Looking Into Spittlebugs

Every spring I've noticed little wads of white spittle on other people's plants, notably their rosemary and lavenders. My brother has a lavender hedge out front, and the spittle blobs look festive, almost like flowers to the uninformed. Finally this year my lavender was infested, so to speak, with the benign little pest that is spittlebug and I got the chance to look into who exactly was behind the white wads.














The spittle itself is excreted by glands on the bug and mixed with anal secretions. It feels a lot like marshmallow, except runnier. No idea on what it tastes like. The spittlebug nymphs make spittle to hide under as they suck juices from the host plant. Bad as that sounds, I've not seen where they do a great deal of damage to the plants, though I imagine if they are in large enough numbers they could. In the case of my spittlebugs, there was one bug in each spittle wad and just a few wads here and there. Along with the lavender the bugs were found on the nearby euryops virgineus and calocephalus brownii in small numbers. Spittlebugs are small as you can see by the photo of the one that crawled right onto my pencil all by itself.

Twenty days after these photos of the nymphs were taken I happened to be looking in the right direction and saw an adult. It tolerated a few photos then hopped off with surprising force. The photo that looks head on is actually a rear view; the adults are done up with face-like markings on their posterior.












I looked through 25 pages of family cercopidae:spittlebug photos on Bugguide but did not see one that matched both the nymph and adult appearance. Spittlebug, I now know your faces but not your name.

The Garden as Stage Dressing

People have wondered whether I pose insects on plants or other objects to get more interesting photos. No, I'm not really that close to the bugs and I would not presume such liberties with a wild (stinging) creature. I just take a heck of a lot of photos and get lucky from time to time. OK maybe I'm guilty of an occasional manipulation, but bugs actually do the darnedest things all on their own and I make every effort to ensure no bugs are harmed in the filming of this blog.

I admit, however, I actively seek out photogenic-ness in plants I'm thinking about putting in my garden, and so set the stage for more appealing pictures. This borage is being visited by a honeybee, Apis mellifera. It's an annual that will naturalize (read: possibly invasive); it's kind of coarse and gangly; it's edible though how with all those bristles I don't know; it's seeds are rich in GLA; and it's photogenic.

Earwigs Can Become Pesky

In spring I have trouble with earwigs devouring small transplants and damaging flowers. They get active after sundown and climb surprisingly high up into your plants in search of delicacies to feed on, including aphids. (This further supports my notion that aphids are just plant juice transmogrified, and eating aphids does not change the eater's status as an herbivore.)

Here is a European earwig, Forficula auricularia, holed up in a flower five feet up on a climbing rose on a cloudy day. They like dark and dampness and you can use that information to control the buildup of their numbers to damaging levels. Remove as much as possible places for them to hide in the garden and lay eggs such as boards, overturned pottery, clipped vegetation you didn't get around to cleaning up, etc. Then you can set traps consisting of a nice dark cozy spot (a piece of hose, a rolled up newspaper, a board, an overturned pot) in chosen spots near plants the buggies may be damaging. Check your traps each day; knock off the earwigs you find into a plastic bag or vessel of water and (gulp) destroy them. Soon the number of earwigs in the traps will diminish, indicating the population has been significantly reduced, probably below problem levels.

Reference: UC IPM pest note on earwigs.

Requiem for the Crane Flies

Quid sum miser tunc dicturus?
Quem patronum rogaturus,
cum vix justus sit securus?

For 5 weeks or more crane flies (Nephrotoma wulpiana mainly, and others) have been exceptionally abundant. They've been in the house, on the house, all over the garden rising from the shrubbery like spindly angels, they've been in my hair and in the spider webs. But now their time is nearly over, I think; their eggs must have been laid by now, our current cool moist weather notwithstanding their days as adult crane flies are drawing to a close.


Quantus tremor est futurus,
quando judex est venturus,
cuncta stricte discussurus!

This male crane fly got caught in the messy web of a common house spider, a predator of all who pass by. If the fly managed to mate before his demise the legacy of his DNA will hatch in the soil soon and return next spring as crane flies; and his corpus will be reincarnated in a couple weeks as spiderlings. If he wasn't successful mating, well, just the spiders then.


