Fu Manchu bottlebrush caterpillar, jewelweed gall midge, alien spacecraft, and impending hurricanes

Have I mentioned recently that I, Ms. No Discernible Income, recently went back to work after a self-imposed two-year hiatus? That’s right, I’m working, part-time, at a top-secret entity whose details I will not reveal, except for to say that we have a veritable shitload of yogurt in our fridge these days at any given time. Pardon my French.
This past week was my third week on the job. Remind me of how people do this whole work thing? I know, I know, cue the violins, shut up, Sarah. But seriously, it’s been a rough adjustment: not being able to dawdle with the camera for an hour or so each day, and then spend two or three hours doing research on my discoveries and tagging my photos and blogging about it – you might not realize it, but this wee little odyssey of a dilettante naturalist takes quite a bit of time. 
Today I divided said time between getting ready for our overnight guest – that would be Irene – and aggressively puttering around and goofing off.

Home is where the heart is.

We’ve cleared the decks, literally – Kevin took down the portable screened-in-porch, and I dealt with the deck furniture. We have garbage cans set up under the eaves to catch rainwater (we don’t have gutters, and recently figured out that something like 25% of our roof run-off ends up in the corner between the bump-out and the bulkhead, where it subsequently sneaks in down the bulkhead’s (presumably eroding) foundation and from there, into the basement. (Not for nothing did Santa Claus bring us a shop vac for Christmas.) Flashlights, batteries, water, food…I think we’ll be OK. Gulp. Oh, and I went for my run, since tomorrow’s not going to happen. It was supposed to be a nine-miler, but I think…heavy sigh…I think I may need to re-think the next half-marathon, and let my plantar fascia sprain and concomitant (you read right, I used “concomitant” in a sentence) ankle discomfort heal up.
Onwards to the report. There’s a lot to report. Go grab a snack, you’ll be here a while.
The anemones have long gone to seed, and now those seeds are starting to be dispersed.

Anemone canadensis on July 13…	…and today. This appears to be the classic “eat me and poop” strategy.
Anemone virginiana on August 5…	…and today. Oh cool, a totally different game plan for this one: wind dispersal.

I got a better look at the opened up flowers of tall blue lettuce (Lactuca biennis), first seen here the other day

I love that this plant, which can grow to 12 freakin’ feet high, but has flowers no larger than a quarter inch wide, is named for the color of the tips of its tiny, wee stamens. Speaking of tall lettuce, here’s tall white lettuce (Prenanthes altissima).

It was already going to seed, which tells you how little I’ve been able to get out and about with the camera, but fortunately I found a few flowers still open:


At long last, some of the False Solomon’s Seal berries are really, truly, turning red:


Nearby, I found Mr. Fu Manchu Bottlebrush Caterpillar hanging out.

I am informed that his real name is Halysidota tessellaris - Banded Tussock Moth – but I like my name better, duh.
And now, let’s play with the jewelweed (Impatiens capensis).

Here’s one that’s obviously preggers – see how the uvula-like dangly bit at the top is getting fat? I am REALLY looking forward to documenting how this is going to turn into a seed. I’ve seen some seeds already, but I haven’t (damn this “working for a living” B.S.!) found the time to scout out all the intermediate stages. I will, though.
I did, however, have time to suss out something that I’d been curious about since I first saw it on August 8th: a weird huge jewelweed bud? leaf? that had clearly been appropriated by some other life process.

Trust me, this is not a normal jewelweed thing. I pinched it off and took it home to do a little home surgery.

Dum – dum – Dah!!!

Little orange larvae! Excellent! One of them woke up and started exploring, whereupon I promptly filmed him.

After some digging around, I learned that this is probably the larva of a gall midge, Schizomyia impatientis. I love how they are as orange as the plant’s flowers. How cool is that?
I wandered down toward the mailbox, across the meadow, and checked in on the plantain (Plantago major). Many have gone to seed, but a few are still flowering.

This one has only the white bits. Stigma?

Others have both the white, and the purple (stamen?), bits.


Here’s an alien spacecraft disguised as a longjawed orbweaver, hanging out on a stalk of plantain.
Next door, here’s a type of marsh fly:

By the way, I don’t know a thing about bugs. These ID’s are brought to you by the incredible nerds (and that’s a good thing) at bugguide.net.
I checked in one more time on a jack-in-the-pulpit on the streambank:

Looking good.
OK, the sky is darkening up. Here we go, campers. See you on the other side.

transformation takes many shapes.

Just another day in paradise.  Much to my annoyance, a milkweed along the side of our driveway that showed no signs of anything happening just three days ago, suddenly produced this while I wasn’t looking:
 
(That’s my delicate ladylike pinky finger there, which has been scientifically measured at 1/4” wide.) Later on, I found a different milkweed on our neighbor’s property that is just STUDDED with flowers – it did way better in the reproduction game than the ones in our driveway.

As you can see, several of the flowers seem to be busy with incipient pod-formation. I haven’t noticed anything that looks like a monarch caterpillar on the way, but I may not be looking for the right things or in the right places.
At this time of year, while new flowers do show up, there are plenty of old buddies to check in on.

