter in one location.

Perhaps the most notorious ant to talk about queen number is the Argentine Ant, Linepithema humile. In North America at least, this species spreads exclusively by budding. Queens mate inside the nest causing their numbers to skyrocket at one time of the year. Workers in L. humile have very high standards when it comes to queens though and each year they kill off ~90% of their own queens. This massacre occurs at the same time of year each year. It would seem they don't like their queens to be more than a year old, perhaps to maintain queens at the peak of their egg laying capacity.

Though the queens to polygynic colonies ultimately produce larger colonies, their monogynic counterparts typically live longer.

Ant Chat Episode 33: Myrmecochory

2011-08-03T00:30:00.000-04:00

I've already done a short show about Myrmecochory which you can see by clicking here. It was such a popular show, at least on youtube, that I decided to do another one but this time with different ants. I will hopefully do this as an annual event each year but I hope to mix it up with other plants that have elaiosome on their seeds. Unfortunately Trilliums are the only plants that I seem to have any success with as far as seed distribution goes. The Hepatica I grew this year for whatever reason didn't get any ant attention.

Fun Fact: To my knowledge there wasn't a word for seed dispersal by wasps before this episode was made. I asked James C. Trager what that might be called and he suggested the word Sphecochory. Now I'm not sure if planting in tales the seed being successfully making it to a spot where it can grow. Yellow Jackets do nest underground but I've also seen paper wasps raiding the pods for seeds and the flesh within too. Successful planting probably happens rarely but the seed is still at least being taken away from the parent plant and making it into the ground. So maybe Sphecochory will make it's way into the dictionary someday.

A Trillium seed pod turned inside out.

An Aphaenogaster rudis walking through the Trillium seeds.

Nylanderia flavipes stealing the elaiosome from Trillium seeds.

An unexpected thief terrorizes the ants away, and begins chewing off one of the seeds.

Sphecochory - Seed distribution by wasps. Why not.

A Camponotus castaneus locating a Trillium seed.

A Camponotus castaneus hauling a Trillium seed home.

Butterfly Season

2011-07-31T23:34:00.000-04:00

It's finally time to start seeing some butterflies outside. I believe the way their generations fall over the year make July and August the best months to see most species. Currently there are three highlights in my yard. The Monarch is a given but still to illusive for me to get photos of, but I've been seeing them pass through the yard.

Eastern Tiger Swallowtail, Papilio glaucus. This is probably the biggest butterfly we get here. It uses the Wild Black Cherry, Tulip Tree, and Native Magnolias as host plants. I most frequently see them on the Wild Black Cherry that grows behind our hours in a small fragmented woodland no one takes responsibility for. This wooded area doesn't actually touch my property which has always held me back from trying to find caterpillars. I do have some native plum trees which are in the same genus but so far there aren't any nibbles.

The Red-spotted Purple, Limenitis arthemis.

I find this to be one of the easiest butterflies to approach without spooking. They do eventually fly away but it's nothing compared to some of the other species. There are a number of color forms with the most drastic being a bold white stripe in place of the blue and orange, which changes the common name to White Admiral instead of Red-spotted Purple. When not in that form though, the adult of this species can be distinguished from the following: The band of light blue along the rear wings. The orange spots on the front wings and shading that may be hard to see in some lighting. Also there are even more orange blue and white spots under the wings.

This species shares the Wild Cherry as a host plant with the Tiger Swallowtail. Willow and Birch are other host plants. This is a butterfly that really goes for rotting fruit and tree sap, over flowers. They like sipping at mud puddles and collecting salt from sandy clearings. Generally you'll find them hanging out around the fruiting plants or damaged trees near their host plants.

Are Prairies Practical to the Average Joe?

2011-07-30T01:32:00.000-04:00

I was at my cousin's house yesterday. He's on 5 acres that form a slight slope with the bottom being a slight wetland area. He mows his entire property in an hour or two with one of those professional-looking riding mowers but can't do the wetland area for various reasons. The ground is to uneven, some woody snags here and there, some of the plants while low growing form woody thickets, it floods and fills a small pond area after rainfall. I don't blame him for not wanting to mow but his idea is to let it go wild so it turns into a slight woodland. I'm not 100% behind that idea.

At least the Field side has a boat.

So I explored his property for an hour and at the end he asked me what I thought. My response, "Well you have a great view from the house, your neighbor's horses are pretty to watch, I love this wetland area and how it's just teaming with life, but the rest of your property bores the hell out me."

