The Flow

May 5 + 14, 2006: My gardens are home for many odds and ends plants left over from projects on the professional side of my life. I could say no; no I don't want those eight 10-foot leptospermum, but they will look beautiful when they bloom in winter. I never wanted agapanthas, but I've got them in two colors and three sizes. Same could be said for liriope. Thing is, I don't think I could stand in the way of the flow.

I really didn't want to bother with a few bearded iris rhizomes last winter . . . not my thing, though I once had a garden with a massive planting of lilac bearded iris all under various fruit trees, and it was eye-poppingly nice. But these particular orphans were old and dried out, and some of them were destined to bear unacceptably blue and white striped flowers. Still, the flow won out: bearded iris don't take much room or effort, and I felt sorry for them never getting a chance to grow.

So spring came along and the iris I had begrudgingly planted sprouted. A few petered out; maybe the rhizomes were too dried out. One blue and white one bloomed, then it mysteriously disappeared. One produced a flamboyant yellow first bloom. Then the flow caught up with it in the form of aphids. As plants flow through a space, so too do insect populations along with the ups and downs of the prevailing conditions. As luck has it, spring is the ideal time for plants to bloom and aphids to prosper. The flower shared its short life with the aphids, then faded to a juicy senescence. Fruit flies moved in to suck on the fermenting flower. You can see a few aphid nymphs hanging on to the sepals in the 2nd photo (9 days later) trying to mature before their food source dries up.

In the end the flow has a way of playing itself out, in waves of amplification and diminishment. I have since planted more bearded iris leftovers, this time several dozen purples rejected in toto from their intended project. I find myself curiously rooting for them to flourish like garish costume jewelry and painted-on brows amongst the jeans-and-bandana aloes, sedums and grasses. I'll enjoy their extravagant blooms and their precipitous, fruit-fly-attended descent into rot as the season proceeds.

Rainbow of Harmonia axyridis

Nov 23 + Dec 3 2006. There were a lot of adult ladybugs emerging and flying during this period. I took numerous photos of variously colored and patterned individuals which all turned out to be morphs of the multicolored asian ladybug, Harmonia axyridis. For even more variations, check out this array at Bugguide.

Bee Tongue

It was a sweet, warm and sunny day the other day and many honeybees were out nectaring on the Geralton waxflower (Chamelaucium uncinatum), a western Australian native that I and the bees can always count on for a bit of winter or early spring cheer.

Carpet Beetles Bag Daisy Patch

March 24, 2006: Spring had sprung, and I was tripping outside to get daisies to put in a vase on my kitchen window sill. The flowers were full of small beetles in the process of mowing down the stamens of the daisy disk florets. Many pest species are named for the destructive habits of the larvae, and these are no exception. These are carpet beetles (probably Anthrenus verbasci, the varied carpet beetle, although see note below regarding ID) the adults of which feed on pollen and are said to be important pollinators. Meanwhile, their larvae are hairy stumpy-carrot-shaped critters that may be feeding on fibers in your house. They eat many things (wool, leather, horn for example) of animal origin which might include carpets or clothing of yours, or even accumulations of dog hair in forgotten crevices. These beetles are an important pest of insect collections, so it didn't surprise me to read that their preferred food really is dead insect carcasses. It's suspected that wasp nests (the beetle larvae feed on the leftovers) around the home contributes to the carpet beetles' prevalence.

One reason insects have been so succesful their use of different food sources in their various life stages, therefore avoiding self-competition. These carpet beetles are a good example of this.

By the way, if yer daisies have beetles on them, it's probably NOT a good idea to bring them inside the house.

At the UC IPM site, the photo for Anthrenus verbasci is an entirely different looking bug. However, I have gone with this ID since numerous other sources identify it so. Open to corrections.

Seed bug primer

Feb 20, 2006. Noticed this bug on our grey-washed wood gate. I assumed it was a small milkweed bug, Lygaeus kalmii, which is common in my parts especially since I grow asclepias curassavica. The milkweed bugs, small and large, feed on milkweed mostly, and accumulate alkaloids from the plants' sap in their tissue. This makes them taste very unpleasant. Their bright coloration advertises this fact, and helps protect them from predation. Look at this photo on bugguide, though, and it's obvious my specimen is NOT the same.

Poking around for a definitive ID I came up with Neacoryphus bicrucis, the whitecrossed seed bug. There is not quite as much information on their life history, maybe these are not as common, less obnoxious, less interesting than their milkweed bug brethren. From what information I can find, whitecrossed seed bugs are said to feed on ragwort, senecio jacobaea, and other senecios. I do grow some senecios, but have yet to see their nymphs or adults feeding on those plants. Ragwort (also called stinking willie) produces alkaloids as does milkweed so it is likely the whitecrossed seed bugs are bad tasting.