Fac eas de morte transpire ad vitam.
Quam olim Abrahae promisisti,
et semini ejus.

While this is the end for the individual flies, life goes on and never rests but finds its peace in eternal reprocessing of matter and light. Hidden in my garden soil will be leatherjackets, maggots of the crane flies, eating decomposed matter and growing to emerge next spring as unlikely angels of the long, tangled and easily broken legs.


Requiem aeternam dona eis,
et lux perpetua luceat eis.

By the way, common house spiders (Parasteatoda tepidarium) are available for purchase. They cost 50 cents each for a live specimen, which is cheap for distilled angels and sunlight.

Rat Races

We name what we know
and don't know in human terms.
What else can we do?

Island Heat

Can you believe this heat in the middle of April? It's the buzz around town, with our neighboring city of Santa Ana posting a record breaking 103 yesterday. Actually, I can remember a similar heat spell last April, maybe not quite as hot but very close to the same time. It was 7 days later in April 2008 when I sat out in the driveway on a sweat-dripping hot Saturday in the small pool of shade under the blooming melaleuca linarifolia and noticed what a bug magnet that tree can be.

This past Sunday, April 19 2009, found the tree about 1/4 in bloom with plenty more buds set to open soon. I haven't had time to just sit under the tree observing (yet) but I did notice this mourning cloak, nymphalis antiopa, and lots of honeybees feeding among the flowers.





The forecast is for a cooling trend. I'll see how that effects the bloom and the attendant bugs on my tree island.

Eggses

1. These are katydid eggs laid on one of my mom's camellia bushes. As is obvious these eggs are laid on top of the stem, unlike those of the forktailed bush katydid, Scudderia furcata, the katydid common in my garden. Those are inserted into the plant tissue at the leaf's margin as seen in a great photo of a female ovipositing, about 1/2 way down this page found on Natural History of Orange County. I saw a tiny nymph, and it looks like one egg has hatched, but it hopped off and/or blended into the shrubbery before I got a good look.











2. Eggs of corn earworm, helicoverpa zea, freshly laid on the buds of my salmon flowered pelargonium. I don't like this flower nearly enough to begrudge the caterpillars some of the flowers.

A Pretty Moth for a Slow Friday Night

I have trouble identifying moths but am quite sure this one is the Large Yellow Underwing, Noctua pronuba. It popped out of this wiry white plant (Oh! it's Calocephalus brownii, cushion bush. Thanks to a visit to Green Scene where I saw it for sale and luckily also labeled) in the late afternoon while I was poking around looking for mantids. Chances are fair it may have just emerged . . . the larvae overwinter as the fat caterpillars we call cutworms which can cause a lot of damage to plants. Like many moths they are taxonomically known by their pestiferousness, classed in the subfamily Noctuinae, cutworm moths in the larger family of owlet moths, Noctuidae. That's a lot of noct, which points to night, which is when moths are most active. This one flew off into the westering sun while I was looking, revealing its bright yellow underwings, hence the more appreciative common name for the adult phase of this creature.

Borage is Not Boring for Spiders and other Living Things

Last year's crop of green lynx spideys suffered a terrible loss when my Indian mallow (Abutilon palmeri) up and died suddenly over the winter. That big fuzzy-leafed shrub, attractive to so many bugs apt to become spider-prey, was home to three clutches of peucetia viridens eggs last fall. And so the tiny spiders, now on their second molt by the looks of this one, have had to make other plans. This one has taken residence just below the blooming cyme of this borage plant. I saw a few aphids, the random tiny files and some chew marks on the leaves, so the spider has something to hunt. Borago officinalis is reviled by some for reseeding itself with abandon, a characteristic I kind of admire in a plant, to a point. For now its hairy leaves and sky blue flowers create habitat for spiders and other living things.

