Hollyhocks

So the hollyhocks I planted 3 months ago are blooming, the three little 4" plants of the variety "Summer Carnival" I decided to try all grown up. I was lucky enough to get three different colors, the two pinks shown here and pale yellow. The yellow blooming plant is about 1/2 the height of the others, which are now passing 6 feet. My alcea rosea experiment has turned out well. Some of the buggies that like 'em too are a tiny grasshopper nymph, Schistocerca nitens, a honey bee of course and as best as I can figure a seed bug, possibly genus Nysius.

E-closure on a leaf

I picked up this sycamore leaf the other day as I was walking through the neighborhood because this little thingy on it caught my eye. It looks like a double eclosure: If that were true the outer shell would be the host species and the inner shell the parasitoid. However, Cindy (see comment and link to excellent info below) has given an ID on this one: it is the pupal molt of the twice-stabbed ladybeetle, genus Chilocorus, apparently often found on sycamore trees feeding on scale or other sucking insects. The outer white and black shell is the final larval molt, and the inner reddish shell is the pupal molt. Thanks Cindy, now I have closure on this eclosure! The leaf looks pretty, too, set on the arm of my freshly painted chair. BTW if you take a notion to paint your adirondack chair(s) like I did, bear in mind just how many surfaces there are.

Stilt Bug Nymph

Big deal, huh? Fuzzy photo of a little green thingy. Last spring I saw my first stilt bug and was smitten with its long-legged grace and thin knobbly antennae. It would seem reasonable and exciting to think this little guy (my 2nd stilt bug) is the same species as, or even the progeny of, the adult seen in this post. Stilt bugs are true bugs (as opposed to dirty rotten scoundrel bugs) in the family Berytidae. There does not seem to be an abundance of information on these insects.

If You Plant it They Will Come, part 1

So I planted hollyhocks as previously discussed and they've grown quite nicely. I noticed these tiny weevils on the buds . . . never seen them before but tried googling "hollyhock weevil". Bingo, that is actually what these are called, aka Apion longirostre. The "long" in the specific name must refer to the snout which is very long especially for a creature so small (ha). Garden websites refer to these as a pest which can and will spoil your hollyhock seeds. I'm letting them be of course, to see what comes of these tiny invaders of the hollyhock kingdom.

By the way the nearest hollyhocks to the ones in my backyard are 150 feet away as the beetle flies, over two houses, several fences and a large tecomara hedge. I'm assuming that is where the weevils came from . . . I'll go look to verify some are on Peter's mailbox hollyhock patch. UPDATE: Yes, there are some there. But before that, from whence did they come?

Here is an absolutely stunning photo of this species; with the naked eye or a non-macro lens you can't really see that they are . . . fuzzy?

Fly Dance

This sequence shows a boatman fly, pogonortalis doclea, rotating its body position counter-clockwise about 45 degrees at a time as it waves its wings in an oar-like motion, all a part of the males' mating display. According to bugguide, this fly is an import from Australia, the lone representative of its genus in the US, and the adults feed on mammal dung.

TGIL: a bit of sun

Here's the sun shining through the growing tip of a sunflower plant. We've had some weird weather for late May: rain, gloom, cold wind, lightning, and rumors of funnel clouds but at least a bit of sunshine, too.

The Fly and the Spider

If you had any doubt about the flycatching ability of a spider look at the difference in size between this barely half-grown lynx spider and its green bottle fly prey. I do not know how many flies it takes to grow a spider; once these spiders start preying on larger items, they grow at a phenomenal rate through the summer, then mate, produce eggs and die. Lucky there are fewer flies in winter.

New Predator in Town

This flame skipper, Libellula saturata, rested on a low-growing pelargonium flower for an inordinate (unodonate?) amount of time. I like to think I'm right: that it was quite freshly emerged as an adult flyer, and needed to rest a bit before taking up the dragonfly mantle.

