gardening | The Prairie Ecologist

I’ve been very lucky so far this month to have a lot of time to wander through prairies with my camera, both during and outside of work hours. Here is a selection of images from the first 10 days of September.

Dotted gayfeather and annual buckwheat at the Niobrara Valley Preserve.

The Niobrara Valley Preserve continues to be accented by huge patches of annual buckwheat (Eriogonum annuum). Last week, I stopped briefly to admire some dotted gayfeather plants, which contrasted beautifully with the buckwheat. While I was lying down with the gayfeather (being very careful not to lie on top of any cacti) a bumble bee stopped by to visit the flowers, which was a pleasant surprise.

Plains sunflower against a backdrop of buckwheat and camphorweed.

Not long after I photographed the gayfeather, I came across an old bison bull hanging out by himself. The rut has ended, so he might have just been resting after a month of chasing cows and fighting off other bulls. My guess, though, is that he was an older bull who skipped all that excitement and has been hanging out by himself all summer. As I watched the bull, I also watched the thunderstorm building behind him and moving off to the east. As always, I photographed the bison from the safety of my vehicle.

A bison stands in front of a building storm.

Later that night, I was about to crawl into my tent (we were hosting a workshop and housing was scarce – plus it was a beautiful night for camping) when I noticed lightning in the distance. The storm that had built behind the bison was still in sight as it moved eastward. I walked the short distance between my tent and the Niobrara River and photographed the storm, the stars, and the river for a while.

A receding thunderstorm over the Niobrara River after dark.

Our new backyard prairie garden is finally starting to come into its own and it’s been fun to see what animals have been drawn in. Yesterday, I saw both a cricket frog and leopard frog, which was surprising, given the distance between us and any water bodies or streams. I didn’t photograph either of them because the lighting was bad, but I did capture a fun portrait of a gorgeous wasp visiting some wild bergamot.

A *Prionyx* wasp on wild bergamot in our backyard.

Lincoln Creek Prairie, my local go-to spot for quick in-town photography jaunts, is getting tall and harder to walk through. Tall prairie plants, though, are fun to silhouette against early and late sunlight.

Maximilian sunflower at Lincoln Creek Prairie.

Garden spiders continue to be abundant and visually apparent at a lot of the prairies I’m visiting right now. I picked one up the other day, just to show someone that they’re harmless. It ran around on my hands but clearly wasn’t happy about it so I let it go back to its web. I say they’re harmless… I mean they’re harmless to us, of course, not to the many smaller invertebrates whose lives end shortly after they encounter the big webs.

I was leaving one of our Platte River Prairies sites the other day, having finished up some data collection, when I saw a garden spider web with thistle seeds stuck to it. The seeds framed the spider itself really nicely and I couldn’t resist stopping to try some photography. Without going into needless details, having to do with topography, vegetation, lens selection, apertures, etc., I couldn’t figure out an angle and composition that matched what I had envisioned in my head. I did eventually get a shot that at least showed what was going on. It’s fine.

Thistle seeds caught in a garden spider web.

Speaking of thistles, a lot of native thistles are producing seeds right now, which is making a lot of birds very happy. Some of the thistles (especially tall thistle – Cirsium altissimum) are still blooming, which is making a lot of monarchs, bumble bees, and other pollinators very happy. I’m always a sucker for floating seeds, both before and after they launch.

Seeds of tall thistle (native wildflower).

I also like playing around with different lighting angles when a photo subject gives me the time for that. The thistle seed above wasn’t going anywhere, so I shot it from multiple directions. The tiny moth below was too cold and wet to complain about my lying down on multiple sides of it, trying out various angles and compositions.

I’m still hearing cicadas in both the prairie and our yard, but I think they’re starting to wane. Grasshoppers, crickets, and katydids, though, are still going strong, making the late summer prairies nice and noisy. The high-pitched whines and buzzes of those insects is sometimes punctured by the machine gun song of sedge wrens, too. Sometimes I like to enjoy an audiobook as I wander the prairie, but it can be hard to focus on the plot when the prairie music is so loud. That’s not a complaint, by the way, just an observation.

Plains dog day cicada – Lincoln Creek Prairie.

I’m seeing a lot of praying mantises right now. I’ve photographed all three of our biggest species over the last month or so. This last week, I found both the native Carolina mantis and the non-native European mantis in situations where they were willing to pose for photos. I’ve seen some Chinese mantises as well, but not recently during times of good light or when I’ve had time to stop and visit.

