When an Entomologist Adopts a Meadow

When a native meadow is created in what used to be a sprawling expanse of grass in a city park, it's usually plant people--gardeners, botanists--who do the planting and the ongoing weeding.

But what happens when an entomologist comes along later on and adopts the meadow? This particular meadow, in Buhr Park in Ann Arbor, MI, exists and thrives in part because of a plant-loving neighbor, Jeannine Palms. Recently, though, I received an email from another friend in Ann Arbor, entomologist David Cappaert, who is spending his retirement documenting the mind-boggling diversity of insect life he finds near and far from home.

"Occasionally," he wrote, "I adopt an interesting local plant community, and spend serious time documenting the resident insects. In the last week or so, I’ve been looking at flowers and foliage in the Buhr Park meadows, by day and night."

The result is a gallery of photos of the many insects and spiders that visit the meadow or have taken up residence there. The photos with a white screen in the background were photographed at night when they were attracted to an illuminated white sheet stretched on a frame. 

Among his finds were a couple specialists. Most everyone knows that a monarch caterpillar feeds only on milkweed. But there are a lot of other specialists out there. 

David found a denticulate longhorned bee, which will look to the untrained eye like most any other bee, but whose larvae only eat the pollen of the boneset flower, 

and an ironweed plume moth, whose caterpillars only feed on ironweed. 

Even if they lack the charisma of a monarch butterfly, knowing that there are insects that absolutely depend on this or that kind of plant brings new meaning to the work of planting and sustaining a meadow. Without boneset, the denticulate longhorned bee is out of luck.

Thanks to David for sharing his finds. Lucky is the meadow that gets adopted by an entomologist with a seasoned eye and a good camera.