Trichopoda pennipes, Feather-legged Fly, on Pycnanthemum, Mountain-Mint, in my garden yesterday. Although it’s widespread and common, occurring throughout North America, this was the first time I’ve noticed this species in my garden. This photo shows several of the keys to identifying this species:
“Feathered” fringes on the hindlegs, true of Trichopoda.
Orange abdomen. Females have a black-tipped abdomen. Males, such as this one, have a completely orange abdomen.
Wings are completely black. This species has a transparent margin to the wing.
Trichopoda is a parasitoid of Hempitera, true bugs, including many agricultural and garden pests, such as squash bugs and stinkbugs. For this reason, it’s considered a “beneficial” insect:
Each female fly lays on average 100 eggs, which are placed singly on the body of a large nymph or adult bug. Most of the small, white or gray, oval eggs are placed on the underside of the thorax or abdomen, but they can occur on almost any part of the bug. Many eggs may be laid on the same host, but only one larva will survive in each bug. The young larva that hatches from the egg bores directly into the host body. The maggot feeds on the body fluids of the host for about two weeks, during which time it increases to a size almost equal to that of the body cavity of its host. When it has completed its development, the cream-colored third instar maggot emerges from the bug between the posterior abdominal segments. The bug dies after emergence of the fly, not from the parasitoid feeding, but from the mechanical injury to its body. The maggot pupates about an inch down in the soil in a dark reddish-brown puparium formed from the last larval skin, and an adult fly emerges about two weeks later. There can be three generations per year depending on location.
The fly overwinters as a second instar larva within the body of the overwintering host bug. Adult flies emerge in late spring or early summer. The only bugs large enough to parasitize at this time are overwintered adults. Subsequent generations develop on both nymphs and adults of the next generation. – Trichopodes pennipes, Parasitoid of True Bugs
Scolia dubia, Blue-winged Digger Wasp, on Pycnanthemum, Mountain-Mint, in my garden.
Another little jewel of a wasp that is new to me this year. I’ve been seeing it on the Pycnanthemum, but was unable to get decent photos of it until yesterday. I’ve also seen it on the Clethra alnifolia, Summersweet in my garden, which just started blooming in the past week.
With the wings held back, the blue iridescence of the wings might lead one to mistakenly identify this as a small Sphex pensylvanicus, Great Black Wasp.
Scolia dubia
Sphex pensylvanicus
But once the wings spread to the sides, the exposed abdomen distinguishes it. The cinnamon- colored abdomen and two bright yellow spots make for a clear identification, once you know the species.
Adults feed on nectar, which both the Mountain-Mint and Summersweet offer in abundance.
Females dig in search of grubs of June Bugs and Japanese Beetles to parasitize with their eggs. The wasp larva feeds on the beetle grub and overwinters as a cocoon, emerging the next year.
This species is another example of the importance of providing habitat for wasps in the garden; they are natural bio-controls of other insects that might otherwise overwhelm the gardener’s intentions.
Echinacea pallida, Pale Coneflower, growing in my urban backyard native plant garden.
I was appalled to see the National Wildlife Federation publish on their Web site, without qualification or counter-point, a press piece by the “Brand Manager for American Beauties Native Plants.” (Appalled, but unfortunately, not shocked, given NWF’s mishandling of their Monsanto-Scotts-MiracleGro sell-out, and their ham-handed retraction only in the face of public outrage and opposition.)
The Brand Manager’s puff piece includes this statement:
At American Beauties Native Plants, we take a slightly broader view in our definition of native plants–we include cultivars. A cultivar is a plant that has been selected and cultivated because of some unique quality, such as disease resistance, cold hardiness, height, flower form or color. Sometimes interesting varieties are found in nature and brought into cultivation making them cultivated varieties or cultivars. In my years as a research horticulturist I observed pollinators, birds and other wildlife interacting freely with cultivated plants.
This paragraph is immediately followed by a photograph of “[Echinacea] ‘Tiki Torch’ is a hybrid of Echinacea paradoxa and a cultivar of Echinacea purpurea.”
A cultivar is a vegetatively propagated selection – a clone – of an individual from a population. But a hybrid is not a cultivar. More than that, ‘Tiki Torch’ is a patented plant. By definition, anything that is patented must be man-made, NOT natural, not native. One cannot obtain a patent on something that occurs naturally in the wild, even if you select it, propagate, and promote it as a cultivar. American Beauties greenwashing “native” with so broad a brush that they include patented plants is deceptive marketing. NWF blindly supporting such an association by publishing it unchallenged on their Web site is, at best, cluelessness.
In my urban backyard native plant garden, I grow plants from a range of sources, including cultivars, unnamed straight species of unknown geographic origins, and – my most-prized specimens – local ecotypes propagated by the Greenbelt Native Plant Center from wild populations in and around New York City. I also grow in container a beautiful specimen of the patented Heuchera ‘Caramel’ in this (otherwise) native plant garden. I use it to illustrate what is NOT native.