Seed bugs

Although I couldn't find confirmation these white-crossed seed bugs of the species Neacoryphus bicrucis range into California, it's hard to believe these aren't those. They look like 'em (but differences among bugs can be subtle) and they feed and breed like 'em: Food plant is said to be ragwort, no scientific name given, and they mate on ragwort, too. The plant genus senecio is synonymous with ragwort; here the bugs are seen mating and just hanging out (preparing to feed, maybe?) on my senecio cineraria, also known as dusty miller in my locale and others call silver ragwort. This plant is commonly grown as an ornamental bedding plant around here, often removed before it has a chance to grow flower spikes and clusters of small yellow daisies.

Babies on the bins

So I was minding my own business walking past the trio of waste bins in the driveway when I noticed the lids were crawling with tiny stagmomantis californica. My guess is there is/was an ootheca attached to a branch of the melaleuca tree directly over the recycle bin and some of the hatchlings dropped onto the bin lid below. This then is very likely their mother, captured strolling up the tree last autumn.

TGIL: alcea rosea

I've never grown hollyhocks; possibly I have a morbid fear of the rust (puccinia malvacearum) that ravages the foliage of most of the hollyhocks I've seen growing. But this spring I decided to try some; why the hell not? They are now about as tall as me with lots of buds and a few fat ones starting to show color; the big roughly textured leaves have been attracting and sustaining bugs for awhile. I suspect either earwigs (they are hungrier than you'd think) or very tiny illusive grasshoppers are responsible for the chewed up lower leaves; I never see 'em in the act. The mating flies are likely to be cluster flies, pollenia, which if they are will lay their eggs in soil so their maggot offspring can conveniently parasitise earthworms. I haven't seen a parasitised earthworm which gives me something to look forward to. The curled leaf looks to be a spider lair, but no one was home at the time. The leaf mine was produced by some species of leaf miner (duh!) which has emerged as an adult . And, there's been no sign of rust.

Don't Strip the Parkway

Early this morning I dreamed the gardening crew had mowed the meadow in the parkway down to neat little nubs. Sure this wasn't true, I still took a peek out the front door to see that the milkweeds and the 3 foot tall rye flower stalks were still there. It's been almost one year since we took the plunge to expunge the boring and create a mixed, less vertically challenged planting in the space between the sidewalk and the street. Last summer the existing patchy rye/blue lawn was lifted along with a couple inches of soil, and stuff was seeded and planted, watered and it grew. What started as mostly an aesthetic endeavor (flowers are more interesting to look at than lawn) grew into a sort of habitat development project as we have realized how many insect species are using, or potentially could be using, the dynamic new parkway strip as a resource.

Plenty of plant species have also found the parkway strip welcoming. Currently we have ryegrass, feather grass, alyssum, and the coconut geraniums (please don't confuse this with cheeseweed, Malva parviflora, like my mom did) going to seed; asclepias curassavica, statice (limonium sinuata), feverfew (tanacetum parthenium) and oenothera in full bloom; two members of the umbelliferae (Daucus carota and Ammi majus), catananche caerulea, verbena bonariensis and some mystery daisy volunteers are coming into bloom. The lantana, salvias (greggii et al), euryops and artemisia are either done blooming or waiting for their season. Most of these plants grew as volunteers, and the plant density has kept what I would consider weeds from growing for the most part. Next I'll be seeding in some tithonia seeds saved from last autumn, and I'll probably discover some other plant species growing in there that will get a chance to develop after the spent alyssum and grasses are carefully cut back. And of course there is our old street tree, the Ulmus parvifolia, which shelters and feeds our mourning cloak caterpillar population.

So, I got over my bad dream this morning and got to work on my 2nd cup of coffee and counting beans when there's a knock on the door . . . it's a guy from a local nursery out drumming up side work for himself in the neighborhood. He wants to know if I would like the weeds in the parkway cut down and cleaned up. Argghhh.

No, actually. The stink bugs and the ground beetles and the milkweed bugs (large and small) and the monarch butterflies and the harlequin bugs and the syrphids and the aphids and the looper caterpillars and their mothers the moths; all of these and I want you to keep your indiscriminate mitts off of our meadow.

