Bugs on a Flower

There are some flowers that seem to be especially attractive to insects. In the spring, the lilacs host all sorts of insects, large and small, some of which you can see in this blog post. I first noticed this delightful flower blooming wild in my field last year; this year it had spread, and I saw that it was covered with insects of all sorts, including this tiny butterfly, with its proboscis dipping for a meal.

I couldn't identify the flower, but a Facebook friend pointed out that it looked like a Centaurea, and indeed it does look like the Centaurea montana above that is in my garden.

This beautiful little spider is color coordinated with the flower.

Many bees visited the blooms, from smaller....

....to larger....

....to extremely tiny. You can see the yellow pollen on the legs of the brilliant shiny green bee; its coloration is sumptuous.

And finally, an itty-bitty worm with an elegant brown and beige pattern (you can click on the photos to see these insects more clearly). Flowers that are simply a visual delight for us are sustenance for some in the insect kingdom.

A Walk in the Woods: Early Blooms

Spring Beauty 

The paths in the woods are strewn with delight. The earliest spring wildflowers are blooming, and though tiny––Spring Beauty flowers are only about 1/2 inch across––seeing masses of them bright above the dun ground is so cheering.

Hepatica

The Round-lobed Hepatica is another tiny flower that sparkles in the spring, with a lovely pale violet color, decorated by its little white globes spreading outward from its center.

Yellow Violet

A third of the very small flowers of early spring are the yellow violets, rising above shiny leaves.

Wild Ginger

Here is a flower I'd never seen before, that of wild ginger. It is a small flower, growing close to the ground, so easy to miss. I love the graceful spread of its three narrowing petals. 

Bellwort

Bellwort is a bit taller than the previous flowers; its flower is elegantly suspended, and so graceful in its upturned pale yellow petals.

Trout Lily

It is such a treat to come across this flower in the woods; I see many of the speckled leaves, but not many flowers. It is a small beauty, of an intense yellow. When I see flowers like this I am reminded that our cultivated garden flowers often came from smaller wildflowers.

Eastern Leatherwood

I noticed these tiny pendulous flowers on small trees (or shrubs) along my trail. Their reproductive parts dangle down festively. 

Eastern Leatherwood with insect cocoon, front and back

While photographing those flowers, I noticed this cocoon, another sort of flower.

Maple

After several warm days, the hills are showing the pale new greens of leafing trees; they also show a red haze interspersed with the greens: the red of maple flowers. Their bursting stamens are a perfect metaphor for the explosion of spring.

The Wonders of Winter Survival

A couple of days ago I was amazed and elated watching this little creature––a wooly bear caterpillar––move in my hand; it waved its little legs and raised its head. Oh wow! OMG!! It's alive!

Why was I so thrilled? because a couple of days before I'd brought it inside from the shed, where it was curled up frozen solid from winter's cold. For me this was a little experiment, a test to see if it really was true that some animals survive winter by freezing. I just read a wonderful book about animals in winter––Winter World: the ingenuity of animal survival by Bernd Heinrich––which described the various strategies of getting through winter, from using anti-freeze, to powering down into torpor, to huddling together, to shivering, to lowering body temperature. Any one of those things is amazing. We homo sapiens survived moving north by using fire, wearing clothing, finding shelter; for animals other than us, only shelter is a survival mechanism used by some.

Regarding insects Heinrich writes:

Insects exhibit an exhilaration and a celebration of the exceptions, where anything goes that can.

Each insect species has a life stage at which it gets through the winter. For the Isabella Tiger moth, it is its larval stage, the wooly bear caterpillar. For the beloved Charlotte the spider––the barn spider––it is its eggs; you can see a dead spider at the bottom right, egg masses at the top of the photo above. The insects use a substance in their tissues––glycerol and sorbitol, which are alcohols, converted from glycogen––that act as antifreeze.