My cousin isn't into plants, he has no knowledge that natives are better than non, and I wasn't in the right company to explain otherwise. My dad was also walking with us and he has a habit of "correcting" me. Actually it's more like voicing the opinions of late night infomercials. It's the kind of logic that changes the dynamic of the conversation onto something else. For example he believes nothing in the world can grow without fertilizer. Want to grow something in the middle of the desert? Just dump some fertilizer and your tropical oasis will magically appear. He doesn't understand that a lot of plants love growing in conditions that aren't bursting with nitrogen. Anyhow...

The overall issue my cousin has is owning to much land. He wants to install an in-ground pool with hot tub that waterfalls into it, but at the same time he's thinking about getting a few horses. He might eventually put an addition on his home, will probably need a barn for the horses or whatever other livestock he plans on keeping, and at the same time knows nothing about managing so much land other than to mow the lawn. Plant wise, he's planted some saplings but doesn't know what half of them are. To top that off, towards the end of my visit, he said he has the money to fund any sort of projects or ideas I have about making low maintenance planting.

For starters, before leavings I corrected him about a tree he thought highly of. He wanted a tree just like the one out front of his parent's home, and thought it was a Magnolia so he planted one. In actuality his parents have a Japanese Flowering Cherry, a double flowering one I think. So he was a little bummed about that.

That last part about wanting ideas for low maintenance planting really stuck with me on the ride home. The most obvious solution I think would be to install a Prairie seed mix but he has some nasty, evil looking weeds around his home!

Solanum sp.

I have no idea what this little vine is but I gasped when I saw those thorns coming out from under the leaf vanes. One dug into my finger pretty bad when I went down to touch it. I was really caught off guard about there being thorns under the leaves.

Solanum sp.

I really want to recommend my cousin plant a seed mix with a lot of forbs in it so doesn't just look like the side of his house. We'll explore that later. The thing holding me back though is the abundance of weeds like the one above around his property. Thistle and pokeweed are the least of his problems. There are so many types of thorn covered vines around I'd be afraid that they'd seed themselves into the mix from the wind and take over. The thing about managing a backyard prairie is mowing/haying can only suppress so many weeds, not everyone is open to the idea of burning, and asking to barrow the neighbor's cow just sounds silly. In short, I feel I should consult an expert before recommending this as an option.

The benefit to installing a prairie is he'd only have to mow it once a year, but still have to do the perimeter of his fence as well any open lawn areas. I'm certain he's open to the idea of setting fire to the yard, I'd say he's attempted to do that once or twice from the look of his fire pit. Considering he's in farm country maybe borrowing some livestock, or even charging them for the survive could be done too, but their hooves would tear up his property a bit. These are all fairly big jumps for the average person to make.

He didn't know what Milkweed was before today, and he has probably the prettiest specimen of Asclepias incarnata, Swamp Milkweed, I've ever seen growing in his wetland.

I wish I'd taken this picture at a slightly lower angle to take the focus off the grass behind the milkweed more.

It was just this one milkweed growing among this short grass. There were other Swamp Milkweeds about but this one stood out more than all the others.

It has a single stem, which I've never seen happen. And look how thick it is compared to my hand. The result was the thing being thicker than what the norm is all over the whole plant. All of the stems were engorged much thicker than they should be. It was enough to make me think twice about my ID. Other specimens in the wetland were more towards the norm though with multiple stems and closer looking to what most nurseries sell.

Pollinators were all over this thing. There were lots of Monarchs flying around but they were to busy having sex to be laying eggs it seemed. No caterpillars or nibbling at all, though I'm sure that'll change tomorrow.

Mist Flower, (The real one this time!) Eupatorium coelestinum, had a few patches here and there. I could see growing this for the sweeps of color their clumps offer.

What I think is Common Boneset, Eupatorium perfoliatum, was also growing there. Normally I don't like bonesets but this one was more like a white flowering Joe Pye Weed (same genus).

A neat looking kind of Wild Mint, Mentha sp. I think, also caught my eye. There weren't a whole lot of pollinators around it, which is shocking for a mint plant! but there is a lot to be said about the form and pattern all the stems create.

They spread by rhizomes I'm sure.

Cloudless Sulphurs, Phoebis sennae, were dancing around some Purple Coneflowers. This wasn't in the wetland at all. He has these planted as part of the landscaping (... I suspect something the former owners put in).

Fritillaries were also flying about both in the wetland and up by the house. I suspect the abundance of thistle and other unnamed host plants around have been supporting the population.

So I'm left with the conclusion that if all this wonderful nature can grow around his house without any care at all, then despite the weeds it should be worth it to install a prairie. And if he hates that idea then I'll just tell him what to buy and where to plant it!