Mason wasp

I was hanging out in the backyard, eating lunch I believe it was, when I noticed this wasp flying through. My first impression was it was something new. Then I thought, oh it's a polistes wasp. Then I was able to get close enough to see the shape of the abdomen and snap a few photos before it got annoyed and flew off. This is a mason wasp, genus Ancistrocerus, as near as I can tell. They are known as polistes mimics (fooled me for a bit). Aside from the obvious differences in body shape, though, it was the flight pattern that initially told me (trust those first impressions) this was not the usual. Instead of a slow and deliberate flight around and into the foliage (as the paper wasps do while searching for prey), this new wasp darts onto a plant then darts away, moving in more angular ways than the polistes. It is more skittish, also, and settles for just a moment before darting away. Hence the crappy photo. I'll try for more as summer progresses and also be looking for the nesting places of these gals.

Small Milkweed Bugs

I'm happy to say I have both large and small milkweed bugs this year on the asclepias plants. This is a pair of the small ones, Lygaeus kalmii, doing their part to make even more small milkweed bugs. Although the two species superficially resemble each other, compare here and see how different their markings really are.

Tree Island

On the south side of our house a melaleuca linariifolia tree grows, commonly called flaxleaf paperbark or snow in summer. It has spongy bark that sheds in sheets, fragrant needle-like foliage and white bottlebrushy flowers in late spring (in our climate). A week ago the tree came into full bloom during a run of hot dry weather. On Saturday morning as the day heated up, I sat under the tree watching the array of insect species feeding on the nectar and/or pollen the tree offered so abundantly:

First, I have never seen as many butterflies at one time on this property. The photo is a lame attempt to represent the numbers (20 or so) of Nympalis antiopa visiting the tree at once. These butterflies had been seen flying in fair numbers for about a week. Now they were taking advantage of the tree's nectar along with the convenient or comfortably high roosts it offers. Occasionally a pair would fly off; presumably mating ensued and then egg-laying on the Chinese elm trees that line our street.

A "normal" number of Vanessa annabella, West Coast Lady, came and went. The caterpillars of this species like to eat plants in the mallow family. My garden has gobs of those, not to mention the untidy neighbor yards' cheeseweed, in case the adult females decide to lay some eggs. I saw a few of another species of brush-footed butterfly, possibly Lorquin's admiral, too high up in the tree canopy to photograph or even see properly.

There were lots of varied carpet beetles, Athrenus verbasci, tumbling through the huge (to these tiny creatures) mass of stamens and pollen grains.





Syrphid flies that joined the banquet included several unidentified species along with Eristalinus taeniops, Syritta pipiens, and a Copestylum. There were also fair numbers of green bottle flies, Phaenicia sericata, also feeding on nectar.











A few male valley carpenter bees, Xylocopa varipunctata, cruised through the upper branches but no females did. And of course there were lots and lots of honeybees but this light colored "blonde" one caught my eye. Apparently this is "just" a color variation of Apis mellifera, not a different species or anything of special interest.


















So I'm sitting there with the heat of that late April day sizzling just outside the pool of tree-shade I'm in, with all these species (and more . . . the ones I couldn't get even a crappy photo of, the unidentified, and of course the unseen) moving around and above me in a kind of dance; more purposeful than frenzied, joyful if insects can be said to have joy. Certainly a lot of creatures were getting fed. And I thought of sky islands, peaks that rise out of the southwestern desert offering resources and habitat for a great diversity of life forms. This melaleuca tree's bloom arose out of what perhaps was a bit of a nutritional desert, attracting hungry insects to its bounty. The party lasted for about a week, now the blossoms are drying up and fallen all over my windowsills. The buggies have moved on to their next opportunity. I feel lucky to have shared that tree island with them.