A couple of well-loved frog species in my area––wood frogs and peepers––survive winter by freezing solid, just like the wooly bear. It's hard to believe that this plump and active leaper becomes a block of ice in winter. Toads dig themselves into unfrozen ground and hibernate, keeping their body temperature a little above freezing, but the wood frog, gray tree frog, chorus frog, and my favorite spring peeper, all can be frozen in winter with no ill effects. Similarly to insects, they use alcohols to allow ice to form between the cells, but not inside them, which would be deadly. Heinrich describes the miraculous:

In about fifteen hours, the frog is frozen solid except for the insides of its cells. Its heart stops. No more blood flows. It no longer breathes. By most definitions it is dead. But it is prepared to again revive at a later date. 

I saw this black bear in the field in front of my house last spring. During the summer into fall, it likely ate ravenously, storing up lots of fat for its winter hibernation. When the weather began to get cold, it found a nice den in which to spend the cold months. There are interesting things about bears in hibernation: their body temperature does not go down more than a couple of degrees but they don't drink or urinate all winter; although they are sedentary for months, they don't lose bone mass. How, Heinrich asks, are they able, after five months of rest, "to get up and walk up a mountain"? No bed sores, no major loss of muscle mass, no hardened arteries from all the fat they consume.

We inadvertently simulate a hibernation-like state of inactivity in our modern environment, a new state of nature to which we are not well adapted.

Golden-crowned kinglet

Photo by Gary Irwin, courtesy of Wikipedia

One of Heinrich's favorite mysteries is how a tiny bird––the Golden-crowned kinglet––with so little body mass to keep it warm, can survive northern winters. It is smaller than a warbler, not much larger than a hummingbird. They have to eat constantly in order to have enough weight to make it through the losses of the cold nights. They do things that other birds do: fluff up their feathers to create air pockets and thus more insulating warmth, huddle together in a shelter, shiver to warm the body. In the end, Heinrich believes it's a matter of luck for individual survival, with a good balance of various strategies. I love what Heinrich has written about these birds, ending his fascinating book:

Undampened enthusiasm and raw drive would matter. I do not and cannot ever know the combination of happiness, hunger, or emotions that energize a bird. But whenever I've watched kinglets in their nonstop hopping, hovering, and searching, seen their intimate expressions, and heard their constant chatter of tsees, songs and various calls, I've felt an infectious hyperenthusiasm flow from them, and sensed a grand, boundless zest for life. They could not survive without that in their harsh world. Like us, they are programmed for optimism.
....They defy the odds and the laws of physics, and prove that the fabulous is possible. 

*I'll be away for a few days; see you next week. 

A Monarch is Born

Yesterday, I was in the garden digging up the dried corn stalks when I spotted a Monarch butterfly chrysalis hanging from one of the corn leaves. It was quite a surprise to find it so late in the season and hanging from a vegetable. Two years ago, I found one on a swiss chard stalk that I was about to cook. They are so beautiful with their necklace and spots of gold on a celadon ground.

By this morning the chrysalis had turned black and I could clearly see the wing. The day was cool and gray, so I wondered if the butterfly would emerge.

By later in the afternoon the weather had warmed and there was some sun through high clouds, so I felt sure I would see the butterfly today. This photo was taken at 2:39 PM.

You can see the chrysalis hanging from the leaf on the right. I did chores out in the garden so I could keep an eye on it. Nothing seemed to be happening at 4:10 PM so I went into the house for a few minutes.

Oh! I wish I had not: when I returned I could see from a distance that the butterfly had emerged. I took this photo at 4:26 PM. The same thing happened to me two years ago: I waited and waited, went into the house, and when I returned a few minutes later, there was the butterfly and its now empty chrysalis. They seem to be shy about sharing their emergence. The wings are crumpled, not surprising seeing how small the container was for the body and wings of this large butterfly.

By 4:35 the wings were already smoothed. The butterfly was busy seemingly cleaning its face and testing its proboscis.

