Bees On Boneset

The most numerous insects crowding the boneset flowers for weeks on end during this unusually cool August were bumble bees and honeybees. There were also lots of tinier bee-like creatures zigzagging across the plant or landing to feast at length. With those, it was very hard to tell if they were all the same kind or could be distinguished one from another in some way. Note the sacs of pollen on the legs of the honey bees and bumble bees.

These three bees raise the total count to 32.

Flies On Boneset

This is the third post documenting and roughly grouping nearly 50 species of insects and spiders that have been visiting a cluster of seven boneset plants in my backyard.

No other wildflower in my backyard, with the possible exception of the meadow rue that bloomed earlier in the season, has attracted anywhere near the variety and sheer numbers of species that this unassuming boneset has.

Again, the grouping of all these insects together is based on a guess as to what constitutes a fly. If all of these nine photos are of different species, then the species count rises to 29.

Update, August 30, 2009: Thanks to Keith Bayless, who provided latin names for many of these insects (see comment section)
First photo: Tachinidae: Trichopoda pennipes?
(Tachina Fly)

2 Calliphoridae: Lucilia? sp.

3 Muscidae: Coenosia?

5 Tachinidae

6 Dolichopodidae: Condylostylus

7 Hymenoptera: Halictidae: Augochlorini

8 Hymenoptera: Halictidae: Augochlorini

9 Calliphoridae: Pollenia?

Boneset Bugs and Beetles

I hope you like Boneset, which is a 4-5 foot high wildflower blooming now along streams and in my backyard in Princeton, because you're going to see a lot of it in this and accompanying posts, serving as a deceivingly bland white background for an astonishing variety of bugs, bees, wasps, flies, spiders, moths and butterflies. I started noticing so many different kinds that I decided to document and post as many as possible on this blog.

What has boneset got that all those other, more brightly colored flowers lack? Those others may draw a random bee or two, but boneset's platters of shallow, honey-scented flowers serve as a mecca for a book full of insects. One day I'll crack that book and find out what they all are. For now, some photos.

With this first of several posts documenting the variety of life attracted to a boneset, the count for kinds of bug or beetle-like insects stands at nine.

Update, August 30, 2009: Thanks to Keith Bayless who provided latin names for most of these insects! (see comment section)

First photo: Coleoptera: Cerambycidae: Megacyllene robiniae (Locust Borer--indicates that black locusts grow nearby)



2 Coleoptera: Cantharidae: Chauliognathus pennsylvanicus
(Soldier Beetle)

3 Hemiptera: Rhopalidae?
(Blog host's note: initial internet search suggests something like Harmostes reflexulus)

4 Hemiptera: Reduviidae: Phymata pennsylvanica
(Pennsylvania Ambush Bug)

5 Lepidoptera: Yponomeutidae: Atteva punctella
(Ailanthus webworm moth--a kind of ermine moth that uses Tree of Heaven as a host plant in its larval stage)

6 Coleoptera: Coccinellidae
(Ladybug)

7 Hemiptera: Cicadellidae
Note: Red-Banded Leaf Hopper (Graphocephala coccinea)

10 Coleoptera? Phalacridae?
(Note: These are referred to as Shining Flower Beetles)

11 Hemipera: Thyreocoridae
(Note: a "Negro Bug")

Ambushed by Obedient Plant

You'd think my customary route to work at Mountain Lakes Preserve would run out of surprises, but one day last week, I happened to glance to the right down an unmowed sewer right of way, and a completely unexpected sight caught my eye.

Obedient Plant, perhaps part of an old, forgotten planting near Pettoranello Gardens. It's called obedient because if you push one of the tubular blossums left or right, it will stay where you put it. The plant itself, however, is disobedient, tending to spread aggressively from where you put it in a garden.

Cup Plant--The Mark Twain Connection

It may not look particularly special, in a season crowded with yellow flowers, but this plant has traveled far and wide to get here, and is of high pedigree. Its travels began when a certain someone, visiting his fiance in Hartford, CT, spotted it thriving next to a dumpster in the parking lot behind the house Mark Twain built and lived in for much of his life, .

