Garden Pest Control, Goldenrod Style

Frustratingly, we are often gone during the time when the goldenrods are in full bloom.  I say "frustratingly" because I am fascinated by pollinators and by the interaction between plants and the insects that use them...and goldenrods are among the most highly utilized flowers in my gardens.  Only asters seem to attract more insects.

We only have 2 species of goldenrod in our yard so far.  One species, wreath goldenrod (Solidago caesia), I planted.  The second species, whose identity is more problematic, came in on its own.  When I looked at the USDA Plant Profiles site, there are 12 goldenrods said to be native to Okaloosa County, Florida.  I can eliminate two of those species based on growth habit, but I am still left with at least 10 possible species that might be "my" goldenrod.  That said, I'm not sure how important it is to know the exact identity as, to my knowledge, all goldenrods are spectacular pollinator plants.

Like most years, we were gone for 10 days during peak goldenrod bloom time this year, but I was able to get a few photos the day we left and, again, a day or two after we got back.  I don't have all the insects identified, but I thought I'd share some of the photos with you anyway.

As I listed the species I'd photographed nectaring on or otherwise using our goldenrods, I realized that goldenrods are marvelous predator attractants.  There were at least 6 different wasp species nectaring, most of whom feed their young on moth or other caterpillars.  (Note:  I am paranoid about wasps, but have never been bothered by a wasp feeding on a flower.  Generally only social wasps and bees are aggressive, and then only in defending their nests.)  There were other insect predators, too.

There were at least 4 different mason or potter wasps, all of whom feed their young on caterpillars:

Among these cute little solitary wasps, some (the mason wasps) utilize existing small holes to pack with paralyzed caterpillars and lay an egg upon, before closing up the opening with mud.  The holes in our bricks around the windows, where a prior owner had to board up the windows in preparation for a hurricane, are popular nesting spots for mason wasps.  Others of these wasps build free standing pots of mud which are filled with paralyzed caterpillars before an egg is laid and the pot is sealed.  Those are, not surprisingly, known as potter wasps.


Shown below, northern paper wasps can be very colorful.  This IS a social species and they build a classic "wasp nest" made of regurgitated wood fibers (paper).  Typical of social wasp species, paper wasps do defend their nest - but the individual wasps pay no attention to people when they are away from the nest, feeding on nectar.  Like the species above, this species hunts caterpillars but they hunt other insects, too, to feed their larvae.  They chew up their prey and feed their young on the protein rich regurgitated mix that results.

Thread-waisted wasps are odd looking creatures, but again they are great predators.  While the adult feeds on nectar at flowers, they feed their young on moth caterpillars.  Good protein for growing bodies!

Breaking the long line of caterpillar predators, there were also five-banded tiphiid wasps.  Tiphiid wasps lay each egg on a white grub in the soil (yes, THOSE white grubs).  When the egg hatches, the wasp larva burrows into the grub and slowly eats it from the inside, saving the most important organs for last, so that the grub remains alive and "fresh" until the bitter end.

Two other predatory insects that I found and photographed on the goldenrod were a pair of ladybugs (whose photo was so bad that I'm going to save my photographic reputation and not share it) and a milkweed assassin bug. 

Assassin bugs are indiscriminate predators and feed on many different kinds of insects.  I have to wonder how this brightly colored insect can get close enough to any other insect to capture it and eat it, but obviously they do.



There were common green bottle flies nectaring on the goldenrod, too.  These are one of the insect species whose larvae feed on carrion - and those larvae are also used by forensic scientists to date the age of corpses.  Obviously, the adults feed on flower nectar.

When you think of pollinators, you think of bees, right?  So far I haven't actually shared photos of any bees that were visiting the goldenrod, but there were, indeed, several different species of native bees that I saw.

In fact, bees were the most obvious insects feeding on the goldenrod blooms - at least in part because some of them were the biggest insects.  What is the first thing you notice in the photo above?  The two big eastern carpenter bees, of course.

Zooming in a little bit closer, you can see the righthand one in decent focus.  The left one, the one that is flying, is unfortunately out of focus, but I think you can still see the "bare" abdomen that is indicative of carpenter bees.  That big shiny black abdomen is the quickest and easiest way to separate carpenter bees from similarly sized and shaped bumblebees, whose abdomens are covered with hair.

There was one big black bee that also had a shiny abdomen.  I'd never seen one quite like it before, so I submitted the photos to BugGuide, where I was told it was also a carpenter bee....