It was moving toward evening and cooling off. At 4:43 the Monarch was slightly opening its wings. An hour later I did not see it spread its wings. Because of the cool early evening, I wonder if it will wait until morning to do so. I was so happy to have found the Monarch chrysalis before dumping the corn stalk on the compost pile, so happy to know it had a successful birth; now I wish this beautiful endangered creature a safe journey south.

The Webs They Weave

The moisture of foggy mornings earlier this week settled on spider webs, highlighting their delicate structures. The lawn was dotted with fine, lacy handkerchiefs, the webs of grass spiders, who hide in funnel-like holes until their prey is spotted.

The silk of this orb web....

....and this is dotted with beads of moisture making them glitter like a crystal chandelier. (click on images to enlarge and see the details)

A tiny red spider is at the center of an elegant web in the raspberry patch. These tiny creatures, and so many others, are usually unseen, unnoticed; the sparkling of the moist web points them out.

Another small spider is centered in its web, but as I came close to photograph it, it took off quickly and hid amid some flowers.

I don't know what kind of spider made this sheet web, a thin net catching water, soil, debris, and a strand of hair. Spider silk is amazingly strong, with greater tensile strength than the same weight of steel, as I learned on Wikipedia.

Here is one of my grand spider residents, a barn spider, Araneus cavaticus, made famous by the marvelous story Charlotte's Web by E.B. White. These spiders weave sometimes spectacular webs and some years my shed is festooned with the stretching silk. My Charlotte, who lives on the porch, usually works at night, but one afternoon she appeared so I could take her picture. If you enlarge it by clicking, you'll see the silk coming out from the end of her abdomen, and she adroitly uses her legs to put it in place. Watching this spider, it is easy to imagine how White was inspired to think of the barn spider weaving words into its web.

I wanted an excuse to share a favorite haiku by Issa, translated by Robert Hass, so here is a web, with its spider, in the corner of the doorway to the cellar:

Don't worry, spiders,
I keep house
  casually.

Gatherings of Tiny Flowers

Lilac

Many flowers are simple in form, such as the 3 petaled Trillium, or the 6 petaled tulip. Roses can be plain or frothy, as can peonies. Different from these singular flowers are the tiny flowers of many shrubs and small trees; grouped in long sprays or rounds they have a beautiful presence. First among these flowers, a glory of spring, is the lilac with its head made up of myriad 3 or 4 petaled flowers, so attractive to insects. Each year I look forward to watching the swallowtail butterflies sip from the flowers.

Nannyberry, in bud

The Nannyberry, a viburnum,  is a very large shrub that I'd planted as a small stick many years ago. Each spring it's covered with round clusters of white flowers, and red berries that are attractive to birds in the fall. I love seeing the early stages of tiny buds crowded together.

Nannyberry flowers

Later, looking closely through the camera lens I can see the gathering of a multitude of white flowers, decorated by long, yellow tipped stamens.

Red Osier Dogwood

These pretty, star shaped flowers are blooming on a shrub that grows wild here, and prolifically (I'm constantly back cutting newly appearing plants).

Bridal Wreath Spirea

The round arrays of blossoms are small and more delicate on the Bridal Wreath shrub, but they cover the bush almost completely now, a white cloud.

Chokecherry

Not all flowers are gathered into circular forms; the chokecherry, like the lilac, has a long form, more cylindrical than the lilac, gracefully drooping, inviting many insects.

American Cranberry

Another viburnum, the American cranberry has a circlet of larger flowers surrounding small ones, here not yet opened, at its center. The surprising thing about this configuration is that the outer, showier flowers are sterile and it's the tiny ones in the middle that are fertile.

Snowball Viburnum, green stage

The Snowball is a delight in spring with its round massed flower heads. I love how they start out green.....

Snowball Viburnum, white

.....and as the petals mature the flowers become a bright white, round fluffy balls nodding in the wind. With all these plants each individual flower is insignificant, but together they put on quite a show, a grand chorus working in concert.

