The Springtime Glow of Golden Ragwort

Golden Ragwort blooms
March 15, 2024

While there are many spring wildflowers that are stunningly beautiful when viewed from nearby, there aren't many that put on a bright show from afar.  One that does is Golden Ragwort (Packera aurea).

Golden Ragwort blooms
with Eastern Calligrapher (Syrphid Fly)
March 25, 2024

Viewed from near or far, Golden Ragwort is a shining star.  Or, to be more accurate, Golden Ragwort is a cluster of shining stars, often found in drifts of gold, nestled in clouds of glistening emerald green foliage.

Golden Ragwort winter foliage
February 7, 2025

Let's unpack that last statement....  One of the things that really appeals to me about Golden Ragwort is the richly shining, emerald foliage which is at its best in early spring, a time when I'm craving green.  For most of the year, this plant grows as a basal rosette of rounded leaves which can form a beautiful ground cover in mass.  The rosettes stay evergreen through the cold, ready to start growing rapidly as the days lengthen and the weather warms up.

Flower buds developing above ferny foliage
February 26, 2024

As the springtime cues of longer days and warmer temperatures come, the plants start to get "fuller and fluffier" (as my friend Barbie used to say) and, before long, ferny-looking leaves begin to appear.  The ferny leaves signal that the flower stalks are beginning to grow. 

 

Buds opening on a Golden Ragwort flower cluster
(Very blurry Asian Ladybug on center bud)
March 14, 2024

Soon clusters of green and purple buds are pushing skyward, on stems often suffused with deep purple.  By early-mid March, the buds are breaking open into clear yellowish gold, daisy-shaped flowers that appear in flat-topped clusters held about 12-18" above the ground.

Cluster of Golden Ragworts in bloom
March 15, 2024

A bed of Golden Ragworts in full bloom is breath-taking.  In a woodland setting, clusters of them scattered among trees seem to create their own dappled sunlight in the shade.  Even a single plant in full bloom is a bright accent that inevitably draws the eye.

Which brings me to one of the great characteristics of Golden Ragwort: it grows in a variety of conditions, ranging from full sun to fairly heavy shade, and from moderately dry soil to quite damp conditions.  If you'd ask me where it does best, I'd say moist soil in light shade, but it looks good in a variety of settings. 

 

Two flower stems munched by deer
March 5, 2024

On top of its ease of siting, Golden Ragwort is also easy to transplant and grow.  Best of all, it is fairly resistant to deer and other critters grazing on it.  I've never noticed signs of rabbits munching and the vole damage I've seen seemed to be almost accidental from their runs running nearby.  There is one time of year when the deer seem to snack on it in our yard: that is when the flower stalks are pushing up, before they bloom.  I've hypothesized that the flower stalks must have less of the defensive chemicals than the foliage has overall.  In any event, if we remember to spray deer deterrent on the plants during this relatively brief period of time, the deer seem to leave the plants strictly alone.  If we forget the deer spray?  Well, the plants bloom anyway, just lower and later in the season.

Besides deer, Golden Ragwort can help with other pests in the garden.  In the native plant community, there is a growing awareness that some native plant species can help keep invasive plants at bay.  Golden Ragwort is one of those species.  Several years ago, Nancy Lawson, the Humane Gardener, wrote a post "How to Fight Plants with Plants" describing how she first observed this happening in her own garden, with Golden Ragwort keeping Garlic Mustard from taking over.  In our garden, I find little or no Japanese Stilt Grass, one of the worst invasives in our yard, in the area where Golden Ragwort grows thickly.

Golden Ragwort seeds
April 22, 2024

What are the downsides of Golden Ragwort?  There are always a few downsides, right?  Well, this plant does like to seed itself around a bit.  It's easy to pull out the seedlings - and they make a great source of new plants to increase your own plantings or to gift to friends - but you will probably find some seedlings around.

Because of its strong growth habits, Golden Ragwort is absolutely capable of overpowering a "shy" or slow-growing plant nearby.  I would not, for example, plant it with bloodroot.  It does do well, however, with several of the fall asters and other such strong growers.