Back to the (Local) Bugs

And what can be more local than that which crawls up the wall of my house? This is the first time I've seen the bug inside the pod, or case if you prefer. The household casebearer moth (Phereoeca uterella) caterpillar, seen here hauling its case made of silk and whatnot (sand, soil, insect parts or poo, whatever it finds) up the wall of my porch, has left its little melon-seed-shaped cases glued to the wall and made me wonder what in the heck they are. So now I know.

The case has enough room inside for the larva to turn around, and it will use both of the entrances (one at each end) to poke its head and true legs out. When danger threatens they retreat into the case and close up the ends. How do they know when it's safe to emerge again? These guys eat old spider webs, I'm told. But also they maybe eat other animal fibers like wool or hair. Not usually a pest but if you see an awful lot of them around your valuable wool rugs I'd worry. Luckily I have no valuable rugs.

This guy was heading up the wall in what seemed like a mighty struggle carrying the heavy case, but it eventually made it to a ceramic sun thingy hanging on the wall, behind which there is an abundance of, you guessed it, spider webs.

Bloom Day of Doom

This is my mailbox, empty except for junk mailers and unwanted catalogs, and some of my miniature roses. No time (or desire) to buy stuff out of catalogs anyway . . . must garden. Oh, and finish up the tax returns. Well, there's always form 4868 for those of us who'd rather garden in April than crunch those numbers.






To clarify, I used to procrastinate and run my returns out to the post office at 11:45 pm on the 15th of April. And so, the day represented a sense of doom and I think still does for many people. These days, I've matured and I normally have this task completed well ahead of time (at least a couple days!). When you're not lending the government money all year long and filing for a refund, well, there's not much incentive in getting the thing done way in advance EXCEPT that April is a much better time to play outdoors than grind the calculator inside. Hence: Form 4868.

Further clarification: Don't think I'm one of these newfangled tea partiers in the news this tax-filing day. For the first time in, oh, about 8 years I feel OK about the federal tax I pay. It seems there's someone in charge with a plan, and a brain. I think over all we get pretty good value for our tax dollars in terms of a safe, decent place to live and do business, while of course there is vast amounts of improvement and reprioritization needed in all phases of both government and private sector enterprises, again, especially after the last 8 years. As for the tea party, I'd rather sip a fine cup of Good Earth Original in the garden than line up with the likes of Sean Hannity and pollute the bay with my symbolic tea; just to clarify that position. Anyway, this guy Marc Cooper has a few choice words about that, too:

Inflated Beetles

When we arrived at Red Rock Canyon State Park, it was nearly midday and the temperature was 89 degrees, just right for a stroll among the crumbling towers, rocks and gravelly dry streambed. While doing that we found a couple of these beetles running around in the gravel seeking plants which they then ran up then down, pausing to nibble at selected somethings now and then. They turn out to be Cysteodemus armatus, inflated blister beetles also known as desert spider beetle. Notice that these display two different color patterns; the species comes in several variations but I didn't know that at the time I was observing them and thought, well, I didn't know what to think really but figured I'd find out later as long as I managed to get a few decent pictures. Which wasn't too easy given the speed they were running and the possibility of rattlesnakes lurking under the rocks I was trying not to trip over.

Aside from their weird looks, these beetles seem rather interesting: They are flightless; there is a dead air space under the pock-marked elytra which functions as insulation from the heat; they are most active in the heat of the day; their hemolymph contains a toxin that will cause skin irritations; they have a hypermetamorphic life cycle, wherein the larvae pass through various stages with different morphology and behaviors; the larvae are parasitoids (on bees?) while the adults eat wildflowers that appear briefly in spring; and these beetles enjoy the finer things in life as they live in the Mojave and Colorado deserts in CA, AZ and NV. Oh, and, none of the sources I read mention this but as the beetles ran they emitted a very theatrical swishing or scrapey sound which reminded me of a movie (maybe it was Disney's Living Desert, remember that?) where the sounds made by small desert creatuers as they scurried were made hyper-real by movie magic. Except this was real.

Inflated blister beetle, I was glad to make your curious acquaintance this spring.

