Something's buggin me

I do not use pesticides in my garden.  Period.  Close paragraph.

Because of my complete avoidance of pesticides my garden is full of life.  Bees, ants, beetles and the birds that eat them.

Usually my garden gets into a balance.  I have a little insect damage to some plants but I can live with that if it means I get all of the other insects and birds that bring movement and activity to my garden.

This year I'm having more than normal damage to my plants.  And it's not on the expected ones.  My hostas have little damage (and they are like crack to the deer, rabbits and slugs!).

My Echinacea purpura is loosing it's petals to something.  Not the leaves.  Just the petals.  I found this little inchworm on one of the blooms.  The culprit?

One of my Heucheras (coral bells, this one is called Stoplight) has major insect damage.  The others right next to it?  Not so much.

This one is weird.  Tricolor sage.  Usually herbs are left alone by most herbivores and insects.  The strong flavors and smells are part of their defenses.  But this one is just being eaten alive.  Insects or the new batch of baby bunnies I've been spotting?  (yes, even at four inches they can be on their own. And it doesn't take much to hide them - they're hiding under my perennials!)

And this one - Aster (Symphotrichium?) October skies.  Eaten to the stem.  Another plant with aromatic foliage.

I'm not even considering a pesticide but I'm hopeful that they'll survive the summer onslaught and return next year, bigger and stronger.  And maybe the rabbits will nest somewhere else so my yard isn't filled with cute little eating machines.

[Sorry no pictures of the baby bunnies - they flee if they even think I'm reaching for a camera.  Try here for an example of what they look like.  Could you turn this little guy out of your garden?  I don't think so!]

Spring Thaw 2011

We finally got down to less than a foot of snow on the ground this past week and with a warm weekend (it's nearly 60 today!)  and a seasonal week with highs above freezing I'm expecting the remaining snow pack to disappear soon.  Yipee!

You can see ground where I've been walking

With the snow in retreat I have a few important questions.
Will I have outside blooms for Garden Bloggers Bloom Day?

Daffodils under the Mexican Feather Grass

Crocus in the Hell Strip

Iris reticulata (I think) near the house

How much damage did my shrubs get from the heavy snowfall?

Pieris japonica got weighed down by the heavy snow

I don't usually prune my Buddleia back quite so harshly but I'm pretty sure this will come back strong

When will I start to see green?

Perovskia (Russian sage) showing swelling buds

Heuchera kept its leaves under the snow all winter

Stay tuned!

Seven Secrets of a Biologist

I recently noticed some damage to one of my shrub dogwoods (Cornus hesseyii Garden Glow).  Several leaves on one stem were completely destroyed.

See?

As a biologist and a gardener I wanted to know what was causing the damage.

Secret 1 - Biologist are ALWAYS curious about the natural world.

I scratched my head a bit and recalled that some leaf damaging insects will stay on the plant but will hide under the leaves.  So I looked under a half intact leaf and found these - Caterpillars!

Secret 2 - Biologist look under things.

Well, that didn't tell me what they ARE.  So I hit the reference books.

Secret 3 - Biologists have LOTS of reference books.

No luck in the books.  Caterpillars can be really hard to identify.  First off they can look different at different ages.  Second off there are few good identification guides.  Third off the guides organize caterpillars by family, not by shape or color.  It's a logical way to group them but when the book has around 450 pages it's not easy to flip through looking at all the images.

Secret 4 - Biologist look through all 450 pages anyway.

So I turned to the next best resource - one that can sometime be easier to look through.  The Internet.  I Googled several things - white and black caterpillar, white and yellow and black caterpillar, and such - before I hit on the right search - Dogwood caterpillars.

Secret 5 - Biologists know how to use Google.

Secret 6 - Biologist are persistent in their pursuit of knowledge.

Bingo!

These are Macromphytis tarsatus.  Say that five times fast.  Heck, say that once!  They are the larval stage of the Dogwood Sawfly.

See?  They aren't even caterpillars!  No wonder I couldn't find them in my books!  Caterpillars are larva of butterflies and moths.  These guys will grow up to be a type of wasp.

So what's the last secret?  Remember yesterday's mystery caterpillar?

I couldn't find it either in my books or by internet searches so I sent the image out to a group of butterfly people (the MassLeps listserve) and asked.

Secret 7 - Biologists ask a friend, an acquaintance or a complete stranger who is an expert in the field.

This guy is a Tobacco Budworm (Heliothis virescens) and it will grow up to be a drab looking moth.  These caterpillars vary in color.  It's possibly this color because the flowers of the snapdragon are red and it's eaten some of that pigment.

So there you go.  The Seven Secrets that separate Biologists from normal people.

Do normal people write blogs about caterpillars?