Giant yet hard to shoot

Giant swallowtail butterflies (Papilio cresphontes) have been visiting my garden for about a month. They stop briefly, really more of a genuflect, to nectar and then float off to someone else's yard. The one in this photo spiraled around the back yard for several minutes, flirting with the kumquat tree, sniffing at the rue, then briefly touching down on the lantana. This is the best photo I could get. I have planted some more rue (ruta graveolens) to try and make my yard a more attractive egg-laying site. A good place to get rue (and other herbs) is from the farmers market. The vendor there had 4" plants at a price of 3 for $5, which compares very favorably with the garden centers, one of which asked $9 for a 1 gallon plant.

Green Squiggle meets Purple Undulations

Last summer I adopted a pineapple lily of uncertain species or variety; it was from that booth at the county fair that sells fragipani and all things exotic, avoiding latin names like the plague. It was put into an orange ceramic pot, grew a sumptuous bunch of leaves, then died back for a winter's sleep without producing a flower spike. As of late-March the eucomis had awakened and is now growing strong. On a recent semi-magical morning I noticed this glowing green caterpillar squiggle on the undulating purple leaves of the young plant. This is a cabbage looper, Trichoplusia ni, a plant-damaging pest with a broad range of favored plant foods. The adult is a ubiquitous moth you've probably seen but not really noticed. It also has one of the cooler specific names in the taxonomic world.

When faced with the destruction of one of my plants by insects, my first priority is to snap some photos. The caterpillar crawled around striking interesting poses until I felt I had enough. I went inside to put away the camera, meaning to go back and pick the leaf-destroyer off my plant. Distraction ensued and it wasn't until the next day I found the caterpillar was gone. It had left no trace of itself, not a chewed leaf nor a poop.

Designers study plant varieties, make plans, acquire materials to make their envisioned color schemes come to life in the garden. Sometimes a fortuitous combination just happens and you're lucky enough to be able to see it before the caterpillar disappears and the eucomis matures into olive greenness.

Carpet Beetles Rain on Me

Today I was called to the garage to investigate the strange occurrence of tiny beetles falling from *somewhere* onto the garage floor. When I arrived on the scene there were scores of tiny (~2mm) round variegated brown beetles, some crawling, on the cool concrete between the shelves with the auto cleaning supplies and short-handle tools (left side) and the nuts and bolts (right side). I picked up a couple of them for closer examination but need magnification for my old eyes to see these are Anthrenus verbasci, the varied carpet beetle. I have been seeing lots and lots of these guys working the flowers for pollen and nectar, which is what the adults feed on. The larvae feed on a wide range of dead animal matter, including woolen carpets, clothing and furs which is the source of their reputation as a household pest and their name. The name is a bit of a misnomer, since the beetles (adults) do not feed on carpets but seek them out as a place to lay their eggs.

OK. It was obvious these carpet beetles were emerging after pupating somewhere in the garage since they would not normally seek out that habitat (dark, no flowers to feed on). Looking up, I found the likely source in a large messy and carcass-littered spider nest covering the skylight. Dead insect matter in wasp-, spider- or bee nests are a natural egg-laying site for these beetles (when they can't find fine carpets or furs). Some of the beetles had gotten caught in the web. I guess one way to reduce the numbers of carpet beetles might be to vigilantly clean up spider webs around the place; I was a bit shocked at how slovenly this particular web was, and at how many beetles it was producing. Anyway, I've never seen any larvae inside our house, which maybe says a lot for my housekeeping skills, or maybe speaks more for our lack of woolen carpets, furs and leather-bound books. If we had those I might be more concerned about the carpet beetle population; or maybe I secretly hope the larvae will attack our leather upholstered couch that has disappointed us with its gross lack of comfortableness since day one.

May Backlog #1

I have seen a lot of critters so far this month, and here it is the eve of the ides of a post-less May. Turning back the calendar to the beginning of the month this wild-eyed female carpenter bee, xylocopa varipunctata, offers you Greetings and Welcome to the merry month of May. Males of the species have been seen flying, too, as well as the previously unseen in this vicinity bumble bee, Bombus californicus making for a lot of large furry flying objects in our airspace.