Some Summer Flowering Forbs

2011-07-29T01:55:00.000-04:00

Tall Coreopsis is flowering! Coreopsis tripteris. I planted this in two locations this year. The first I bought from an online nursery as a bare root plant and it's gotten to be about 4' tall. No flowers open yet but there are buds. The second location was from a 3 gallon pot I found among the massive inventory Popes' Gardens has. They're a local nursery about the size of a farm that sells at least one of everything. I wish they stocked more natives but they have such a huge selection that it's easy to overlook things like Tall Coreopsis. I kind of jumped up and gasped when I saw they sell it. The one from their nursery is flowering now, with it's blooms pictured above.

To be more accurate, 3' high isn't very tall at all but that should change next year. An unfortunate side effect of nursery grown can be stressed roots, either from growing in a pot to long or being divided off an adult plant. This stress limits the natural growth and disrupts the normal cycle of growing. This isn't necessarily bad for the plant though, it encourages early flowering is all. Next year it should grow to a more normal size of 5' to 8' tall.

To talk a little bit more about stressed plants, it's almost standard practice in the nursery trade. Think about how many trees being sold are taller than you are and yet they sit in pots where their root structure is little more than the size of a basket ball. Ideally you should grow everything from seed, or at least only plant things that are about knee high, so the root structure is more evenly balanced with the top growth. Time is the issue though as many of those potted trees are likely 5 to 10 years old.

The flowers to Tall Coreopsis aren't very showy, but frankly that's normal for a Coreopsis. The real show will hopefully happen next year when the plant isn't as stressed. Tearing out some of the tangled roots before planting encourages them to grow out and get a firm grip on the surrounding soil. Next year they should reach 5' to 8' tall and flower much more heavily. I have a Perennial Sunflower planted right next to this one (not in the photo) and the contrast of flower size should be neat to see.

Also flowering now is Sneezeweed. I can't remember why I bought this plant honestly. I've never been happy with the amount of pollinators on it. I hate the red ring around the flower, it really annoys me when plants have this. I'd rather the bloom be totally red or not at all. Red is to showy of a color and it can easily contrast with green in irritating ways. It's not that I hate red flowers, but it's the hardest flower color to ignore and can be very distracting when seen in the background. It just takes the eye off the focus, say a butterfly on a flower... on and then there's that big red glob in the background. I'd get rid of the thing but it's filling in a bare spot and nothing seems to survive very well there anyhow. I used to have a totally yellow form but it seems to have died off.

Black-Eyed Susans, Rudbeckia hirta, are also flowering finally. In the past I've listed this on plants honeybees love. I still stand by that but I really need to stress the following: You need a field, like a 10' by 10' area of just this plant (and maybe related or similar flowering species) all in bloom to really get honeybee attention. They otherwise ignore it completely along with most other pollinator. This little sweat bee (right?) so far is the only thing I've seen working the flowers all year. I know something likes pollinating them because they keep coming back year after year. Black-Eyed Susans are biannual! The nonflowering leaves poking out of the ground are next year's blooms waiting to happen. Occasionally there is a perennial in the mix but those aren't the standard.

What's great about this plant is it's a pioneer species. The seeds germinate in response to sunlight so you'll find this plant reseeding itself where there are bare patches of soil. If there's to much organic matter laying about then this species slowly dies out in the field. After a good swift burning all the plant debris shrivels up into ash and allows more light to hit the soil. Within two years they're back at it flowering in all their glory. Of course if you're haying the field once a year, that is removing your lawn clippings instead of mulching them back into the land, then they don't really go away.

Generally they're one of the easier plants to spread around by seed. After the plant pretty much dies back and you're left only with the dead stems, cut off a few seed heads and sprinkle their contents about in open bare soil in a full sun location. Next year if they germinate you should be able to see a leaf or two poking out of the soil, and the year after that they should be of flowering age. Some seeds won't germinate until the next year, so you'll get fluctuation in how lush and full their patches are unless you keep at it reseeding them around.

As far as nectar and pollen go, you'll get far more interesting things happening with Sunflowers, Liatris, Coneflowers, and many others. It's just nice to have a few plants not covered in bees now and again. Some Fritillary Butterflies use Rudbeckia as a host plant as well, though it's vital to their populations to leave the plant stems where they are until next spring. The caterpillar pupa over winter on the stem and preemptive burning or mowing can decimate their population locally.

Mountain Mint Madness

2011-07-28T01:29:00.000-04:00

About a month ago the honeybees and bumblebees lost interest in the Mountain Mint, Pycnanthemum sp. presumably to take nectar from bigger and better things. In their absence some of the more obscure pollinating wasps have taking their place.