.... a female southern carpenter bee (Xylocopa micans).  The males of this species have yellow or orangish hair on their thorax, similar to the eastern carpenter bee above, but they often seem to have green eyes... or at least that's what it seems like, looking at the images on BugGuide.

There was a male green metallic bee (Agapostemon splendens), a species I've seen on other flowers in the yard before.

There were also a couple of bees that I haven't identified yet.

I may need to ask for help from BugGuide to identify these, too.



If we'd been home during the peak goldenrod bloom time, I'm sure that I'd have more insect photos to share with you.  There were, for example, several butterflies that I'd see nectaring on the goldenrod, but they were always gone by the time I got outside with my camera.

All in all, though, I'm pretty happy with the 15 different species I observed using the goldenrods in our yard.  These pollinators will also be pollinating other flowers in the area...and over half of these species will also be controlling leaf-eating insect species in the yard as they raise their families.  That's pest control I LOVE to see happening!

Learning the Local Native Plants

Ashamedly, I have to admit that it took me living here for over 10 months to get off my duff and go back out to the nearby wild area for a walk-about to look for native plants.  Even then, my friend Anna had to initiate the outing.  I can't believe I waited this long - and I'm kicking myself about all the interesting sights I have been missing.

On Monday morning, Anna and I sallied forth to the same road/trail that my family and I visited 18 months ago.  I blogged about our finds in "We're Not in Kansas Any More!" as well as two subsequent posts about specific plants.  Walking on Monday, I actually recognized the American holly tree that I talked about in that original post, but otherwise my attention was generally drawn to very different plants this time.

We were scouting for lupine, which Anna had seen along this sand road just a week or two earlier.  Unfortunately, in the intervening time, some "maintenance" had been done on the trail by a bulldozer, carelessly and messily widening it, and we found no trace of the lupine.  We did, however, discover some other treasures.

One of the first plants we noticed was Pinewoods Milkweed, Asclepias humistrata.

This plant is also known by the common names of sandhill milkweed, for its preferred habitat, and pink-veined milkweed or purple milkweed for rather obvious reasons.  This is a plant that I would love to grow in my yard, as I find the leaves gorgeous just by themselves. 

Add in the attractive pinkish flowers and its function as food for monarch caterpillars and this plant becomes almost irresistible.

Another attractive plant that we noticed was this little white-flowered beauty with its beautifully shaped, dark green leaves.

As I researched to figure out what we were seeing, I was very glad that we didn't try to pick any of the flowers we saw, just to save us from picking this one.  This plant is called Tread-Softly, Cnidoscolus stimulosus, and all of the green, above-ground parts of the plant are covered with stinging hairs.  While this isn't not a true nettle, it is sometimes called bull nettle or spurge nettle.  Another name for it is finger rot, which makes my imagination run wild in all sorts of nasty ways.  Needless to say, this is NOT a plant that I plan on trying to import into our yard!   Ironically, at least one source said that the tuberous roots are edible...but getting to those roots might take some serious caution.

Silphium is a genus that I became somewhat familiar with on the prairie, where one of its most famous members is Compass Plant, Silphium laciniatum.  As soon as I saw the leaves of this basal rosette, my mind yelled, "Silphium!", and I think that instinctive reaction is probably correct.

While I won't know for sure until later in the year when I see it bloom, I think this beautiful little clump of big, bright green leaves belongs to Kidneyleaf Rosinweed, Silphium compositum.   I'm not sure you could dream up a much uglier name for a plant.  Despite its ugly name, I hope to find a source for this species, since I think the leaves would look really nice in a native flower bed, adding some dramatic size and visual texture to the overall mix.

There were two flowers that we found that I haven't been able to identify yet.  First was this pinky-purple little beauty.

That's reindeer moss nestled beside it, to give you a sense of scale.  We saw several of these plants blooming and they were all less than 12" tall.

Second was this yellow-green, almost abstract bloomer that I suspect is in the Euphorbiaceae family. We saw several;  they seemed to run about 15-18" tall.

If anyone knows the identity of either of these plants, I would love to know what they are.

Another plant we noticed was this silvery, quiet-looking plant.

A little research gave me the identity, Healing Croton, Croton argyranthemus. 

What I haven't been able to determine is why it's been given the common name of Healing Croton.  It is the larval food for a pretty little butterfly known as a goatweed leafwing.   I haven't seen a goatweed leafwing since moving here to Florida, although they do occur here, but here are photos of one in Kansas, taken in September 2013.