Remains

At times when we drove through select areas of the Mojave Desert the insects were so numerous hitting the car it sounded like a rainstorm. It turns out an awful lot of them were syrphid flies, like this one. An unexpected surprise was found in that unnamed, unloved stretch of 395 before and after Johannesburg. Patches of goldfields and other flowers stretched from the wretched 2 lane all the way to the hills as far as you could see. I think it was so beautiful it made impatient drivers forget for awhile their urge to pass. I am sorry about the bugs, but what can you do?

Easter Egg

I was happy to be able to get out to the desert over the weekend. So many bugs and so little time but this one's bright yellow elytra stood out like a poorly hidden Easter egg against the volcanic rock it was on. This is a freshly emerged California lady beetle, Coccinella californica. The wing covers probably darkened quite a bit as they hardened. On the other side of the rock was another pupa waiting to emerge.

Mantids after their Skeletons Harden

These are two of the Stagmomantis californica nymphs after their exoskeletons have hardened and now you can see the striped markings on them. The first one climbed to the tip of a Sedum nussbaumerianum leaf, posed there for a few moments before hopping onto the acacia itiaphylla swaying overhead. They are very good jumpers.

















The second one kept trying to reach the next senecio leaf by stretching its tiny body; then finally and easily made the leap.

Thoughts about Baseball

So major league baseball season is underway. I really love baseball because it's a slow, dignified game played out in the honey-scented spring sunshine or a warm summer evening with moths flying around in the lights. The grass is green, the beer is cold, the bats are hopefully hot or the pitcher is at least. Still, this cartoon captured something I've felt disgruntled about for awhile (extreme player compensation). This would be the appropriate year for baseball owners to give it back to the fans, in the form of plenty of cheap tickets and $1 beers, popcorn and hot dogs. If Arte Moreno won't do it, well I can get my baseball itch scratched in other ways, such as at a high school or college game. And, there's always the game on the transistor radio and a cheap bottled beer in the tranquility of my own back yard with the crickets, where parking is still free.

4/9 Well maybe not the $1 beers. Too many people can't drink responsibly. So sad about the death of 22 year old Angels pitcher Nick Adenhart.

Surprise Visit from the Stagmomantis Stork

So I was walking through the backyard, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince and a bowl of cheese puffs in hand on my way to the rocking chair for a read when I happened to look down and see tiny mantis nymphs tumbling in slo-mo out of the oothecum that was placed under the styrofoam crow's tail early last November. These are stagmomantis californica, California mantis.

The first thing you see of an emerging nymph is the rounded top of its head and two dark flattened eyes . I'm not sure what the mechanism is for them to come out, but it looks like they are being squeezed out of a tube. As the nymph comes out, it jerks its body a bit and finally is fully free of the foam casing of the oothecum. At this point it is roughly cylindrical, with the segments of the abdomen reinforcing the resemblance to a worm or even a maggot. But mantids are insects with gradual metamorphosis, meaning the young will resemble the appearance of the adults, unlike (for example) maggots which do not resemble flies. As more and more nymphs squeeze out, the older ones unfurl their legs and antennae; their body lengthens and their heads expand into that characteristic mantis shape with a pointy beak in the middle and bulging eyes on each side. This expansion happens quite quickly: I started watching at 10:45 when there were maybe three emerged; everyone was out and pumped up by 11:11. I counted 24 of them; just over 1 minute each for the emergence.

After they hatch the tiny mantids move slowly away from the oothecum, giving their legs a test while their abdomens curl up. They tend to form ranks, all facing about the same direction, although a few adventurous individuals went off the opposite way. Iconoclasts, I guess. The rest reminded me of the scene in Star Wars Ep I, The Phantom Menace, where rank after rank of battle droids methodically unload from a large, oothecum-like ship onto a pastoral field, ready to do battle upon the people of Naboo.

By late afternoon/early evening the baby mantids had moved off of the mother crow and into the nearby plants. Overnight their exoskeletons had cured to a darker brown with some light brown stripes and markings. They leave their siblings behind for a solitary life in the planet of my garden munching insects (usually) smaller than themselves.