A lot of these wasps refuse to stay still for pictures so a short video was needed to capture them in action. The rather colorful stripped scoliid wasp was the only that I couldn't get at least a decent picture of. Others were more cooperative.

Mud Wasp of some sort.

Summer Azure of some sort.

Another plant I've seen some of these on was the Rattlesnake Master, Eryngium yuccifolium. Last year I had four of them, but only one has come back. I have seen the longer of the two thin dark mud wasps on other kinds of mint as well.

Imperial Moth Eggs Hatching

2011-07-27T14:50:00.000-04:00

A friend mailed me some Imperial Moth eggs last week, Eacles imperialis. They were quick to turn from a light green to transparent.

Within a few days of arriving they've started hatching. After a few quick nibbles they hold still a while, waiting for their spines to inflate (emerge?) and harden. These hard spikes will be their only protection early on.

I was also sent some Polyphemus Moth eggs so hopefully I'll be able to update on those too.

Catching and Release Giant Silk Moths

2011-07-25T14:58:00.000-04:00

After two attempts trying at catch and release with Eacles imperialis, Imperial Moth, I have no eggs to show for it. The idea with catch and release is as you can imagine. Catch and store in a dark place where they can spend the night. Sheltered outside in a birdcage or screened terrarium will work. There's no way to tell if they're mated with from looks alone but if they're mated they should start laying eggs in the darkness (leaves to a host plant are optional). If they're not mated with then there's the potential to attract a male right up to the cage and it's a simple matter of sticking him inside with her. They're quite easy to handle.

Telling the two genders apart as I recently learned from a friend isn't as you might read in books. Typically males are darker and have more brown/purple color, while females tend more towards the yellow. I'm told this is inconsistent, and it's "easier" to judge gender based on the antenna. Males have fluffier antenna, while the female is thinner, and more strand-like.

If there's no eggs in the morning, then it's best to release them later that night, or at least leave the lid off the cage while outside just before dark. The life cycle to these moths is something like 2 weeks in the adult stage. Weather pending that's not a lot of time to get stuff done.

I'm not sure how successful this method is with other moths. Polyphemus moths are the only one I'm confident enough to say, "they will lay eggs in the dark, even in the absence of a host plant." I would assume other giant silk moths would do the same, especially because they all seem to be generalist foragers using most tree genera in the average forest as host plants. Females are commonly mated with just after they've come out of their cocoon, or crystals, during the late afternoon hours. As darkness rolls in she almost doesn't need to care where she deposits her eggs in a forest full of host plants. This makes sense in my mind at least. Other moths who have more specific host plants or lay eggs at different times of the day might not be as receptive to this method.

Upon success: young caterpillars should be divided into small groups (10 at most) in containers they can't escape from. They should be fed their host plant into adulthood, and perhaps bred in captivity before releasing into the wild again. This can be harder than it sounds, especially when a single female to one of these species can lay some 400 eggs over night. If that's to much to handle, consider sharing the wealth with others, or releasing the young caterpillars on host plants as they're born.

I had success getting a Polyphemus moth to lay eggs last year, and she deposited ~200 eggs. I released her into the yard afterward and found she'd laid eggs in our oak tree where I discovered a cocoon to at least one successful individual. The mistake I made with that generation was keeping all the caterpillars together in the same cage, and eventually moving them to a setup where they started escaping. Sadly not one of them made it past the second or third instar. They kept wondering off away from their host plant leaves, I think attempting to disperse, and the AC did them in shortly after. Once they get beyond this wondering stage I'm told they settle down and play nice.

This year I'm going to try keeping them all inside on a heating pad in small groups. Once they're old enough I have a larger setup outside on our covered deck. A friend mailed me eggs to two species and hopefully I'll be able to update you all on their progress.

Hummingbird Moths like Amsonia

2011-07-23T21:55:00.000-04:00

Hemaris diffinis, Snowberry Clearwing (I think). Last week several dozen of these suddenly showed up taking nectar from assorted honeysuckles and ironweeds currently in bloom. Host Plants include: Dwarf Honeysuckle, Honeysuckle, Snowberry, Amsonia, and Dogbane. Preference for native species is likely as there are a number of imported honeysuckles. I've yet to see any caterpillars on anything, so maybe this species might occur in an annual cycle. Meaning you'll never see the developing stages and the adult side by side.

The real news here is reading that something uses Amsonia as a host plant! It's a somewhat under used perennial but is occasionally used by landscapers. I've only recently planted two species and have no pictures of yet. They are Eastern Blue Star, Amsonia tabernaemontana, and what's called Spring Sky Blue Star, Amsonia ciliata.