A discreet thinning of that thick stand traveled to Ann Arbor, Michigan, where it joined other prairie species in a front yard. When its proud owner moved to North Carolina, he took a plant along, and gave it new digs in a wetland garden at a neighborhood park.

From there, his brother took a small clump to Wisconsin, where it thrived in another front yard on a quiet residential street north of Milwaukee.

By this time, the original plant-knapper had become a purist, reluctant to transport plant material and soil from North Carolina to his new home in Princeton, NJ, lest it contain invasive species. Missing the cupplant, he asked his brother for seed from the plant in Wisconsin. It was duly sent and planted, yet sentimentality was not enough to insure good care. Only one seedling survived the neglect, and finally was given a spot in a backyard wetland garden.

Only now, in the fourteenth year of its travels, has it finally begun to bloom here in Princeton.

CupPlant is named for the way the leaves form a cup around the stem. The cup holds water after a rain, providing a nice spot for birds to slake their thirst. It's a member of the Silphium genus, which includes other beautiful, tall prairie wildflowers like Prairie Dock and Compass Plant. A traveler seeking orientation can look at a Compass Plant's broad leaves, which line up on a north-south axis.

Though CupPlant is a native, I've never encountered it growing naturally in the field. You'll find it planted along the lakeshores of NY's Central Park, and occasionally in botanical gardens. I like to think the flower caught Mark Twain's eye one day, and that a sprig traveled home with him, on the first leg of a continuing journey.

Canal Nature Trail

A well-constructed sign, the product of a scout project supervised by the D&R Canal State Park ranger, greets trail users just off Harrison Street. I've been meaning to fill it with flyers full of information about what grows along the trail, but for now a blog post will have to do.


Near the sign is a swath of Switchgrass--a member of the tall-grass prairies.

Take the trail this time of year, and you may encounter Ground Nut, a native bean, growing near the lakeshore.

An anonymous beetle on an ironweed blossom.


A flowering Winged Sumac, whose leaves will turn radiant red in a couple months.



A goldfinch gorging on something in the cutleaf coneflowers--maybe the immature seeds. All of these wildflowers were getting mowed down until the state park ranger, Stephanie Fox, agreed to reduce mowing of areas away from the trails to once a year in the dormant season. This turned out to be a great way to save fuel and time while allowing an impressive variety of native wildflowers to prosper.

The Jumpseeds Are Jumpin'

Why call a plant "Virginia Knotweed" when you could call it "Jumpseed", and watch how the seeds jump when you pull your fingers up the stem? There are so many less than ideal common names for native plants--many a beautiful plant has "weed" in its name--that it's a relief when a good one comes along.

So Jumpseed it is--scientific name Polygonum virginianum. The photo shows a whole understory of jumpseed, ready to live up to its name, over next to the Pettoranello Gardens parking lot.

Thanks to Carolyn Edelmann for providing the name, and an explanation of its meaning.

Savanna By The Lake

It's common to think of landscapes as either open or closed, bright field or dark woods. But walk along the towpath that runs between Lake Carnegie and the canal, just west of Harrison Street, and you enter an inbetween landscape of scattered trees and sunny openings, where wildflowers find their niches in the endlessly varied gradations of light.

It's hard to say what's "natural" about this spot. Many of the trees were planted by Princeton University long ago, and this narrow strip of land is squeezed between manmade canal and lake. But the landscape is probably closer in character to what the first European settlers would have found, back when Indians used fire to open up the landscape. The periodic fires would have left the oaks unharmed, protected by their thick fire-resistant bark, but most other trees would not have survived, allowing the sun to reach the ground and support a rich understory of grasses and herbs.