Fading Golden Ragwort blooms juxtaposed
with newly opening Viburnum blossoms
April 18, 2024

The last downside is that this plant's "ugly phase", the time period when it's done blooming, it's forming seeds, and its flower spikes are drying up and turning brown, occurs just as the rest of the garden is swinging into full spring bloom.  While that can be a great thing, because the visual focus moves on to other plants, it can also be disconcerting to have "dead blooms" during peak garden bloom time.  If neatness is important to you, you can always cut the spent flower stalks off, disposing of them or putting them on a brush pile where birds would still have access to the seeds.  The basal rosettes will soon plump up nicely and you'll have a pleasing ground cover for the remainder of the year. 

Next comes my favorite part of talking about any native plant - the animal community it belongs to!  Not surprisingly, given that there aren't a lot of perennials blooming at this time of year, a lot of pollinators and other insects are drawn to Golden Ragwort.  A brief look through the photos I've taken over the last two years shows at least 25 different insect species using this plant - and I know I didn't catch photos of all the insects I saw.  Here are a few highlights, chosen to show the variety of insects drawn to Golden Ragwort.....

Three-cornered Alfalfa Hopper
March 12, 2024

Not all insects that use Golden Ragwort are using the flowers.  One of the first insects I saw last spring was this Three-cornered Alfalfa Hopper (Spissistilus festinus), a species of treehopper that is known to feed on a wide variety of plants.  Treehoppers suck sap to feed, but I saw no sign of any damage to the plant from its feeding actions.  This individual probably overwintered as an adult.

Syrphid fly
March 14, 2024

I commonly see syrphid flies of several species feeding at Golden Ragwort blooms or hovering around the plants.  I don't know the exact species of this individual, but it's in the genus Syrphus, one of many syrphid fly groups whose larvae are voracious aphid predators.  Since this individual is not feeding, it may actually be scouting for a site to lay eggs.  A single syrphid fly larva can consume up to 400 aphids as it grows, so these are great "neighbors" to have in your garden.  Syrphid flies tend to overwinter as pupae either on plants, in the leaf litter, or in the soil.

Syrphid fly laying an egg next to aphids
on Golden Ragwort
March 15, 2024

This syrphid fly, also a Syrphus sp., is almost assuredly laying eggs.  I have a sequence of photos of this individual which I love because, if you zoom in really close, you can see several (green) aphids just to the left of the tip of her abdomen.  Mom's making sure her babies will have their meals served fresh upon their arrival!

Cellophane Bee
March 25, 2024

This photo just makes me smile.  Can you imagine visiting restaurants so replete with food that you end up literally coated with it as you eat?  Well, when I phrase it that way, it sounds rather gross...but this bee looks like she's whole-heartedly enjoying her meal.  This is a cellophane bee (Collettes sp.), one of the native bees that builds a solitary nest in the ground.   Cellophane bees coat the walls of their nests with a polyester secretion to protect their developing young, hence the name cellophane bee.

Blueberry Digger Bee
March 16, 2024

Another native bee I always love to see each spring is the Blueberry Digger Bee (Habropoda laboriosa), a.k.a. the Southeastern Blueberry Bee, which looks like a small bumble bee.  This powerhouse ia a buzz pollinator and a specialist in pollinating blueberry blossoms.  It may, however, nectar at other flowers, as this one is doing.  According to Bugguide, in her adult lifetime, a single female Blueberry Digger Bee may visit around 50,000 blueberry flowers, producing over 6000 blueberries by her actions.  These bees only fly for a few weeks in the spring; their adulthood is timed to coincide with the bloom season of blueberries.  As is common for many of the solitary bees, there is only one generation each year.  Not surprisingly, given their name, this species nests in the ground.

Damselfly, March 20, 2024

Where flowers attract pollinators and other insects, predators will follow.  This damselfly is a good example.  Dragonflies and damselflies have excellent eyesight and can be hard to sneak up on to photograph...which is another way of saying that I'm sorry for the poor quality of this photo!