Lonicera sempervirens, Trumpet Honeysuckle, blooming in my urban backyard native plant garden and wildlife habitat this afternoon. My little urban backyard native plant garden is in its peak Spring bloom:
With a score or so species, subspecies, and natural hybrids native to northeastern North America, the genus Amelanchier goes by several common names, many of which represent the plants’ phenology:
It blooms now, when the ground has thawed enough to dig new graves, and services can be held for those who died during the Winter.
Alosa sapidissima, American Shad, print by Shermon Foote Denton, First Annual Report of the Commissioners of Fisheries, Game, and Forests of the State of New York (1896) County-level map of Amelanchier distribution, Biota of North America Program (BONAP)
There are examples of Amelanchier blooming all around us, if you know what to look for. Unfortunately, you’re more likely to encounter Pyrus calleryana, Callery Pear, alien and invasive, and widely planted as street trees. This year, they started blooming before the Serviceberries.
Serviceberries, to my eye, are more elegant, with widely-spaced branches, and feathery flowers held in elongated clusters. My specimen, Amelanchier x grandiflora ‘Autumn Brilliance’, finally bloomed two days ago. It’s opening unevenly, still a day or two away from full bloom. Perhaps it’s as suspicious of our early Spring as I am, hoarding its treasures lest they all be squandered at once to a hard frost.
Last Wednesday, the furry buds of Amelanchier x grandiflora ‘Autumn Brilliance’ were extending.
Yesterday, four days later, the shoots have turned upright, and individual flower buds are visible. Bloom is imminent.
Helenium autumnale, Sneezeweed, NYC-local Ecotype. This plant already needs dividing, something I wasn’t expecting to do for another month.
Podophyllum peltatum, Mayapple
Trillium (cuneatum?)
Mertensia virginica, Virgina Bluebells, is already tall and full of sky-blue flower buds.
Flower Buds, Vaccinium corymbosum, Highbush Blueberry, NYC-local ecotype. This also seems extremely early. Maybe I’ll get blueberries in May this year.
Updated 2011-11-20 My photo of Patrick Dougherty’s “Natural History” blanketed in January’s snow opens Brooklyn Botanic Garden’s 2012 calendar.
Earlier this year, the Brooklyn Botanic Garden solicited submissions for a visitor-sourced calendar:
Among the Garden’s most passionate visitors are photographers, who capture the beauty each season brings to the Garden’s 52 acres. Their images, taken from unique vantage points, offer perspectives that are at once stunning and unexpected. The 2012 calendar celebrates BBG through their eyes, with a selection of the best visitor-contributed photos from an online competition hosted last year.
Today, the winners met for a reception and guided tour of the Garden.
After coffee and munchies, following a brief welcome and introduction from BBG’s Claire Hansen, we set out on our own guided tour of the “Your Take” trail, a temporary exhibit on the grounds of the Garden, highlighting each of the photos in the calendar, and its photographer, at the location the photo was taken. Here I am posing with my sign. Photo: John Magisano
The signs will be up through January. Here’s the complete list of all photos in the calendar.
A yose (group-style) bonsai specimen of Acer palmatum, Japanese Maple, developed by Stanley Chinn currently on display at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. Yose typically group multiple specimens of the same, or closely related species, in the same planting to simplify cultural requirements. Chinn’s masterful touch is the selection of cultivars with different fall foliage colors. This specimen is unusual in that there appear to be only two, rather than the typical three or some other odd number, of the trees in the grouping.
There is no better time of year to visit the Brooklyn Botanic Garden’s C. V. Starr Bonsai Museum than right now. Most of the trees on display are in peak fall foliage color. And while the wind has knocked the leaves off many of the trees on the grounds, the sheltered bonsai have been spared those indignities.
This season, they’ve placed an additional display table at the northern end of the greenhouse, opposite the entrance.
You can quantify the relative benefits of an individual tree, and project its future benefits as it grows through the years, with i-Tree Design:
i-Tree Design (beta) allows anyone to make a simple estimation of the benefits individual trees provide. With inputs of location, species, tree size and condition, users will get an understanding of the benefits that trees provide related to greenhouse gas mitigation, air quality improvements and storm water interception. With the added step of drawing a house or building footprint—and virtually “planting” a tree—trees’ effects on building energy use can be evaluated.
This tool is intended to be a simple and accessible starting point for understanding individual trees’ value to the homeowner and their community.
Using it is straightforward:
Enter a street address.
Select the common name of the tree species or genus.
Enter the size, indicated by DBH: diameter at breast height (5′ off the ground).
Select the general health or condition of the tree, from “Excellent” to “Dead or Dying.”
The results are returned quickly. Details are available from the different tabs.
The application requires Flash to be supported and enabled in your browser, so it won’t work behind many corporate firewalls.
One of the great pleasures of gardening is observing the activity the garden invites. I can lay out the welcome mat, and set the table, but the guests decide whether or not the invitation is enticing enough to stop by for a drink, a meal, or to raise a family. While charismatic megafauna such as birds and mammals are entertaining, the most common and endlessly diverse visitors are insects.
