The Battle With Photinia

It looks benign, green like all the other plants in the forest, with ornamental white flowers in the spring and golden foliage and red berries in the fall. But Asian Photinia (Photinia villosa) has started quietly taking over Mountain Lakes. In some areas of the park, it has formed a monoculture in the understory, shading out all other plant species.

No diversity means very limited food choices for wildlife. So that other species will have a chance to grow, the Friends of Princeton Open Space began this year a campaign to dramatically reduce the Photinia population at Mountain Lakes.



This is what the woods looks like after a dense stand of Photinia has been removed by our extraordinary volunteer, Andrew Thornton. Other than a few stray ferns, there is nothing native growing here beneath the trees. The cut Photinia has been piled for wildlife habitat. The next step will be to replant the area with natives, or encourage whatever natives sprout.

One of the native species that will benefit from Photinia removal is the spicebush (Lindera benzoin), which forms energy-rich berries in the fall.

40th Anniversary Celebration Open To All, Oct. 4

Wine, hors d’oeuvres, music

and a silent auction featuring the beautiful paintings created that day.

FRIENDS OF PRINCETON OPEN SPACE invite you to
Preserve with Paint

A Celebration of our 40th Anniversary

Oct 4th, 5:00-7:00 p.m., at the beautiful setting of Mountain Lakes House

There is no charge to attend Preserve with Paint, but please r.s.v.p. to Friends of Princeton Open Space 609 497-1331

On Sunday, October 4th, Friends of Princeton Open Space will celebrate its 40th birthday and many successful land preservation projects in Princeton. As part of this community-building event, plein air painters will come to Mountain Lakes Preserve to capture the beauty of our lakes, woods and fields on canvas.

More info at www.fopos.org

Hickory Horned Devil Caterpillar

It's enough to make one think that all of one's actions, no matter how seemingly scattered, are somehow connected. If I hadn't taken up the cause of saving the Veblen House in Herrontown Woods, I would never have noticed a giant caterpillar crawling on a walnut branch in front of the house.

Not knowing what it was, I googled "giant horned caterpillar", and immediately found the name.

Mark Johnson, Princeton's animal control officer, was on the scene, primarily to tell us how to get rid of a raccoon, two squirrels and a flying squirrel that have found the boarded up house to their liking. He said the lighter colored caterpillar is probably a female. The big, thick glove is for handling animals with teeth. The caterpillars, scary as they look, proved to be harmless.

I'm borrowing this quote from an Ohio State University fact sheet:

"They are enormous in size, being five to six inches long and nearly 3/4-inch in diameter. They feed for a period of 37 to 42 days on the leaves of hickory, walnut, butternut, pecan, ash, lilac, persimmon, sycamore, sumac and sweet gum. Larvae mature in late summer, wandering around searching for a place to burrow underground to pupate. Overwintering occurs in the pupal stage.

The moth (Royal Walnut Moth) has a wingspan of five to six inches and is seen in midsummer. It has a long body covered with orange yellow hair. The forewings are gray with orange veins and yellow spots. The hindwings are primarily orange with scattered yellow patches."

Struggle For Survival--Scene 1

Our camera crew spent the whole summer patiently waiting for a chance to catch this rare shot of a Cicada Killer wasp poised to seize its prey. (Figure added for scale)

A 3-Winged Monarch Learns To Fly

Monarchs usually have four wings--two on each side--but I found one on a bush at Littlebrook Elementary a couple days ago that had only three. That explained why it didn't fly away when I approached. When I presented it with my finger, it crawled on, and I noticed it had only four legs, instead of the usual six.

It looked freshly born out of its chrysalis, undamaged other than by a quirk of genetic fate. I showed it to some kids on the playground, and then called my daughter and her friend over to have a look. They adopted it instantly, and took it home, naming it "Buggie". That afternoon, during a playdate, they reportedly taught Buggie to fly by dropping it from a treehouse, and also discovered that it would follow orders. Clearly, a highly intelligent little butterfly!