Carolina mantis at Lincoln Creek Prairie.

Carolina mantis hanging out on a milkweed plant.

Jumping spiders are always adorable, but when they’re hiding in their little silken shelters high up in the vegetation, they’re gosh darned irresistible. Why is irresistible spelled with “ible” at the end instead of “able”? If we’re not able to resist something, shouldn’t it be “able”? Language is so confusing. Don’t bother commenting on this, by the way. I know there are rules for when to use each suffix. I just can’t be bothered to care about those rules.

Anyway, it’s usually hard to photograph spiders in their shelters because they’re hiding. Which is the point, of course. I was able to gently encourage this one to come out and say hello, briefly. I took a couple quick photos before it crawled back into hiding and I left it alone.

An exposed bird dropping moth on Maximilian sunflower. I love its tiny “unicorn horn” above its head.

Nebraska has 10 species of goldenrod, not counting two Euthamia species which are often called “grassleaf goldenrods”. That count comes from the Flora of Nebraska, which keeps Solidago altissimum as a variety of Canada goldenrod, not a separate species. Those 10 species, though, do include stiff goldenrod, even though botanists have changed its genus from Solidago to Oligoneuron. Ah, taxonomy. More rules.

The point is, there are a lot of goldenrod-ish plants in our prairies, all of which are really pretty. I don’t know that I have a favorite, but it’s really hard to resist the charms of soft, or velvet goldenrod (Solidago mollis). It’s a terrific mixed grass prairie plant – tough, stocky (staulky?), and able to withstand the dynamic and sometimes harsh conditions of central Nebraska grasslands. There are some big patches of the plant at our family prairie, as well as up in the Sandhills prairie at the Niobrara Valley Preserve, so I’ve seen it a lot lately.

If you look closely at goldenrod flowers this time of year, you’ll see a lot of insect visitors, including bees, butterflies, and other pollinators. You’ll also see a fair number of beetles, including a lot of goldenrod soldier beetles. The one I notice most, though, is the black blister beetle (Epicauta pensylvanica), And, no, there’s not a double N in pensylvanica. Don’t blame me – I’m not in charge of words or rules about words.

A black blister beetle on velvet goldenrod (*Solidago mollis*). Helzer family prairie.

Blister beetles can excrete a yellow substance that does indeed cause blisters, but I’ve never had that happen to me. I’ve let some crawl on my hands and have photographed a lot of them. I just don’t squeeze them or otherwise make them feel threatened.

The black blister beetle’s larvae start out very mobile after hatching and will find and feed on the eggs of grasshoppers. I haven’t found any reports that they hitchhike on adult grasshoppers to find those eggs, but I wouldn’t be shocked if they do. After all, their cousins the oil beetles hitchhike on bees to get to bee nests. Either way, it’s fun to see black blister beetles every year, and while they feed on lots of plants, I always associate them with late summer goldenrods.

Blister beetle on stiff goldenrod at the Helzer Family Prairie.

My last photo might be my favorite of the month so far, but it’s also one of the most recent, which exposes a big bias of mine. I saw a lot of katydids at Gjerloff Prairie yesterday morning before I had to run back to town to give a presentation to a college class (virtually). This one was one of the last I saw and I spent quite a bit of time photographing it. The sun had finally started to break through some horizon-hugging clouds and was making the dew drops all around me sparkle. I tried a lot of camera angles before I finally got what I wanted – partial sky blurred in the background, along with some sparkly drops to help frame the image.

A katydid warming up on a dewy, sparkly morning at Gjerloff Prairie.

I also spotted the first migratory (I assume) variegated meadowhawk dragonfly of the fall yesterday morning, roosting in the tall grass at Gjerloff. That’s usually my best signal for the change of seasons. I didn’t get a chance to photograph that particular dragonfly because I came across it well before it was light enough for a good photo. That’s ok, it still counts as my autumn indicator (along with the fact I had to wear layers to stay warm during my pre-sunrise walk), so happy autumn everyone!

Kim and I recently moved across town. We waited a year before starting to work on the yard and garden, but things are underway now. Kim’s in charge of the vast majority of the landscaping, but I’m putting together a strip of prairie plants along our east boundary. It’ll take a few years to fill in all the space, both because I’ll keep adding plants and because the early plants will grow and spread. Meanwhile, some of this year’s additions are already blooming and attracting insects.