The Hymenoptera includes bees, wasps, and ants. Although my garden also provides amply for ants, we’ll stick with the bees and wasps today. Following are some of the few portaits I’ve been able to capture of the many visitors to my gardens. The pollinator magnet, Pycnanthemum, Mountain-mint, in the Lamiaceae, provides the stage for many of these photos. I’m always amazed at the variety and abundance of insect activity it attracts when blooming.
Multiple pollinators on Pycnanthemum
Bees
There are over 250 species of bees native to New York City alone. I’m still learning to identify just a handful of the dozens of species that frequent my garden.
My current favorite is the bejeweled Agapostemon, Jade Bee Bombus impatiens, Common Eastern Bumblebee, on Monarda fistulosa
Coelioxys, Cuckoo Bee. I think I’ve got several species from the genus visiting my garden, but I’ve yet to get identification for the others. These are in the Megachilidae, the Leaf-cutter and Mason Bee family. Bees in this family typically carry pollen on hairs beneath their abdomens, instead of in pollen baskets on their legs. You can see this bee isn’t carrying any pollen; it doesn’t even have the hairs beneath its abdomen to do so. It doesn’t need to, because it takes over the pollen-provisioned nests of other leaf-cutter bees for its own young.
Along with the Hymenoptera come the mimic flies. Many of the seeming bees and wasps, seen from a distance, turn out to be flies on closer inspection. In “the field,” i.e.: my garden, there are two features that provide quick distinction between the two familes:
Antennae: Flies have short, clublike antenna, like feelers, in the center of the face, between the eyes. Bees and wasps have long, segmented antenna arising higher up on the face, almost from the top of the head
Eyes: Flies’ compound eyes are huge, covering nearly all of their face. Bees and wasps have compound eyes that wrap partially along the sides of their heads.
The feet are also different, but I usually don’t notice those until I’m browsing and culling my shots. Finally, bees and wasps have four wings, while flies only have two – Di-ptera, two-winged.
The Syrphidae/Flower-Fly family hosts countless mimics of bees and wasps.
Eristalis arbustorum on Hydrangea
Eristalis transversa, Transverse Flower Fly
Their tactics of mimicry are not limited to patterns and colors. Many species have evolved body modifications to mimic even the shapes of wasps and bees.
Syritta pipiens provides a good example of this. This is the most wasp-like fly I’ve found yet in my garden, though more extreme mimics exist. Glimpsed from behind as it moves quickly over the flowers, it could easily be mistaken for a tiny wasp.
Viewed from the side, or the front, Syritta is more obviously a fly, not a wasp, and a dedicated mimic.
Toxomerus geminatus sports a radically flattened abdomen. This seems to be an adaptation to present a wider area from above, as a predator might view it, for displaying its mimicry, while preserving a smaller volume and keeping weight down.
I wonder what they are mimicing? Might some of these mimics mirror actual target species, not just general “bee-ness” or “wasp-ness”? If so, I would expect to find both the mimic and subject in the same range, and exhibit the same phenology. For example, Toxomerus bears a resemblance to Agapostemon at a quick glance.
Photographing Insect Activity
This is my setup for doing live insect macro photography “in the wild,” i.e.: in my garden. The lens is a specialized macro lens that allows for an extremely close focusing distance, though I’m not taking advantage of it in this example. I target some flowers with lots of insect activity, in this case, a local ecotype of Monarda fistulosa, in the Lamiaceae, the Mint Family. Then I wait for insects to visit the flowers, within range of the camera.
I use the tripod handle to pivot up and down; it turns side-to-side easily. Ease of rapid movement with stability is critical, as the insect subjects move rapidly over each inflorescence, and from bloom to bloom. Still, the tripod only steadies my own shaky hands. The insects, of course, are moving, but so are the plants, which sway with the slightest breezes. A fast auto-focus helps; a quick hand is still needed when automation fails.
The mobility allows me to track a single insect as it moves around, and capture different shots, and perspectives, on the same individual. This is critical for identification, since I don’t know until later what the key features to look for might be. It’s often some tiny detail, only revealed from some obscure angle, that distinguishes the species.
My subjects, while largely oblivious to my actions, are not cooperative. I have to shoot hundreds of photos to get a few good shots that are in focus, free of motion blur, and have enough of the right details to identify the species, or at least narrow down to the family. This was never possible, or at least not economically feasible, before digital photography.
Macro shot of Pycnanthemum inflorescences, with common objects for scale: left, pencil eraser, right, U.S. nickle coin.
Eric Grissell, Bees, Wasps, and Ants: The Indispensable Role of Hymenoptera in Gardens
Douglas W. Tallamy, Bringing Nature Home: How You Can Sustain Wildlife with Native Plants
The Xerces Society, Attracting Native Pollinators:Protecting North America’s Bees and Butterflies
Links
The bug geeks at BugGuide are awesome. Only through their generous sharing of knowledge and expertise have I been able to identify my little visitors. They cover the United States and Canada.