Nature and Art at a Small Museum

The grand and awkward moose is the most impressive creature I've ever seen. Although I've spotted quite a few cows––the female moose––on my land and in the woods around it, I've never seen a bull moose with a large rack. It took my first visit to the delightful Montshire Museum of Science to see this engaging specimen. The Montshire is a small natural history museum, located in Norwich, Vermont, a relatively new institution with many hands-on activities especially engaging for children. Another natural history museum in Vermont, The Fairbanks Museum and Planetarium, is a very different sort of place, a step into the 19th century, which I wrote about here.

The special exhibition that got me to the museum was "From the Mountains to the Sea: Plants, Trees, and Shrubs of New England", a juried show of work by members of the New England Society of Botanical Artists (see some examples below). But before going upstairs to the exhibit, I wandered around on the first floor, amid excited children enjoying the displays of native fish and amphibians. This Yellow Perch with bright orange lower fins was swimming about in front of an audience.

A Green Frog peaks out of its hiding place, blending in with the green life around it.

I loved seeing the Painted Turtles, which look like fierce prehistoric beasts, scary yet very decorative.

Bobbi Angell, Blue Flag; copper etching

A very different mood was in evidence in the exhibit of contemporary botanical drawings, one of loving and precise attentiveness. The aim of the New England Society of Botanical Artists is to "increase public awareness of the significance of preserving New England's native plants."  This lovely etching seems to owe a great deal to the art of Japan in its simple yet dramatic composition.

Susan Sawyer, Black Ash, Five Winter Twigs; watercolor over graphite.

A seemingly mundane subject becomes fascinating by the small differences from twig to twig, with the group standing together, slightly leaning and curving, a harmonious quintet, with one amusing little pushy outgrowth.

Beverly Duncan, Autumn Remains - Pignut Hickory; watercolor and pencil on parchment.

The dried remains of leaves and nuts and insects achieve an eloquence through Duncan's careful looking and recording.

Kelly Leahy Radding, Nodding Ladies' Tresses Orchid, Schreber's Big Red Stem Moss, Running Clubmoss, Common Haircap Moss, detail; watercolor on parchment.

I love the delicacy of this drawing and its detailed observation. I learned that botanical drawing has a long history, with accurately drawn plants beginning most notably in 1530, with Otto Brunfels' Herbarium vivae eicones, illustrated with woodcuts by Hans Weiditz. Weiditz drew his plants from life, instead of copying older images as was the practice previously. Many books were produced in later years, some for practical reasons such as medicinal plants, but many for the sheer beauty of flowers. This show was full of ordinary beauty, found in things often overlooked.

There were other kinds of beauty to be seen upstairs at the Montshire, especially in their insect collections. The somewhat faded display of moths was quite amazing: 2000 species in Vermont! I loved the spotted black and white moths with their dramatic designs (click to enlarge).

While I was bent over the beetle display, enjoying the brilliant coloration and varied designs, I was joined in admiration by a 10 year old boy who enthusiastically pointed out his favorites. It was wonderful to see the kids having such a good time noticing things, learning about the world around them.

A very popular exhibit was of a non-native species of ant, a Leafcutter ant colony (some great photos at the link). The ants cut up leaves, carrying pieces many times their size to the fungus garden where the leaves are chewed and made into a paste; this paste becomes a fungus that the ants feed on. The organization of these ants is quite remarkable.

Walking outside the museum, I saw many water displays, all closed down for winter but watched over by a text from Leonardo da Vinci on water, "the driver of nature". He saw water as always changing: "Now it brings a conflagration, then it extinguishes; is warm and is cold; now it carries away, then it sets down......" (click on image to enlarge so you can read it). Water is all important and we are too careless with this precious resource.

The flowing water of the Connecticut River is alongside the museum, where I could see it from a very different vantage point than from that bridge in the distance which I cross to get to Hanover, NH. I could almost imagine the river wild as it was a few hundred years ago, with only native plants gracing its banks.