Both of these bug species are members of the family Lygaeidae, the seed bugs. They both feed on plants and especially seeds. Their nymphs feed on the same plants as the adults. Both species are said to be migratory, although in Tustin's latitude it might not be obvious whether they are coming or going.

Gnat under Glass

I was peeking through the living room blinds at some lesser goldfinches and purple finches at the feeder, when I noticed this fungus gnat (? I think) inside the glass. Finches do eat insects to some extent; and might have considered this small gnat worth consuming if they weren't so enthralled by the cracked sunflower seeds and thistle; oh, and if the gnat had been outside.

The Ice Man Cometh'd

Hmmm yes it's been colder than I'd prefer these past days. While surveying the carnage (er, I guess that would more properly called vegage?) caused by sub-freezing nights on my apparently tender garden, I saw this katydid nymph on a crisped salvia. Also, my wonderful red pentas--the darling of many butterflies and ladybugs, the apple of my eye in kinder weather--was showing all kinds of frost damage in this afternoon's sunshine.

We have been remarking for years about the apparent correlation of warmer, frost-free winters here in southern CA, and the spread of imported pests, as well as the general uptick in certain noxious plant pests such as scale. Let's see if this cold spell has any noticeable effect on those guys this spring and summer. And, let's consider which is worse: the bugs or the cold?

By the way, I saw a mourning cloak butterfly midday today; out of the corner of my eye I noticed that fluttering which really can't be anything else but a butterfly. I turned just in time to see it float over the neighbor's roof which, according to my husband who gets out of bed way earlier than I do, was dripping with icicles just a few hours earlier. Cool.

2006 Archives: Mantid takes time to smell roses

June 15, 2006: A chinese mantid nymph cruises an iceberg rose blossom for prey a few weeks after hatching on my kitchen table June 3. Of the hundreds of hatchlings that I released into the garden, I would later see very few maturing mantids, only one adult, and no egg cases.

I had never introduced a large number of a species into the garden before, and so wondered what impact the release of hundreds of predators might have on the usual mix of spider and insect species. Of the prey, there were far fewer stinkbugs than "usual", and not nearly the numbers of katydids seen the summer before. And, through the summer of 2006, there was a marked reduction in predator populations. There were few (if any--I haven't seen even one) lynx spiders that survived the summer to maturity. There were very few araneus spiders; couldn't find any trash web spiders either. Is it possible the mantids outcompeted and preyed upon the young spiders, then were themselves preyed upon by something else? Our bird population has increased dramatically during the past year, both in numbers and diversity. Did the birds eat all the developing mantids? The one adult mantid I saw had a deformed or injured wing, possibly from a bird attack.

Is it worthwhile to use introduced general predator species to control garden pests, or is the gardener simply displacing the natural predators already in place? It will be interesting to see what happens to the balance of species as spring and summer unfold this year.

Fly Humor

UFI--IDd

*sigh* the old adage, "The more you know, the more you realize how little you know" is so true.

November 29, 2006: I noticed this little fly on my pineapple plant. It was moving its wings in an odd rowing motion and posturing along the leaf edges. I snapped a few photos and shrugged, having no idea what it was other than some kind of fly.

Then I got lucky. Actually, my luck has been improving over the past year as a couple of guys have been adding lots of information and species to this site devoted to listing the flora and fauna of OC. Lo and behold, when I checked there was my little fly in living color and identified to genus: Pogonortalis; and a wonderfully descriptive common name: Boatman fly. So now I know what to call it.

What does it eat? Where does it lay its eggs? What do the larvae eat? How many molts do the maggots go through before pupating? How long is the entire life cycle typically? How many generations per year are produced? Is the boatman fly a friend or foe? What is its geographical distribution?

Very little information is, so far, forthcoming on this bit of fly. I found Pogonortalis doclea listed on an Australian site as well as on Bugguide. I found a reference on the California Dept of Food and Ag noting that it is a class C pest--whatever that means.

Still, I am grateful to have a name to pin on it . . . it would not only be unwieldy to search for "small big-eyed fly with bulbous, velvety-looking abdomen and oar-like wing motions"; it would also be fruitless; I just tried it, no relevant results. Thank you very much, Natural History of Orange County, for the i.d. If I learn anything more about this small visitor to my garden, I'll post it here.

They Don't Call Them Hover Flies for Nothing

This hover fly (genus Syrphid) was hanging in the cool winter air the other day. These feed, if they do, on nectar and this one was investigating some red salvia blooming in the backyard. It also showed an interest in the nearby stalks and flower spikes of broom corn (sorghum vulgere) maybe instinctively searching for aphids there.

People sometimes remark, Oh you have such sharp eyes you can see all these small critters when I don't see a thing. True; most of them don't see a thing. But for all my supposed visual acuity I haven't seen where adult hover flies sleep at night, or where they rest in winter until the thin sun finally warms their flight muscles, or found the bit of earth where they land when death plucks them from mid-air. But I will keep on looking.