Although prescribed burns are used as a management tool elsewhere in the D&R Canal State Park, the land along Carnegie lake has been kept savanna-like by annual mowing. This is the best time of year to pay a visit. Beneath spreading oaks of many kinds, an unusual abundance of wildflowers prosper (see Aug. 27 post). On a recent walk, we startled a great blue heron who complained vigorously as it flew away, saw a red tailed hawk perching low near the trail, and watched from close range a goldfinch feasting on the impressive stand of cutleaf coneflowers. Right beside this natural abundance is a human current of canoes and kayaks on the canal, and joggers passing by on the towpath. This spot is in no way remote, but is richer than many a far-flung refuge.

Inventory Walk at Greenway Meadows Aug. 24

This Sunday at 2pm, we'll explore Greenway Meadows, particularly the area along the StonyBrook. The park has great potential for creating wet meadows in low, sunny swales--the sort perfectly suited for boneset and the many other sun-loving wildflowers featured lately on this blog--but we'll see what's growing there now. We may also check out all the native species planted around the D&R Greenway's Johnson Education Center.

This is the last in our summer series of inventory walks, and also marks the last week for our summer intern extraordinaire, Sarah Chambliss, whose good works this summer have been made possible by the Princeton Internships in Civic Service (PICS) and Friends of Princeton Open Space.

Meet at the Greenway Meadows parking lot, across from the entrance to Johnson Park School, out Rosedale Road.

The Friends of Princeton Open Space, which I work for, contributed $300,000 to the purchase of Greenway Meadows, and also helped purchase 14 wooded acres across Rosedale Road from the park. These plant inventory walks are part of an effort to document plant life in Princeton's preserved areas for the upcoming publication of the Princeton Environmental Resource Inventory.

Backyard Biodiversity at 7pm

If you want biodiversity in your backyard, plant a Eupatorium. This one happens to be boneset, perhaps the most magical of all Eupatoriums in its allure for pollinators. The progression in my backyard begins with JoePyeWeed, shifts to boneset and mistflower, then finishes off with Late-Flowering Thoroughwort. All of these have tiny, shallow flowers that appeal to an unusual range of insects.



Boneset rewards anyone willing to stand still long enough to watch at close range the comings and goings at this five foot high fast food joint. There's the usual honey bees and bumblebees hanging out, but then what are all these other creatures in wild outfits? A wasp with blue iridescent wings and brown abdomen. Another wasp with an improbably thin waist. And then another bug of mysterious identity, a couple kinds of moths, and a ladybug cruising up and down the stems in search of a meal.



I have no names for most of these, only a sense of wonder at all the varied life that meets for dinner on a boneset, at 7pm on a Sunday evening.

The Tree That Ate A House

Don't let this happen to you. By all means, be careful what you plant near your foundation, especially now that global warming has increased the metabolic rates of trees. The occupants of this modest brick ranch were lucky to escape.

Upcoming Inventory Walks and a Workday

This Sunday, August 17, a morning session at the high school wetland and an afternoon walk at Marquand Park. August 24, a 2pm inventory walk at Greenway Meadows is planned (the first one got rained out).

Workday at the Wetland: At 9am, we'll meet at the Princeton High School ecolab, i.e. the detention basin that was transformed into a wetland. The native species we planted last year are doing great, and some weeds are doing better than we might wish. It's a good chance to get acquainted with both, before pulling out the latter. The wetland is part dry ground, part wet, so you needn't wear rubber boots unless it rains heavily the day before. The wetland is on Walnut Street, tucked between the two new wings of the high school.

Inventory Walk at Marquand Park: At 2pm, we'll meet at Marquand Park, and explore the less developed areas to see what's growing untended. This, I just realized, is our first inventory walk in Princeton borough. The park is on Lovers Lane, between 206 and Mercer Street. The photo is from a November, 2006 post on this blog--one of the giant tulip poplars in the park.

update on today's walk

For any intrepid souls wishing to ignore the rumblings and dodge occasional raindrops, we're still meeting today at 2pm at Turning Basin Park, on the chance that the thunderstorms will remain distant rumbles.