The most common species used in landscaping seems to be Amsonia hubrichtii, which has wonderful narrow leaves. They flower in the springtime and have an excellent yellow color come fall. What I don't like about this species is how small the blooms are. The flower petals are really narrow and not very showy. This is why I went with Amsonia ciliata who's flowers are much showier but still has the great narrow leaves and fall color. Amsonia tabernaemontana is probably the safest choice as far as cold hardness goes, however the leaves are larger and the light and airy effect is somewhat lost. Plus you're stuck with the narrow looking flowers as in A. hubrichtii. I would suspect A. tabernaemontana would make the best host plant though because of it's broader leaves. Milkweeds with narrow pine-like leaves are often the last to be nibbled by Monarch Caterpillars for example. They go for Swamp Milkweed, Butterfly Weed, and Common Milkweed which have more "normal" looking leaves first.

Some Summer Flowering Shrubs

2011-07-23T01:03:00.000-04:00

Cephalanthus occidentalis, Buttonbush, is blooming! These shrubs grow happily in 4' of water, or along the river's edge, and they make a nice garden plant too but benefit I wouldn't put them in a spot too dry. I consider this plant to be our native butterfly bush, though unfortunately it has a shorter bloom season and with shorter lived flowers. When it does flower though it's said they're rarely seen without a butterfly around them. As you can see bees love them too. The tube shaped flowers are not to deep for honeybees to work so this could be a nice pollinator shrub, ideal for a water garden.

The blooms are fragrant, in that you have to put your nose right up to it. It's not what I'd call a good smell but it's okay, something different.

Another shrub that started blooming this week was Clethra alnifolia, Summersweet or Sailor's Delight. Pictured here is a cultivar called 'Ruby Spice' which I've found actually varies a bit in color, which seems unusual for a cultivar. The true species has solid cream white flowers while this cultivar varies from mostly white to solid red/pink. Regardless these can be incredibly fragrant, (when they want to be it seems,) and very shade tolerant. I find these growing all over as rather small shrubs in the woods. They can get nice and big too, but usually it's when they're in full sun and right next to a water source. Both are excellent for bees.

Identification Flub

2011-07-19T14:00:00.000-04:00

So a year or two ago I ordered about a dozen plugs to Eupatorium fistulosum, Hollow Stem Joe Pye Weed, which gets 5 to 7 feet tall. What arrived on accident was labeled Eupatorium coelestinum, Blue Mist Flower, which gets 2 to 3 feet tall at most. I was okay with the mix up, and they handled it nicely. They said can go ahead and keep the plants they sent and that they were sending me the correct species. As mentioned this was a few years ago, things have established, and grown, and finally the Blue Mist Flower has decided to flower....

... as something in the wrong genus. Yes along with getting the species wrong, they went ahead and got the genus wrong too. What they sent me was Ironweed, Vernonia sp. I already had a species of this that's decided to flower this year as well. It's the purple one up top. The one they sent me has more of a magenta flower, and the buds spread out before flowering.

I have contacted the nursery about this mix up. I'm not naming who they are because I really like them, though if you bought Blue Mist Flower or Ironweed from them and are having the opposite come up, you probably know which nursery it is. They have a huge selection of plants, so stuff like this does happen.

The exact species probably won't be known for another year or so. Though I have asked if they could ID it for me with less than satisfactory results. Ironweeds are notorious for hybridization. Also plants can be somewhat stunted the first few years they grow. I remember the first year I planted Cup Plant; they were 3 feet tall when they flowered! Today those same Cup Plants range from 5 to 7 feet tall before flowering. A similar thing might be happening here with the Ironweeds. I note they don't have many flowers on them this year either. Perhaps next year it will be more apparent which species they are.

My only gripe here is that I planted them in places meant for 2 to 3 foot tall plants. They're currently at 5 feet, but if they're a certain species they may get to be 8! Not exactly the a charming ground cover I was going for. Again I'm not mad at all. Next year I might have to take a shovel to a few plants is no reason to be angry. Vernonia sp. all tend to be very popular with pollinators. I've already had one hummingbird moth go nuts with one of the plants. I think of the genus as the thornless version of Thistle.

Imperial Moth

2011-07-17T23:31:00.001-04:00

Imperial Moths are emerging, Eacles imperalis. In the northern part of North America they only have one generation, adults only live for 2 weeks, and from the earliest ones emerging to the last ones hatching out, they're only around for 3 to 4 weeks of the year. They're one of the few (the only?) giant silk moths who's caterpillar stage burrows underground to spin a cocoon. The result, (come July!) is the adult moth emerging from the burrow, a shallow one I believe and scurrying along the ground looking for something to climb. Once elevated they inflate their wings to take flights. Males are the first to emerge I believe and typically have more purple/brown in their color scheme. Pictured above is a male I believe, though they typically come darker. Females are almost completely yellow but maintain the longer stripe of purple/brown along the wings.