Greater Bee Fly
March 31, 2023

This cute little teddy-bear of an insect is a bee fly, specifically a Greater Bee Fly (Bombylius major).  Don't let its cute looks deceive you:  bee flies are parasitoids on solitary bee species.  The female Greater Bee Fly flicks her eggs into the nest openings of ground-nesting solitary bees or lays her eggs on the flowers she visits.  When the eggs hatch, the larvae are mobile and either hitch a ride back to the nest on the female bee, or move into the nest from where the egg was laid near the entrance.  Once inside the bee's burrow, the bee fly larvae eat up the stores of pollen and nectar that the mother bee has stored for her larvae, as well as feeding on the bee larvae themselves.  The bee fly then pupates in the bee's nest and emerges in the spring.  This is an example of one of nature's feedback loops that helps keep species in balance with each other and with plant resources.

 

Path of Phyllocnistis insignis, a leafminer moth, 
on the upper surface of a Golden Ragwort leaf
June 25, 2023

You will frequently see the tracery of a leafminer mine on one of the Golden Ragwort leaves.  Leafminers, which may be tiny moths, flies, or wasps, are very host specific and are often associated with only one or a few species of plants.  Phyllocnistis insignis, a tiny moth with no common name, is the leafminer that uses Golden Ragwort leaves.   It does not harm the plant at all.  If you look closely at the winter foliage photo near the beginning of this post, you'll also see a leafminer mine on one of the leaves.

Although I'm always tempted to bore folks to tears by showing photos of ALL the insects I've seen using a particular plant, I think I'll close with just one more.

Camouflaged Looper
April 5, 2024

Camouflaged Loopers, the caterpillar of the Wavy-lined Emerald (Synchlora aerata), are common in our yard from spring through fall.  They are masters of disguise, covering themselves with bits of petal from the flowers they are eating.  The adult moth is a beautiful light green with delicate white markings, although I see the adults much less frequently than I see the caterpillars.  While these caterpillars do eat petals, they're relatively small and they do only cosmetic damage.  Honestly, I love finding them - I always feel like I've found a little treasure.

Speaking of treasures, that's what I consider Golden Ragwort in my garden.  

Where can you find this beauty if you want to add some to your garden?  Well, I've never seen it at a standard nursery or big box store, but I do see it regularly at native plant nurseries, native plant sales, and online in the inventory of native plant companies.  Because Golden Ragwort reseeds nicely, it may be available at local Master Gardener sales, too.  In fact, if you're really lucky, a friend may share some with you...or you may find a clump growing naturally in your yard.  That's how I got introduced to this plant here in SE Virginia!

Whether you choose to grow this plant in your garden or to just admire it when you see it growing wild, you'll know what a great native plant those golden blooms are signaling when their sunshiny glow catches your eye.

Turkey Tangle Fogfruit Community

Certain plants seem to create large communities of insects and other wildlife within my garden.  I thought I'd do a series on a couple of these species, starting with Turkey Tangle Fogfruit (Phyla nodiflora).  As I've gone through my photos from last year, I realized I've got pictures from at least 23 different species of animals using this species in 2018 alone - and that's just the number I captured with my camera.  I know there were animals using it that I wasn't able to capture on film (like swallowtail butterflies).  I'm equally certain there were animals using it that I simply didn't see.

Fogfruit is not a showy species to my eye.  Although some people really like its dainty flowers, to be honest, I find this plant rather blah visually.  It is, however, a powerhouse for supporting pollinators and other insects and, as such, has earned a place in my yard whenever possible.

Essentially a groundcover, fogfruit grows around 8" tall.  About 3 years ago, I started out with 2 plants in gallon containers, planted 2' apart.  The fogfruit now covers an area that is about 6' X 8' - and it would be happy to be out in the driveway and into the street, too, if we didn't keep it trimmed back.  On the plus side, fogfruit manages to hold its space fairly well, once established, and doesn't need much of any care.

The first photos I have of the animals it harbored last year are from mid-May.

Here is a small spider that I saw on May 15th, then didn't see again all year.  It's a pretty little thing which the great folks at Antman's Hill on Facebook helped me to identify as an orbweaver, Gea heptagon.

On the same day, I captured a photo of this little syrphid fly (Toxomerus sp.) nectaring at one of the fogfruit blossoms.

Like others in this genus, the larvae of this fly feed on aphids, thrips, and small caterpillars throughout the garden, so it's nice to see the adult visiting.