Steve

Canal Inventory Walk Sunday, Aug. 10

On August 10, at 2pm, we'll meet at Turning Basin Park (on Alexander Rd. where it crosses the canal), to inventory plants along the D&R Canal State Park. Many showy wildflowers, such as cutleaf coneflower and Hibiscus, begin blooming along the canal towpath in early August.

This photo, from the first post on this blog, almost two years ago, shows cutleaf coneflowers blooming along the towpath in mid-August, 2006, near Harrison Street. That was the first year that the D&R Canal State Park reduced mowing of the fields from every two weeks to once a year. Wildflowers that had been getting repeatedly mowed down were finally allowed to grow to full height and bloom.

I haven't been down to the towpath in a month or so, but a similar scene should greet us this Sunday.

Cicadas Rise and Fall

Late evening, two days ago, and a family member comes in from the backyard to report a strange sighting on the steps leading to the garden. I take a look, and am startled by the size of the insect-like thing suspended on the face of the steps.

Closer inspection revealed a cicada of unknown species doing a slow-mo back flip out of its terrestrial skin, with little proto-wing stubs on either side.

Half an hour later, it has righted itself and succeeded in pumping blood into its wings, which are now air drying. The suspension is critical, because if the unfolding wings touch anything, they will be distorted and the little beastie will not be able to launch into the flying stage of its life.

I was struck by the beauty, speed and ingenuity of this transformation to airworthy status. Another cicada pulled off the same timeless stunt two steps away, and the next day the drone of cicadas was noticeably stronger.



But life for the newly hatched cicadas is not entirely a carefree singfest in the trees. Nature has its checks and balances, as I found out the next day when I visited the rainwater garden on Harrison Street a couple blocks away.

There, a strange and even more massive insect-like thing flew low to the ground, landing on a tree trunk. Part of it turned out to be a cicada, the other part a Cicada Killer wasp, which had paralyzed the cicada with its sting and was now struggling to transport it. I watched as the wasp dragged the cicada up the tree trunk to a comfortable perch, presumably to munch upon this juicy morsel.

An internet search revealed that the mature wasp feeds on pollen and nectar, not cicadas, and was instead dragging it up the tree so that it could then glide with it to the wasp's underground burrow, there to lay an egg in the paralyzed cicada. The egg will then hatch and the larval wasp will eat the well-preserved cicada's insides.

Meanwhile, passing motorists see only the benign facade of flowers, if they see anything at all. Nature's workings are all the more hidden when they happen along a busy street, where people are so intent on getting somewhere else that they don't look left or right.

Upcoming Plant Inventory Walks

Nature walks, open to the public, are planned for the first four Sundays in August, to inventory plant life in Princeton's parks and preserves. This coming Sunday, August 3, there will be a plant inventory walk at Herrontown Woods. Meet at the parking lot, across Snowden Lane from Smoyer Park, at 2pm. Unlike most of Princeton's preserves, Herrontown Woods is county owned. It features mature forest, boulder fields and also an old farmstead--two houses and a barn--intended by the donor originally to become an environmental center.

On August 10, also at 2pm, we'll meet at the Turning Basin Park (on Alexander where it crosses the canal), to inventory plants along the D&R Canal State Park. Many showy wildflowers, such as cutleaf coneflower and Hibiscus, begin blooming along the canal towpath in early August.

Inventory walks for August 17 and 24 to be announced.

Damselflies, Sycamores and a River

One of my favorites spots to wade out into the riffles of the Stonybrook is just below the Rosedale Road bridge, next to Greenway Meadows park. The water's shallow, the bottom stony, and on this particular day in early June, sycamore seeds speckled the water's surface, and a few stray sycamore leaves came drifting downstream, catching occasionally on rocks.

A closer look at the leaves (3rd photo) showed them to be a favored place of congregation for a species of damselfly so intent on procreation that they cared little if they were above or below water.









Damselflies clasp their wings together above them when they perch.


A dragonfly (wings lie flat when at rest, and much stockier--last photo) was not so happy in the water, and had to be rescued from its floundering.