In the off chance this was a female (which I still might be wrong about) I decided to keep it over night in a dark place. In the morning there were no eggs so I decided to let it go. Assuming it was a female though there's a tactic you can use to get them to lay in captivity. Unmated females don't usually lay eggs, but if you put them in a bird cage they might attract a male right to the cage. You can stick him in with her, assuming love can't take place through the bars, and afterwards you can set the male go, and let her lay some eggs before releasing.

Host plants include:Pine, Basswood, Birch, Cedar, Elm, Sycamore, Walnut, Oak, Box Elder, Maple, Sweet Gum, Sassafras, and other woody species. There is a subspecies called pini which feeds only on Conifers, and has paler males than usual. Caterpillars come in a range of colors depending on what host plant they're on, see some of them Here. Remember though to complete their life cycle they'll need some sort of medium to burrow around inside. If you feel unable to accommodate them over the winter then consider releasing them into some leaf litter.

CORRECTION: I'm told by a reliable source that the wing patterns aren't accurate for determining male and female. Males tend to have bigger "fluffier" antenna while the female is more strand-like.

My Prairie Update

2011-07-17T00:51:00.000-04:00

Alright I've spend enough posts about other gardens, how's my prairie project going?

It's at least colorful looking minus all the clutter laying around. It's weird nice I think my yard looks in person. There's something about posting photos of it on the internet for all to see that really brings out the clutter.

Here it is from another angle. One of the species of Coreopsis has gone completely dormant/dead. All of the Western Spiderwort seems to be dying back after they flowered. The milkweed is doing great, they have flowers and are sending up even more shoots, with at least 3 or 4 of the 12 plants flowering at any given time. Next year everything should go extremely well.

I've since been transplanting some Liatris into the garden from elsewhere in the garden. I find Liatris to be neat as they don't have much of a root structure but moving them triggers flowering to start immediately.

There's a nice patch of Black Eyed Susan in the older prairie garden next to the tree. They're as mutated as ever naturally.

Cassia hebecarpa, Wild Senna, has started flowering. This is a host plant to the Cloudless Sulphur Butterfly, Phoebis sennae with emphasis on the flowers and seed pods. Leaves are mostly a secondary option for caterpillar consumption. I'd like to plant more of this as the butterfly is quite nice looking.

And speaking of butterflies I've attracted to the yard. Here is either the Spicebush Swallowtail or Black Swallowtail. I have a spicebush but it's very tiny. I have lots of things in the carrot family about which are what black swallowtails love. I'm not certain which this is but I found a picture of a spicebush swallowtail that matches this one perfectly and that's what I'm siding with. It's a shame I don't have a more suitable host plant for it though.

Lilium superbum, Turks Cap Lily, started flowering elsewhere in the garden. I have a cultivar of this in the prairie garden but frankly it looks as effed up looking as that black eyed susan flower. Not sure who thought the thing was pretty enough to cultivate, as the true species lacks random growths and tendril-like flaky structures on the flower.

While the wind was blowing one day I realized how perfect a companion they are to the cup plant. Both are almost as tall as one another, the flower color goes great, they're different enough to not be redundant, everything sounds perfect. I will certainly be planting some bulbs around this fall.

A Class on Milkweed

2011-07-16T15:57:00.001-04:00

Once again I took a class up at the Mt. Cuba Center. To their credit, this is a wonderful place and really is one of those hidden treasures few people take advantage of. This week's class was on the wonders of milkweed. It was a good course as expected, however they lack enough milkweed species on display in the gardens to really make the course worth it. The specimens they did have mostly were either not blooming or not interesting enough to stand out in any meaningful way. Many of them are not even sold in the nursery trade despite their beauty. There was emphasis on companion planting but even this fell short, and mostly repeated information from last week's meadow studies course.

I feel like the lecture could have been improved with more pictures of milkweeds being used in people's gardens. This way they could show off more companion plants not on display.

There was mention of some fauna associations such as the Red Milkweed Beetle, Tetraopes tetrophthalmus, pictured above. And it was neat finding one out in their gardens doing it's thing. But at no point did anyone really talk about the neat thing about this beetle, and my photo doesn't portray it accurately either. It's other common name is Four Eyed Beetle because it has eyes both above and below the antenna socket. This is one of those neat facts gardeners might enjoy.