By June 10th, the action was heating up.  There was this cute little orange "teddy bear" nectaring, a bee fly (Chrysanthrax cypris).

Cute as this guy is, its life cycle is less cuddly.  Flies in the Chrysanthrax genus are external parasitoids on the cocoons of some solitary bees and on the cocoons of tiphiid wasps, which are themselves predators of beetle larvae.  The "balance of nature" is sometimes hard for me to feel comfortable with and gracefully accept, but I do my best.

Throughout June and again in August, I have photos of another bee fly (Exoprosopa fascipennis) nectaring at the fogfruit.

Again, I find this an attractive little creature, but again its life cycle is rather fearsome.  The bee flies in Exoprosopa feed on the cocoons of many different kinds of wasps, including the tiphiid wasps mentioned above, spider wasps, and a group of solitary wasps known as sphecid wasps.

Speaking of wasps, in mid June, this scoliid wasp (Scolia nobilitata) was enjoying the fogfruit nectar, too.

Scoliid wasps are parasitoids of beetle grubs, especially the grubs of May beetles.  The females dig down to the grub, sting it to paralyze it, and deposit on egg. When the egg hatches, the wasp larva eats the perfectly preserved beetle grub.  I like my grub control to be natural (even if it is rather gruesome that way)!

Since both the bee flies and the scoliid wasp were nectaring at the same time on the same plant, it is possible that one or the other of the bee fly species parasitizes this scoliid wasp species, following females as they leave their feeding ground and search for beetle grubs to parasitize.  There is so much about these little guys that we simply don't know, even things as basic as which bee fly species parasitizes which wasp species.  Often these predator/prey relationships with parasitoids are very specific, confined to just one or two species, or perhaps between two particular genuses.

Moving back to less gory lifecycles, a couple days after photographing the pretty wasp above, I started capturing images of butterflies and skippers.  First was this Fiery Skipper (Hylephila phyleus) on June 16th.

 Since the larvae of fiery skippers dine on grasses such as St. Augustine, this species is relatively common.

On June 22nd, I photographed the first Phaon Crescent (Phyciodes phaon) of the year, although these photos are from later in the summer.

These cute little orange butterflies utilize fogfruit as their larval plant, as well as obviously nectaring on it.  Since I see quite a few of them, I'm pretty sure that my little patch of fogfruit is producing phaon crescents, but I've never actutally found one of the caterpillars.

Something sure likes to eat the fogfruit leaves, though!

I spotted this dainty damselfly hanging out around the fogfruit several times last summer. It's the only damselfly or dragonfly species that I photographed on the fogfruit last year, and the folks at Antman's Hill identified it for me as a male Rambur's Forktail (Ischnura ramburii).  That makes sense, as I've seen the (orange) female Rambur's Forktail in the yard multiple times, although I've never photographed one on the fogfruit.

There were several more wasps and bees over the course of the summer, including this potter or mason wasp on July 20th, .....

...and this paper wasp (Polistes metricus) on August 10th.

I actually don't see many paper wasps in the yard - which is fine with me.  Instead, I see lots of solitary wasps, who are generally much easier to share space with. 

One of my favorite finds was this cute little black leafcutter bee, the Carpenter Mimic Leafcutter Bee (Megachile xylocopoides).  As the name suggests, this stunning black bee with the fluorescent blue shimmer is considered a mimic of larger carpenter bees, specifically the Southern Carpenter Bee, which I also saw in my yard last summer.

Note the long hairs on the underside of the abdomen?  That's how you can tell it's a leafcutter bee - at least if it's a female.  Female leafcutter bees carry pollen in those hairs, often giving them a potbellied appearance.  This gal was apparently feeding herself, not gathering pollen for future offspring.

On August 8th, I was able to capture photos of a Barred Sulfur (Eurema daira) visiting...

...and if you look closely at the stem a few inches below the blossom, you'll see the wad of spittle that signifies a spittlebug nymph feeding - yet another insect species utilizing the fogfruit.

A few days later, I photographed this crisp Checkered Skipper (Pyrgus sp.).

Apparently, most skipper larvae fold and sew leaves together to make tent shelters for themselves, so don't be too quick to destroy any such structures you might come across in your garden.