The garden webworm moth is known as a pest in corn crops, but also across lots of other food and garden plants, including alfalfa, beans, cotton, strawberries and many others. Here, it’s feeding on upright prairie coneflower.

I’ve seen a surprisingly wide variety of visitors so far, but some of the most abundant are insects that are usually categorized as pests. I’ve complained about that characterization before, so I won’t go over all that ground again. However, most of the “pests” showing up on my prairie plants are native insects that also happen to have adapted well to the bounty of food plants humans have spread across the landscape. Their ability to adapt has (unfairly, I think) earned them names that reflect our frustration with them and made them targets.

The corn earworm moth (above), according to Wikipedia, is the second most important economic pest in North America, next to the codling moth. That’s quite a reputation for a pretty nondescript native moth that is also a helpful pollinator for a lot of native plants. Because it feeds on a wide range of human crops, it has other names, including the cotton bollworm and tomato fruit worm.

The cabbage looper moth (below) is a native owlet moth whose larval form happens to enjoy cruciferous vegetable plants such as cabbage, broccoli, and many others. Never mind that it also feeds on well over 150 other species of plants, or that it is a pollinator insect as an adult. Because it eats some of the same plants we eat, we have developed lots of ways to kill it.

Cabbage looper moth on black-eyed Susan.

The American sunflower moth (below) doesn’t cause us any problems in our yard because we don’t mind if it eats a bunch of the seeds from our black-eyed Susans or sunflowers. If I was raising sunflowers for food, oil, or to support my family, however, I’m sure I’d look at them differently.

These petals have been sewn together with silk by an American sunflower moth caterpillar.

Here’s the caterpillar itself, feeding on the developing seeds of this black-eyed Susan.

Look, I get it. We fight back against some of the insects that eat the vegetables in our home garden, too. Some of those, like the cabbage white butterfly, are species introduced to North America, but others are native species that are competing with us for our garden produce. The world is messy.

However, I do think it’s important to keep a certain perspective on these insects and remember that while we are sometimes in conflict, that doesn’t mean the entire species is evil or worthy of eradication. It’s also vital to be thoughtful and careful about how we attack “pests” that are eating our food or other agricultural crops. That includes both treating crops only when there’s a high enough abundance of those insects to be significant. It also means using pesticides and other treatments that are as selective as possible and minimize impacts to other species. We still have a lot of room to grow in this regard.

Keeping a proper perspective can be difficult in a complex world, though, so I’m not here to tell you what your particular perspective should be. As an example of how complicated this is, here (below) is a photo I took this morning of what I think is a European paper wasp in my prairie garden. As the name suggests, this is not a species native to North America, and it has apparently been spreading westward across the continent since about the mid-1990s.

European paper wasp covered in morning dew.

There is evidence from some parts of our continent that the European species may be displacing our native paper wasps. Some of you might think that’s not something to weep about since paper wasps are often unpopular, especially given their penchant for building and defending nests in/on the same structures we live in. However, we don’t really know all the potential ramifications of this continued invasion. Should I have squished that wasp instead of (or after) photographing it? I’ll bet there are those who would advocate for exactly that and I don’t know really have a good counterargument. I didn’t squish it, though, because this is a complicated topic I don’t yet understand well enough to form a strong opinion.

Oof.

Ok, that’s enough heavy stuff. Despite the complexity of some of the insect species and their actions, I really am enjoying seeing what species are finding and colonizing our new prairie garden. I’m looking forward to the next few years – and beyond – as both the plant and invertebrate communities continue to grow and diversify.

Here are some photos (and a video) of some other insects and plants I’ve seen in our garden over the last few days. I think they’re all pretty non-controversial.

A yellow-shouldered drone fly on black-eyed Susan

I hope all of you who are fortunate enough to live near some green space have the opportunity to see and appreciate similar insect diversity. It’s fun to see how popular native plants are getting with the public and how often I see them used in landscaping. That’s really helpful in lots of ways.

However, as I’ve written about before, putting native plants in your landscaping doesn’t necessarily preclude you from adding some non-native species as well. Many of the same insects l see in our prairie garden are also visiting our zinnias, salvia plants, viburnums, and other horticultural species around the yard. There’s nothing wrong with being a purist, if that’s what makes you happy, but it’s not the only path to providing good backyard habitat.

Ok, I’m off to grab some lunch and see what’s happening out in the garden.

The Prairie Ecologist

Essays, photos, and discussion about prairie ecology, restoration, and management

Tag Archives: gardening

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