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?

A Passion for Life

The fragrances of the earth enjoin and
blossom in my nostrils and
sinus -
breath is what we
share with the world.
                    - Gavin Geoffrey Dillard, Graybeard Abbey

Hmmmm.  Seems like a good month to participate in Wildflower Wednesday, but what flower should I pick? 

The spotted beebalm (Monarda punctata) that just started blooming? 

The clustered mountain mint (Pycnanthemum muticum) that has become a new favorite of mine, with its frosty cool garden presence and its outstanding ability to pull in the pollinators - and their predators? 

The turkey tangle fogfruit (Phyla nodiflora) that I concurrently both love and simply dislike?

The Devil's grandmother (Elephantopus tomentosus) that also just started to bloom and which is actually looking like a garden plant this summer since I finally got around to transplanting some into a bed this spring?

The "Eveready bunny" of my garden, the old sturdy standby Indian blanket (Gaillardia pulchella) that just keeps going and going and going and going?

The swamp milkweed (Asclepias incarnata) that I'm relying on to attract some monarchs to my gardens one of these days?

The trailing pineland lantana (Lantana depressa) out by the front sidewalk, with its lemonade colored blossoms covering tidy mounds of vibrantly bright green leaves?

Nope.  Those are all cool and wonderful plants in my gardens, ...

...but I think I'm going for the maypop this time, a.k.a. passion vine (Passiflora incarnata).  Every time I walk down on the deck or dock this summer, the rich fragrance of these impossibly glamorous blossoms startles my senses with its complex allure.  Is it possible that the aroma of these blooms has given rise to the name "passion vine"?  I know that's not the commonly told history, which involves some rather convoluted symbolism about the "passion of Christ", but passion vine fragrance is every bit as romantic as gardenia to me.  This has been the first year that I've really processed how deeply fragrant these flowers are.  To my nose, I think the smell of maypop flowers is richer even than that of roses - and I love the fragrance of roses.

I wish there was a way to put a scratch & sniff app into this blog post.....

I'm obviously not the only living creature that thinks maypop flowers smell appealing, as I frequently see pollinators on them.  These big blooms seem built for BIG pollinators.  Recently, for example, I've seen both...

carpenter bees (Xylocopa virginica)...

and this huge scarab hunter wasp (Campsomeris quadrimaculata) acting almost drunk with the richness of the nectar they are drinking.  Note that the back and head of this wasp are actually coal black without pollen on them.  Yes, this wasp has accidentally gathered THAT MUCH pollen!

As this photo with the blurry carpenter bee shows, there is a horizontal space between the stigmas (curved, long and white with greenish tips) and anthers (yellowish rectangles) and the nectary (reddish purple fuzzy area at the base of the central stalk) that seems expressly designed for such big floral visitors.  If you look back at the photos above, you can see how absolutely covered with pollen the backs of these large insects are!  A smaller bee or wasp wouldn't be anywhere close to as efficient in transferring pollen as these big guys are.

A consequence of such efficient pollination is, of course, the production of seeds.  In the case of passion vine, the seeds are housed in the passion fruit.  For years I've heard that these tennis ball sized fruits are edible, but I've never tried one before because, quite frankly, they just didn't look that appealing to me.  I've decided that this year I'm going to be a bit more adventurous.  According to the web, the fruits are ripe when they start to turn yellow, get wrinkled, and fall off the vine, so I'm keeping my eyes open.  If these fruits taste at all like their fans online say, the taste may rival the fragrance of the flowers.

Humans, bees, and wasps aren't the only animals that love passion vines.  As almost anyone who has planted one knows, gulf fritillaries (Agraulis vanillae) use them as their larval plants and the fritillary caterpillars can quickly reduce a vine to tatters.  In fact, during most growing seasons I have to remind myself to "tolerate the uglies" so that my vine(s) can send many more gorgeously glowing, orange, floating "flowers" off into the breezes.  Luckily, no matter how thoroughly the passion vines are eaten, they always seem to survive and thrive the following year.

This year, however, has been different.  I saw 4 gulf fritillary caterpillars about 2 months ago, but I haven't seen another one since then...until yesterday.  Meanwhile my vines have grown huge, luxurious, almost rampant.  As passionvines do, new vines are sprouting up a dozen feet or more from the parent plant in every direction and they are now even starting to impinge on the deck stairs.  There are plenty of blossoms and a burgeoning crop of that intriguing fruit is developing.  A myriad of flower buds promise ever increasing numbers of blooms still to come.  Truth to tell, it's all beginning to get a little over-the-top, but I don't want to cut it back.  I'm waiting for the caterpillars to come and do that for me.

Finally, yesterday, I found 2 little gulf fritillary cats determinedly munching away.  Then, this afternoon, another 3 more.  Hopefully at least a couple of these tiny orange babies will make it to adulthood, providing some much needed pruning along the way.  Meanwhile, I'm joyously sharing the breath of the world with every deep inhalation of that glorious passion vine fragrance.