Asclepias tuberosa, Butterfly Weed, was the natural highlight of the meadow garden. It's completely over used and among the more common species you can buy in the nursery trade. Seeing it in their meadow was a little boring (as I'd seen it the week before) but they did have it in a variety of it's color forms: solid orange, some with red stripes on the inside, some red on the outside, red both in and out, yellow petals, overall pale orange, solid red flowers, and lots of combinations there above. So this species was well represented.

Asclepias virvidiflora, Green Milkweed, did not stand out at all. We almost walked past the entire patch. Granted we were in the meadow garden and it's setup to be a meadow but I feel like this and other species should be represented in a more formal looking garden somewhere, just to show off how the green color can be brought out somehow and used.

Asclepias verticillata, Whorled Milkweed, was interesting to see in person. I swear I read somewhere that this particular species, with it's grass-like leaves, has nectar that's poisonous for humans to consume. I might be mixing this up with a species out west though. I remember white flowers and grass-like leaves. I could be wrong of course and I can't seem to find a reference for it being poisonous anywhere. But anyhow, this is a rather short species that generally hates being watered or being anywhere near it, especially over the winter. You find this growing in places that have completely nutrient-less, infertile soil where nothing else seems to grow. The instructor said they used to have a patch of about 20 plants there but they all died from to much snow staying on the patch over the winter.

Overall the course was well put together but would have benefited from more gardens where milkweed was being used, maybe with better companions. Growing it all out in the meadow and forest edge where assorted plants are almost growing randomly makes for a harder sell on getting people to grow this. The green milkweed in particular was dying for a companion to bring out the color, as it's otherwise lost against the grass. I was amazed to learn that A. incarnata, Swamp Milkweed is actually fragrant. But not in the sense that it's producing to attract insects, but more from the sun heating up the flower. It smells like dessert with hints of wax and nectar mixed in. Very pleasant indeed and something I never knew before.

More Early Summer Blooms

2011-07-14T15:31:00.000-04:00

Here are some other plants I saw at the Mt. Cuba Center. They were in their Prairie Garden but more located along a path at the top and growing individually or in clumps for educational purposes.

Heliopsis helianthoides var. scabra 'Summer Nights' is the orange ringed form of Western Sunflower or Ox-Eye Sunflower. The true species lacks the orange color and is a more solid yellow. This was definitely an eye catcher, with it's dark foliage and bright flowers, which cover the plant. I read that this species can be aggressive spreading but it's unclear weather that's by rhizomes or by seed. It's pretty enough that I might be willing to find out.

Stokesia laevis, Stokes' Aster. I was growing this in my garden for a time but it died out on me. They benefit from acidic soil apparently. Personally I don't know why this isn't planted instead of Bachelor Buttons. The flowers look similar enough in both shape and color. At least here you have a much bigger flower.

Stokes' Aster 'Peachie's Pick' is a purple flowering cultivar. I think they also come in white as well.

Allium cernuum, Nodding Onion. This wild onion is said to have an overpowering smell and taste, and thus it's culinary potential has been overlooked in favor of the varieties we use today. The wild onion still grows in the wild but can make a nice addition to the garden too. Personally I'm not a fan of this plant but I may one day get around to getting some. It's just not on the top of my list.

They had a lot more stuff flowering there but I don't always take good photos. Their forest was absolutely blooming with Black Cohosh or Bug Bane, I forget which flowers sooner. I have Bug Bane but it rarely does well in my garden.

Meadow "Garden"

2011-07-12T23:02:00.000-04:00

Earlier in the week I attended a course at the Mt. Cuba Center on Meadow Studies. First off I need to put a little disclaimer here; I made like 3 wrong turns getting there and arrived 10 minutes late for the class. I found the title of the course to be a little misleading but the description was accurate. It basically boiled down to "Hay here are some plants blooming now. Let's go look at them." And there's nothing wrong with that but I feel the tone was a little off for a class on meadows.

After reading books like The Ecology and Management of Prairies in the Central United States (Bur Oak Book) by Chris Helzer, who blogs by the way, I came into the course expecting things to be different.

Basically a healthy meadow consists of 150 to 300 plant species. The Mt. Cuba Center seems to run their meadow differently. I think it's correct to say they're trying to maintain a specific look rather than allowing it to go through a natural succession. Other than removing trees now and again I'd say they don't allow their plant species to change over time.

