Dwarf sumac (Rhus copallina)

A member of the cashew family!

Box elder bugs (Boisea trivitatta) mating

August 27, 4 pm, Grass Dale front door

Caterpillar deluxe

Grass Dale Center, 12:45 PM

Tussock moth caterpillar (Orgyia leucostigma)

Monday at Lums: variety!

Garden spider (Argiope aurantia) 

There were several of these fuzzy black caterpillars hanging around. This species may be the caterpillar of the Giant Leopard Moth (Hypercompe scribonia). But that caterpillar shows red bands when it curls up to play dead, and I didn't notice any red bands on these caterpillars. 

Renegade the albino corn snake at the Paw Paw Festival

Pantherophis guttatus

Ala[pcas Run State Park 

Baby bugs, bugs, and bug parts

Another cool spider

What 5:00 in the morning sounds like

Ch ch ch.

...

Ch ch ch.

I'm not sure who was making the sound, but it always came in three bursts. Then there would be an answering three bursts from some ways away. In the middle of the insects, and right after a car, I heard one of the first birds of the morning--just one quick, squeaky note.

Wildflowers

Elizabeth Osborne

22 August 2013
5:30 PM

Ashland Nature Center
Hockessin, DE


On Wednesday night, we learned how to use Newcomb's Wildflower Guide to identify wildflowers.

Last night, we put our knowledge to the test in the meadows around Ashland.

There are three elements to consider when using Newcomb's system. The first is the flower itself: Is it regular, with radial symmetry? Below are some examples of regular flower arrangement.

Maybe the flower is not radially symmetrical--think of an orchid. It has top and bottom parts that look different from one another. Here's an example of an irregular flower:

Finally, the flower may have parts indisinguishable, which just means so many petals that you really can't tell whether they're symmetrical or not. Here's what one of those might look like:

You go to Newcomb's guide and assign the mystery plant a number based on whether the petals are regular, irregular, or indistinguishable.

The next thing to look at are the leaves. Are there any? If so, are they only at the base of the stem? If not, are they alternating? This is what alternating leaves look like:

Alternating leaves

If the leaves are not alternating, they may be opposite or whorled. Opposite leaves grow directly across from one another; whorled leaves grow on the same spot all around the stem.

Opposite leaves (left) and whorled leaves (right; imagine that they are all on the same plane)

Finally, once the leaf pattern has been ascertained, look at the leaves themselves. Are they entire, with a smooth margin, and growing one per stem, like the ones in the picture below?

Are the leaves toothed on the outer edges?

Toothed leaves

Or do there seem to be smaller leaflets all making up one leaf? That is, is the leaf divided?

Divided leaf--smaller leaflets making up one big leaf

Answering these questions one by one, you can get to a section in the first part of the Guide that suggests what flower you might have. For example, the flower below is radially symmetrical. It has four regular parts; its leaves are alternating and entire.

Using the numbers associated with each of these classifications leads to a number of 132. Under this number, there is a "yellow flowers" option. Going to the page listed for the yellow flowers, you find that this is seedbox (Ludwigia alternifolia).

There are two exceptions to Newcomb's system: goldenrods and asters (daisies). Unfortunately, if you don't know what goldenrods or asters look like beforehand, you might get confused; fortunately, goldenrods and asters are easy to spot: goldenrods are golden, and asters look like daisies.

Add caption

Goldenrod

On a daisy, what appear to be petals are actually numerous petals smashed together!

---

 A couple of flowers/interesting things we saw and identified on the trip:

Gall

Touch-me-not (genus Impatiens)

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And here are a few more flowers I saw here and there during the days before and after our field trip.

 

Mystery flowers

Last night at Ashland, we learned to identify wildflowers using Newcomb's Guide.
Here are four flowers I saw on the side of 72 coming into Delaware City this morning. These are my mysteries to solve for today.
The last one may be a tree.

Robber flies (family Asilidae)

Lums Pond, 3:30

Praying mantis visits Delaware City

Orange butterfly

I think this is a
Pearly crescentspot

(
Phyciodes tharos
)
)
)

Insects

Elizabeth Osborne

10 August 2013
9 AM

Ashland Nature Center
Hockessin, DE

On August 10, 2013, the Naturalist Certification class walked around Ashland Nature Center and through the surrounding woods to look at some of the insects there.

The weather was overcast and slightly humid, around 80 degrees F. We could hear a lot of bugs chirping in the background.

We started out right outside the Nature Center. Professor White showed us some of the tools we would be using and talked about what kinds of cameras are good for getting shots of insects.


The Nature Center has a small garden of carnivorous plants. Some plants that eat insects:

Purple pitcher (Sarracenia purpurea)

The inside of the pitcher plant

Venus flytrap (Dionaea muscipula)--when Professor White opened one of the flytrap heads, we found a poor sowbug. These animals are not insects, but terrestrial crustaceans in the order Isopoda.