Overnight, it stayed outside in a terrarium, with a squished tomato for food. The next day, it traveled back to school for show and tell in a 4th grade classroom. My daughter, though, arrived home with a sad face. After school, while they were on the playground, Buggie flew up and kept right on going, despite having only three of its four wings. Monarchs, which fly all the way to Mexico for the winter, are notoriously strong flyers, but no one had expected three-winged Buggie to soar off into the wild blue yonder.

I tried to console my daughter, who in her grief wanted to go to Petco to buy another pet. We finally headed out in search of a monarch egg or larva in various patches of milkweed I know about, but found nothing. I told her that she and her friend had done well, had fed Buggie and taught it to fly, and that now it was where it is supposed to be, with others of its kind, flying strong and far.

She wasn't quite ready to feel good about this.

Beware of Bamboo--An Update

"Beware of Bamboo"--wouldn't that make a good sign to post at the front gate? Most posts here lately have detailed the native abundance in my backyard. But just across the fence is a more typical Princeton scene. Bamboo, English ivy and Wineberry--all exotic invaders--thrive along a neglected fenceline, advancing imperiously into my yard when my back is turned.

Bamboo is thought to be nearly impossible to weed out, but no beast can remain beastly forever without a source of energy.

As described in a post in June, 2008, the hard part of the counter attack was done a couple years back, when my neighbor permitted me to cut the whole, dense, 20 foot high bamboo clone to the ground--on both sides of the fence. It then sent up a new batch of long stems, which I cut just as they were starting to leaf out. The whole idea was to prevent the Thing from collecting any new solar energy, forcing it to spend its reserves on new shoots that would get cut before they could send any energy down to the roots. Time, and the imperatives of metabolism, were on my side in this "drain the energy bank" approach to superweed combat.

Last year, I again cut the new shoots down to the ground just as the stems were starting to send out leaves.

This year, it sent up only a few strange stems, each crowded with unusually dense leaves. Grasping one stem, I felt like I was shaking hands with a woolly green bear out of Monsters Inc. And like in the movie, the monster has been acting mighty gentle of late.

Fifteen minutes of lopping and it was time to declare victory, though I don't dare turn my back for long.

Insect Diversity Central

The boneset--those broad disks of white flowers held six feet aloft next to a backyard mini-pond--had for weeks been drawing a wildly diverse crowd of insects. The varied pollinators variously hovered and fed on the nectar, and I in turn hovered over them, documenting as best I could the local biodiversity with a well-aged Canon Powershot.

The past several days, it seemed the flowers and their magic had faded. I had started to look elsewhere for action, as the air filled with the peeping of goldfinches feasting on the seeds of cutleaf coneflower.

But then what looked like a stick fallen on one of the bonesets caught my eye, and I was back in the elevated sea of white, being stared down by a giant praying mantis. It had shown up a little late for the main course, with only a few scraps of insect life still visiting now. Still, once I started looking I was able to get photos of what might prove to be a dozen more species in a collection that could reach three figures. They were, of course, keeping their distance from the praying mantis.

A fly with wings straight back.

Another fly, larger, with a striped back and wings spread somewhat.

A tiny fly dwarfed by a tiny flower.

True bugs, who are remaining true to each other, at least for the moment. These creatures have been a fixture on the flowers for weeks.

A weevily looking little character.

A tiny yellow inchworm.

A tiny bee, which looks like all the other tiny black bees that have been the most numerous insect on the flowers over the past several weeks.

You might, like me, not at first see much more here than a lifeless tiny bee hanging just below the flowers.

Whenever some insect isn't moving, it pays to take a closer look. More predators have been showing up lately, including this white spider with a distinctive pattern on its back. Nice camouflage.

A daddy long legs.

Other new insects were as often perched on the leaves as on the flowers, including this crickety looking fellow.

Another cricket with a different color scheme.

A tiny beetle-like thing with a tail.

A fly, perhaps, with mottled wings, that hovered for long periods inbetween brief landings.