By design they favor grass species over forbs. Here you can see an abundance of Little Bluestem, Schizachyrium scoparium, which is a grass that ranges from blue-green to green in color. There were lots of other grass species present but only 4 or so were highlighted. To some people this might look boring but grasses really don't shine in the meadow until the autumn and winter. There is something so majestic and calming about watching a field of tall grasses sweep with the wind. When the sight takes up your entire field of vision there's nothing quite like being there in person. It really is something you have to see in person to appreciate; cameras do not capture the effect at all.

To comment on the tone of the course a little I noticed there was almost no talk of succession. The instructor mentions the Rudbeckia hirta, Black-eyed Susan, will reseed itself around but they didn't mention why. Again this leads me to believe they're more interested in maintaining a certain look as opposed to being a course on prairie preservation. There is a follow up course I'm attending next month so I might be wrong about this.

In truth things like Black-eyed Susan have seeds that germinate when in the sun. Thus they are a pioneer species. If a tree falls in the woods, their seeds will germinate. If there's lots of sun hitting the ground, their seeds will germinate. However, several years later this is unlikely the case. All the grasses and forbs in a meadow die back to the ground each year leaving lots of dead stems. Slowly but surely this abundance of organic matter shades out the seeds or prevents them from touching the soil. They're slowly replaced by things like Echinacea purpurea, Purple Coneflower, which are more perennial.

There was a discussion on installation of a meadow and some good pointers given by the instructor but this was only after someone asked about it. Not planting plugs to warm season grasses in the fall was among the smarter things mentioned. As these species only grow when the soil is warm they won't do anything in the fall or winter and typically die as a result.

I look forward to the second course next month. Again, I showed up 10 minutes late so there could be a whole discussion I missed. For a good read, if not a little boring though I recommend The Ecology and Management of Prairies in the Central United States (Bur Oak Book).

Some Summer Forbs

2011-07-11T16:47:00.000-04:00

The major bloomers of summer have finally started up here. My honeybees have finally noticed! Yeah know I spend like $500 a year on plants specifically to boost honey yields and it almost never works until summer hits. Now I doubt there are many forbs that literally add a jar of honey onto what I pull out, a tree maybe, but not a single forb. So along with being a good nectar source I think it's important the plant be native, drought tolerant, and able to spread around if only to one day sell them to others and get your money back. So here are the highlights the honeybees seem to be loving outside right now.

Pycnanthemum sp. Mountain Mint. The very tiny flowers to this plant emerge randomly out a domed cluster lined with special leaves that are naturally covered in a white dust. Bees can not resist.

I find about four honeybees working a single plant nonstop and that's typically for the whole day. Mint plants are certainly a favorite among bees and I hope this native spreads itself around some.

Asclepias tuberosa, Butterfly Weed. This is a garden staple of any butterfly garden, not because the flowers get lots of butterflies on them but because it's the host plant to the Monarch Butterfly.

These are all plugs I installed this year and they're producing some nice flower heads. I haven't seen any honeybees on them yet but I know from experience that they'll eventually find them. They started flowering in June and next year each plant should send up more stems to fill in brilliantly.

Cup Plant, Silphium perfoliatum. The fun thing about this plant is the leaves form a small cup at the stem, and the flower have the option of opening either from the middle out or from the outside in. Bees love this plant and surprisingly it's good at attracting butterfly too.

I have these plants forming a wall right out front of my hives. I'm happy to see they haven't spread as much as I thought they were. I started with 4 plants and each one is pretty much taking up a 2' by 2' area with multiple stems. I'm getting lots of flowers and already some butterflies have stopped by.

Echinacea purpurea, being pollinated by a honey bee. I don't have as many of these plants as I used to but I'm hoping that will change. This plant came up from a seedling I had several years ago and it's starting to seed itself around.

Ironweed, Vernonia sp. I'm not sure of the ID yet. This is a rather small clump of flowers that a hummingbird moth was all over. I like to think of Ironweed as a hornless kind of thistle topped with Liatris-like flowers. As it is only a small clump I don't see much on it but I'm sure that will change later on. As it turns out I was accidentally mailed a dozen or so species of Ironweed, different than what's above.

Crematogaster cerasi Flying Early

2011-07-06T16:01:00.000-04:00

Early one morning recently I discovered what I think is Crematogaster cerasi flying.

Normally I find their nuptial flights in August or September. I guess they're ready to fly in July but typically at this time of year we get a 4 week long drought. They've never done it this early in years past. A good rain fall came through the area and triggered the whole thing. The colony I found was sending up only males, a tactic done to prevent inbreeding. Colonies will only produce either males or queens, or lean heavily towards one gender or the other each year.

They fly early in the morning and are typically done by noon. Queens look rather bulky, only slightly bigger than a pavement ant queen, Tetramorium.