Venus flytraps

A sowbug being digested by the Venus Flytrap

Sundews (family Droseraceae): These plants have sticky droplets that ensnare passing insects. I'm posting this picture full-size so you can see the mucilaginous droplets.

Sundew

From the carnivorous plants, we moved on to the butterfly garden. Flowers blooming in the garden included trumpet creeper (campsis radicans), sweet pepperbush (clethra alnifolia), and small wood sunflower (helianthus microcephalus).

Sweet pepperbush

We saw a fly that mimics a dragonfly, but I didn't get its name. An Internet search suggests it might actually have been an owlfly (neuropteran in the family Ascalphidae). True flies are dipteran (literally, they have two wings). Here's a picture of an owlfly from Wikipedia:

The wings look like a dragonfly's

We saw a milkweed bug.  These look like box elder bugs, but the two species feed on different plants--the boxelder on boxelder, maple, and ash trees, and the milkweed bug on milkweed.

We saw a metallic bee--probably a sweat bee (bees in the family Halictidae). From http://mdc.mo.gov/discover-nature/field-guide/sweat-bees:

  "Like deer visiting a salt lick, or an athlete drinking an electrolyte beverage, they supplement their diet with salts, which they sometimes try to obtain from sweating humans."

Bumblebees (in the genus Bombus) were also getting nectar from the flowers in the garden. 

Bumblebee

Bees were not the only ones the plants were employing for pollination. Butterflies and moths were all over the flowers. A dun skipper (Euphyes vestris) was flying around some small wood sunflowers. Skippers are butterflies with two sets of wings.

Dun skipper on small wood sunflower

A grass skipper (in the genus Hesperiidae)

Grass skipper; not sure yet what these flowers are

Cicada

We saw a melanistic tiger swallowtail (Papilio glaucus). Females may be either black or yellow; when yellow, they have a band of blue spots. Males look like yellow females, but without the blue spots.

Melanistic tiger swallowtail

In the pond by the nature center, we saw a bullfrog (Rana catesbeiana). It was easy to hear, but not so easy to catch.

Tom didn't catch the frog

From the butterfly garden, we moved down to Red Clay Creek. We found a spider wasp (in the family Pompilidae). The female paralyzes a spider to feed her young.

A picture of a spider wasp and spider from Wikipedia

 A bee fly (family Bombyliidae) is a dipteran that mimics a bee and pollinates flowers. According to http://tolweb.org/Bombyliidae,  "Almost all known larval Bombyliidae are parasitic."


We saw a cranefly (family Tipulidae) and a leafhopper (family Cicadellidae). We saw a leaf-footed bug (family Coreidae).

Down by Red Clay Creek, we saw a Chinese mantis (Tinodera sinensis) and a scorpion bug (I can't find its scientific name).

Growing off the boardwalk was a thicket of dodder (genus Cuscuta), a fascinating parasitic plant. A Dodder seedling sprouts in the soil, then grows towards the nearest green plant, alerted to the plant's presence by chemical signals. When it reaches its host, it grows special appendages that it inserts into the plants vascular system. It can even spread diseases between plants it is attached to.

We saw a Common white-tail dragonfly (Plathemis lydia), also called a Long-tailed skimmer.

An isabella tiger moth (Pyrrharctia isabella). The caterpillar of this butterfly is the woolly bear often said to predict the length of the upcoming winter.

The comma (hesperia comma) is a skipper, named because the markings on its back look like commas (there is also a Question Mark (Polygonia interrogationis!), which has a pattern sort of like a question mark).

White trails on leaves were evidence of some kind of leaf miner (the larvae of different families tunnel within the vascular systems of plants).

We saw a weevil, which is from a particular superfamily of beetles with over 60,000 species.

Representing the Orthoptera (crickets, grasshoppers) was a katydid (family Tetigoniidae).

A beautiful ebony jewelwing dragonfly (Calopteryx maculata) was flying around near the water, and in the water itself was a fishing spider (genus Dolomedes). These spiders run across the water when their prey (sometimes even including small fish) makes the surface ripple. They can submerge themselves encased in a bubble of air. (Maybe this is one?)

lots of phantom midges.

A garden spider rocked its web when it was disturbed.  We also saw a crab spider, a planthopper, lots of woolly aphids, a cricket, a lichen moth, a snail, and a tree cricket.

Species list:

Plants:
Purple pitcher
trumpet creeper
Venus flytrap
sundews
sweet pepperbush

Insects:
milkweed bug
melanistic tiger swallowtail
spider wasp
bee fly
cranefly
leafhopper
leaf-footed bug
Chinese mantis
scorpion bug
dodder
dun skipper

white-tailed dragonfly

isabella moth

comma

leaf miner

weevil beetle

katydid

ebony jewelwing

phantom midge

tree cricket

Arachnids:
garden spider
fishing spider
crab spider

Mollusks:
snail