Speaking of butterflies, at one point we found this large chrysalis hanging from a bare branch.  I don't know enough about such things to begin to guess what species made this chrysalis, but I think it's cool.

Another insect sighting was this black and white wasp, working busily to deal with a caterpillar, presumably extracted from this stitched together clump of leaves.

At the time, I was concerned that it might be a bald-faced hornet, so I didn't get too close. 

When I got home and downloaded the photos, I realized that this little beauty is actually a potter or mason wasp, a solitary wasp, presumably collecting caterpillars to paralyze and store for its young to eat as it grows.

Reindeer moss, sparkleberry, blooming yaupon, black cherry, beach rosemary.....  We saw a lot of other things that entranced us.  I'll leave you with a photo of the sky through the pine trees - a slice of heaven.

Potter Wasps

Have you ever run across a little mud pot, perfectly formed, about the size of a small marble, stuck to a twig or a rock or something else rather stationary?

If so, you've come across the nursery for a type of solitary wasp known as a potter wasp.  (A very appropriate name, if you ask me!)

These are great little insects to have living in your garden.  They are gentle wasps and will not sting unless you actually pick one up.  That pot?  Well, let me tell you about the life cycle of the potter wasp....

Adult potter wasps feed on flower nectar to provide themselves with the energy they need to perform their adult tasks. For a male potter wasp, this is pretty simple.  He needs to find female potters wasps and mate with them.

As a side note, in these photos the potter wasp (Eumenes fraternus) is nectaring at Snow-on-the-Mountain (Euphorbia marginata), an annual wildflower that can be surprisingly attractive, although it tends to get a little leggy.

Life is a bit more complicated and definitely harder for female potter wasps, which are usually larger than the males.  A female not only has to find a male and mate, then she has to locate a suitable site to build her pots and ensure that the next generation has enough food and is safely protected enough to make it to adulthood.

To do this, the female potter wasp gathers mud in her mouth (some sources say she actually carries water to dry soil and mixes up the mud herself, mouthful by mouthful!) then flies to her selected site to put the mud in place.  It can take hundreds of flights to build each pot, so the pots are usually located fairly close to a source of appropriate building material.

Once the pot is built, the female begins looking for small caterpillars.  When she locates an appropriate caterpillar, she stings it with just enough venom to paralyze the caterpillar but not kill it, then drags it to the waiting pot, where she deposits it through the open mouth of the pot.  Depending on the size of the caterpillar(s), the female potter wasp may provision each pot with from one to 12 caterpillars!  Then the mother potter wasp lays a single egg and closes up the pot with more mud.

When the egg hatches, the larval wasp eats its way through all the nutritious food (a.k.a. paralyzed caterpillars) that Mom packed in.  When the larva is finished eating and growing, it changes into a pupa and undergoes more changes, finally emerging as an adult potter wasp.  The new adult potter wasp chews its way through the side wall of the pot, which is thinner than the neck, and flies away.

You can tell, then, whether the pot is being worked on (the neck of the pot will still be open), has a baby wasp inside it in either the egg, larval or pupal form (the pot will be sealed up tightly), or has successfully hatched out an adult wasp (there will be a hole chewed through the side of the pot.  One of the pots above, then, is fully provisioned and has an egg and paralyzed caterpillars in it, while the other pot has been constructed and the female has begun hunting for caterpillars with which to fill it.

Not surprisingly, the female will not start constructing a new pot until the one she's working on has been fully provisioned, the egg laid in it, and the neck opening has been sealed.

While wasps can strike fear in human hearts, the solitary wasps such as potter wasps and mud daubers are almost never aggressive.  After all, if a female solitary wasp gets killed, she has lost all ability to procreate.  Since a stinger is a modified egg-layer, a male wasp can never sting, no matter how scared or angry he gets.  It is only the social wasps, like paper wasps and yellow jackets and hornets, that have enough "extra" individuals that they can afford to aggressively defend their nests and risk losing their lives.

Since the baby potter wasps are completely "created" by eating paralyzed caterpillars, potter wasps are an important biological control of caterpillars in any natural community...and in your garden.  So next time you find a little round clay or mud pot or two or three, pause a minute to say thank you to the female potter wasp that built it and that helped make your garden healthier as she stocked the larder for her developing offspring.