Seeds, weeds and bugs, and a few flowers as well;)
It always pays to stop and take a secound look. What IS that goes through my brain regularly! As I walk along the road I go through many diverse habitats, from sunny to shady, oaks to pines, swamp to dry! Sometimes things right in front of my face, literally on the roadside, make me grin ear to ear! This bright red seed head was one of those grins when I got back and realized what it was!
It was a Jack-in-the-PulpitArisaema triphyllum! I was thrilled as I thought we only had one of these beautiful plants along the road. I look for it every year; now I have another spot to keep checking in the Spring! Woohoo, doesn’t take much to make me happy;) Seed heads certainly can make you take a 2nd look!
The white baneberry or doll’s-eyes, is a species of flowering plant in the genus Actaea, of the family Ranunculaceae. The plant is native to eastern North America. It requires organically rich, humusy soil with excellent drainage and is found in hardwood and mixed forest stands. So beautiful but FYI both the berries and the entire plant are considered poisonous to humans. The berries contain cardiac toxins which can have an immediate sedative effect on human cardiac muscle tissue and are the most poisonous part of the plant. Ingestion of the berries can lead to cardiac arrest and death. No snacking here! A variety of birds, which are not affected by the toxins, eat the berries and help disperse the seeds.
I love the milkweed seed pods as they start to open, we had some mists one morning, and they were covered, along with the salsify seed heads! The Winterberry Holly berries are slowly turning from orange to red as they ripen.
The Devil’s Beggarticks-Bidens frondosa had me stumped, flowering, past flowering? Beautiful either way, great name! It can survive in water-saturated soils, frequently found growing at the water’s edge, in drainage ditches, or in swamps! It is usually hard to get a picture of a flower without some kind of insect photobombing it!
I love it all! I’m so pleased a few monarchs have started to pass through. I was beginning to think we wouldn’t see any butterflies this Fall! Next sunny morning I will sit and wait for them! The Bronze Copper was a beauty by the swamp, silver on the outside, orange on the inside!
It never ceases to amaze me what lies right in front of our eyes! The Short-winged Meadow Katydid I found on some fading Goldenrod, it certainly blended in. The very large, long-tailed black American Pelecinid Wasp was impressive! The adults drink nectar and they are parasitoids that lay their eggs directly into grubs of the June beetle (genus Phyllophaga) buried in the soil. Insects are so cool, vampiric, those damn mosquitoes, but cool;)
I watched the Spotted Spreadwings flying about for a while until they finally landed together, making more of their kind!
Along the road and back at the house, well, we have all kinds of caterpillars! So many Milkweed Tussock caterpillars this year!
…and of course the lovely Promethea Silkmoth (Callosamia promethea) that makes my morning every time I see it there!
I wouldn’t have noticed this stick creature if it hadn’t have climbed on my arm as I brushed away what I thought was a twig…he/she proceeded to climb onto my head and I walked it over to the nearest bush and gently set it down on a leaf! The Common Walkingstick or Northern Walkingstick (Diapheromera femorata) is a species of phasmid or stick insect found across North America. The average length of this species is 75 millimetres (3.0 inches) for males and 95 mm (3.7 in) for females. I took the tape measure out and it was 8″ long, including the front antennae! They can really move when walking! Neither sex has wings, the antennae are two-thirds of the length of the body, and each of the cerci (paired appendages at the tip of the abdomen) has a single segment.
When I went looking for the Silkmoth caterpillar, I came across what looked like a pink bug trying to shed its outer skin!
I believe this is an Acanthocephala terminalis- a member of the leaf-footed bug family Coreidae- shedding its outer shell. As adults, they look like this:
The scientific name is derived from the Greek ἄκανθα (akantha), meaning “thorn/spine” and κεφαλή (kephalé), meaning “head”. They seemed to like the Ash tree saplings! On my morning tour of the milkweed bushes and surrounding maples, there is always something!
The Green Stink Bugs are bright, especially the youngsters! Careful of the the Rough Stink Bugs, Genus Brochymena…are they textured or just a bad crowd 😉 Ha! It’s not easy being green, on green either, ask the Fork-tailed Bush Katydid (Scudderia furcata).
The best early morning find was a light brown wolf spider! I’d never seen anything like it! We came across it while watching the Silk Moth Caterpillar, it was at the base of the bush. It’s a Woodland Giant Wolf Spider (Tigrosa aspersa)! Just the body, not the legs, was over an 2″ long. What a beauty! I guess this isn’t a good post for bugaphobes;) Ha!
…it’s not just bugs either lately…mwahahahahaha…I shall treat all the Entomophobes: The general fear of insects and Herpetophobes: The general fear of reptiles and amphibians, equally:)
These Northern Leopard Frogs vary SO much in colour, from bright green to dark browns! I didn’t give this one’s position away to Gamora, the great frog finder!
I was cleaning up some debris and didn’t realize I had a supervisor watching me;) A beautiful Common Garter Snake was hunting in the shrubs at waist height! The lovely, very small Ribbon Snake was on its way into the forest!
Things are changing so quickly right now…Fall is in the air! I’ll leave the novel here and stay tuned for more butterflies, our last hummingbird…little sob…and a very, very large rat snake! Here is a cool bunch of seeds (I did say seeds in the title) I stepped on them in the forest, and they crunched underfoot, so must investigate, I said! Of Course…American Beech (Fagus grandifolia) seeds! So prickly! Saludos amigos