2006 Archives: Fly Tongue

As everyone knows, a fly tastes with its feet. Actually, the hairs on its feet. It drinks both food and drink with its proboscis, from the Greek pro--before, and boskein--to feed. Flies convert solid or semi-solid food to liquid by regurgitating stomach fluids onto the food, thus semi-digesting it!

Vincent G. Dethier says in his legendary book (which I highly recommend) To Know A Fly: "Like taxes, the fly is always with us. . . It has no sociological impediments to reproduction; its food supply is unlimited; its basic requirements, few. . . . So, if we must live together, if we cannot live in peaceful coexistence, . . . let us learn something about and from some of our fellow earthlings." He goes on to describe in humorous detail his various experiments on the sensory proclivities of flies.

January 2006: This fly, a hairy maggot blow fly (Chrysomya rufifacies) has landed on a dewy geranium leaf and is drinking. Dethier explains that a fly detects water to drink with the sense organs on its feet, but whether the fly drinks or not (whether it is thirsty) is determined by the fluid pressure within its body cavity, not being determined by osmostic pressure or salt concentration.

To Know a Fly by Vincent Dethier, Holden-Day, Inc. 1962 ISBN 0-8162-2240-1

2006 Archives: Jesus out on a limb

To paraphrase Lisa Simpson: It's not that I don't have a spiritual side. I just find it hard to believe that Jesus was transfigured onto a moth hanging on a melaleuca branch in my yard.

June 19, 2006: I was walking down the driveway when I noticed this plume moth on the melaleuca tree. I grabbed the camera and took a series of shots for later examination, evaluation and hopefully identification. There are 150 plus species of plume moths in North America believe it or not, but thanks to information from other bug nuts on the internet, I concluded this is probably the geranium plume moth. If so this could be the mother (or father) or future mother (or father) of caterpillars that will eat and roll up the leaves of my geraniums and other ornamental plants in the garden. Grrrr. Then I noticed it: there was a familiar figure in the ventral photo of the moth. I looks like the Ascending Jesus I remember seeing long ago on a holy card while having a minor asthma attack in church. The part that appears to be Jesus' legs, bent slightly at the knees, is the ventral surface of the moth's abdomen. The upstretched arms are the moth's rolled up wings, and Jesus' face is the ventral surface of the moth's thorax where the legs attach. OK, some people have said it looks more like the angel Gabriel, but once I "saw" Jesus, I couldn't not see him there on the moth. My unbiased perception had been co-opted by the cementing of the real, however non-significant image/pattern on the moth to a stored mental image fraught with cultural significance.

Pareidolia is defined as a kind of perception where a person sees faces or figures in random presentations like wood grain, clouds, smoke, tortillas, etc. It is less kindly defined as the misperception of ambiguous stimuli and willful interpretation into something specific or even significant.

Many pareidolia are of religious figures like Jesus. Even though no one knows for sure what he looked like, people are always "seeing" Jesus on stuff like shower windows, rocks, French toast or panini, their bedroom ceiling, and now insects. I suppose this could be because reality (represented by trees, bugs, water stains on asphalt parking lots, patterns of light as it dances through old glass, wood-grained doors, etc) is not Significant enough, and the human mind does crave significance. Religion, whether truly believed or culturally practiced, is laden with significance. Belief in believing in Jesus on a Moth can seem to give one's mundane existence special enchanted qualities. And so, many people do become enchanted by pareidolia, whether by true belief in the apparition as a manifestation of the divine or the longing to believe in such a belief.

I hadn't posted this Jesus image before now because I suspected if I properly marketed the thing, I could make big bucks with it on eBay. Hmmmm maybe not; so I've decided to post it and let you decide: Is it more significant that one individual of one species of one genus of one order of insect was found on a small arromatic tree in midsummer; that its human observer happened to have an image memory that matched a pattern on the moth's body; that the observer photographed it and let the moth go on its way to mate, procreate, to die somewhere unmarked in the garden; that the observer would use the wonder of digital technology to share this oddity of observation with the whole wide world; that some people would find this wondrous; that other would be amused; and others still offended or perhaps bored; that the whole schmeer is added to the vast store of recorded human thought and observation, for what it's worth OR that god has deigned to embed the image of his son on the underside of a not too impressive moth?

And furthermore: Do all geranium plume moths carry the imprint of Jesus on their undersides?

From the Archives 2006: Cassia Blooms

I've decided to revisit some unpublished images from last year during this first month of lucky 2007. There are lots of various goodies, such as bug species I've never posted on, a few oddities, and nice flowers complementing the bugs too. So here goes:

January 29, 2006: This is our old friend the assassin bug, genus Zelus, stalking prey among feathery cassia, Senna artemisioides. This plant is well worth growing in California gardens since it blooms profusely in the dead of winter, that is, the semi-cool period from December through, oh, about March when we start heading back to the beach. After it blooms, seed pods form which turn shiny black and hold until you prune the plants to shape in November.