Of the 23 species I photographed on my Turkey Tangle Fogfruit in 2018, the above photos were the most interesting and/or the insects were the most photogenic.  Rounding out my 23 species were 4 more species of flies, 2-3 species of small beetles, a honeybee, and two other bees I haven't been able to identify yet.

Like the plant they were visiting, most of these animals aren't large or particularly beautiful.  They are the everyday denizens of our gardens, busily living their lives and often feeding other animals in the process.  To me, each of these species has the right to exist, the right to its place on this Earth, just as much as any other species has that same right.  I hope that, someday soon, we humans can learn to coexist with the other plants and animals on this planet, instead of needlessly and carelessly destroying them.

BugGuide for the Win!

A big thank you and shout out to the folks at BugGuide.net for their help in identifying so many of the little beasties that I see in my yard and gardens! 

Last week was a perfect case in point.  I saw a large black bee nectaring on swamp milkweed from my kitchen window and I grabbed the camera to get a few photographs.  This insect was new to me,  but it reminded me of a bee that had been recently talked about and shared in a Facebook group about pollinators.  So I looked up the two-spotted longhorned bee, the species in question, and it looked good...but maybe just a little different from what I was seeing. 

The abdominal spots were smaller in my individual than in many of the photos of the two-spotted longhorned bee in BugGuide and the long hairs on the legs of my individual were dark, not light, but otherwise it looked like a reasonably good match.  There are really a limited number of large black bees it could have been, excluding bumble bees, which this wasn't.  So I tentatively identified my photos and submitted them as an ID request.

Within a day, Dr. John Ascher had identified my specimen as a southern carpenter bee (Xylocopa micans), a species that I was totally unfamiliar with and had never even considered. I actually thought that the eastern carpenter bee (Xylocopa virginica) was the only large carpenter bee in our area so I hadn't thought to look more closely at carpenter bees.

According to the brief research I did, there is not much known about the life cycle of the southern carpenter bee.  A fact sheet from the University of Florida reports that the only nests that have been reported were in small branches of Ligustrum (1958) and red maple (1975), about 1-1.5 m above the ground.  Apparently this species is NOT an economic problem, as the eastern carpenter bee can be.

Was this an earth shattering identification?  No.  But the only other way I know to really identify many of the insects I photograph, including this one, would be to catch them and kill them, then look at them under magnification, using keys.  While that is certainly the classic way to deal with insect identification, I am gardening on less than 0.4 acre in the middle of a suburban development where new assaults seem to occur daily against the wildlife present.  Trees and shrubs are cut down and replaced with chemical-soaked lawn.  What flowers there are come from the big box stores which, around here, means they are full of neonic pesticides.  There are far more non-native plants than natives in everyone's yards, providing little food for native insects and other animals.  Often I only see one individual of a species in my yard - and, if I collected it to identify it, I might have just kept that species from keeping a toehold around here.  For example, I have not, to my knowledge, seen a southern carpenter bee here in the 3 years we've lived here - and I haven't seen another one since I saw this individual a week ago.

Why do I find it so important to know what the various insects are in my yard and gardens?  I ask myself that question on a pretty regular basis, wondering if I'm wasting everyone's time, including my own.  Then I identify a new species and learn about it, finding out that I have...

... a wasp species (Prionyx parkeri) that controls short-horned grasshopper populations and pollinates flowers...

... or a fly species, tiger bee fly (Xenox tigrinus), that parasitizes carpenter bees and balances their populations...

... or yet another syrphid fly whose larvae eats aphids.  (The syrphid fly larva is the large, brown and white blob on the milkweed stem, surrounded by its food, oleander aphids.)

The complex web of relationships in even my basic little gardens truly astounds me, and I learn so much by identifying the different species and researching a bit about their life cycles and feeding habits.   I try to share that information with others, too, hoping to encourage fellow gardeners to just relax and let Mother Nature keep the balance in their yards instead of pulling out the poisons to "keep everything under control".

In fact, thanks in great part to the insect identification help I've received from BugGuide, I've come to think that human "control" is highly over-rated and much more likely to do harm than good, especially in a garden.  What insects are YOU seeing in your garden, and what are you learning about the balance of nature all around you?  Have you dared to go chemical free yet?