Crowfoot (Ranunculus allegheniensis). This hasn’t really seemed to change much since the middle of June, when it looked like this. (As for the flower – click here for just two months ago.)
In the meantime, the False Solomon’s Seal berries are getting bigger, and still look gold from afar. But lovely and speckled up close.


White baneberry’s “doll’s eyes” berries are also ripening – in their case…

…to an eerie white.
Golden Alexander looks about the same as it did a month ago.

You wouldn’t know that, because apparently the last time I mentioned this flower here, it still had its petals. But trust me: all is ho hum in Golden Alexander land. Perhaps things are furiously happening under the surface.
But Ah! Much has changed with the roundleaved dogwood!

The stems have gone bright red! This made me laugh, as I wasn’t expecting it. That’s one of the virtues of being an amateur – everything surprises me. Although come to think of it, other kinds of dogwood also have a habit of red twigs. Still, though, I wasn’t expecting it. I will be expecting it, however, with that white baneberry.
Down by the road, the Eastern Joe-Pye Weed is going great guns.

Bees of many stripes are all over the emerging blossoms.
The cattails are going brown, generally from the top down.

…which makes sense, since it’s at the top of the what you see here that the male flower bits are divided from the female flower bits. The female flowers closest to the males apparently got fertilized sooner?
I noticed a new species today, maybe two, that are very similar.

In both kinds, the leaves are super divided and toothed – basically, really lacy leaves.

In both, all the flower action is in densely-studded racemes (that’s clusters of flowers along, and mostly at the end, of a stalk).  In some of them, the flowers look like this:

Zooming in…little fuzzy capsules, jammed close together.

(Then I got distracted by this awesome fly – TINY – perched on the tip of one of these unopened flower sprays.)

Back to the flowers. I realized that in other examples, the flowers were more in a long spike, ranged evenly along the flower stalk.

(Whoops, blurry. It’s my only shot at this perspective, though.)

I maneuvered the camera to get a look up into these little flower bits – they’re open on the underside.

oh, WOW.
Some of these are…fertilized, I guess.

Honestly, just when I thought I’d seen it all, some new plant wanders in with a completely new way of doing things. This is crazy. You have to understand, each little green cap is maybe…at most, 1/16” of an inch across. I have NO CLUE what this/these plants are.
In other exciting news, I filmed a sleeping (presumably) caterpillar. Did you know they sort of breathe? I mean, sort of, in that they don’t have lungs, really. They have little holes along their sides called spiracles, and they expand and contract their segments to force air in and out. I guess that counts as breathing, right? Anyway, this guy was hanging out on the edge of the table we have in our magic portable screened in porch.

If you can stand 42 seconds of thrilling excitement, watch him (her?) breathe. 

Once you’ve watched a caterpillar stirring in its dreams, you kind of tend to take an interest in the little bugger. According to the angels at bugguide.net, this is a Heterocampa guttivitta, and according to wiki.bugwood.org, whose pictures appear below, it goes through a bunch of stages (“instars”) before arriving at its ultimate Basic Gray Moth destiny.

Who knew that just becoming a moth was so complicated? Maybe I should cut myself some slack for all the various twists and turns my own life has taken.

no use crying over spilled milk(weed)

Howdy devoted readers! Hot enough for ya? Here’s an idea: let’s drive down into New Jersey in the middle of a massive heat wave, to spend time with extended family. This time we were smart: we took the car with the more-or-less functional air conditioner.
We spent the day at the beach with a thousand of our closest friends.

The waves were big, the lifeguards vigilantly blowing their whistles from atop their throne to herd the throngs inside the tiny official swimming area. I successfully avoided the beach cops patrolling the crowds to enforce the $5/day beach pass rule. I just admitted to being a scofflaw, I realize that. But hey: as far as I’m concerned the beach is for everyone, not just the folks with five bucks. Besides, I spent that five bucks a couple times over on most excellent Jersey Shore PIZZA. Pizza for lunch…pizza for dinner… Please, someone, hand me a vegetable.
Now for the nature bits. MILKWEED! Right along the driveway of the house my brother-in-law and his wife have rented for the week was a whole row of milkweed – and they’ve already formed lovely gigantic pods.
Well, some are little.


And some are big.


Some were covered with Aphis nerii – Oleander aphids (thanks, bugguide.net!).

Some were ALSO covered by – get this, what a great name - Large Milkweed Bug (Oncopeltus fasciatus). When they’re fully grown, they look like this:

Actual conversation between a certain unnamed next-generation member of the family – aged 9 – and myself and his mother. “They’re mating,” says he. “Yep,” we agree. “How do they stay stuck together? Glue?” “Nope,” says his mother. End of conversation.
The Large Milkweed Bug is not the only creature having fun on the milkweed.

A Monarch butterfly in the caterpillar stage. My niece asked a great question: how do you tell where the head is?
Because this is one end…


…and this is the other end.

If it had been resting, and not chewing vigorously, I’m not sure I would have been able to tell!
We’re back home in Vermont now. I plan on learning just how those milkweed pods form, as I have never seen the process from the beginning.