Tag Archives: nature

Photo of the Week – June 22, 2012

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One great thing about insects and spiders is that they can be found almost anywhere.  One great thing about kids is that they love to explore.  Putting those two together creates a terrific way to get kids interested in nature. 

It’s been fun watching my kids explore our yard – let alone the prairies I drag them to.  I’ve tried to foster a sense of discovery and excitement about the kinds of creatures we can find all around us.  I’m not an entomologist, but I’m enthusiastic – and we can find an insect in the yard and learn about it together.  I don’t care whether my kids grow up to be prairie ecologists or not, but I do want them to grow up with an awareness of the world around them.  Insects are an easy and accessible place to start.

My son Daniel with a katydid nymph he found in our yard.

Photo of the Week – June 15, 2012

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Milkweeds have very distinctive flowers, with unique shapes and features.  I guess it shouldn’t be surprising that their pollination story is equally interesting.

Common milkweed (Asclepias syriaca) flowers. Lincoln Creek Prairie – Aurora, Nebraska.

First, milkweed flowers don’t produce thousands of of individual pollen grains that can each get carried away to other flowers by visiting insects.  Instead, milkweeds have what are called “pollinia”, or waxy masses of pollen that are designed to stick to insects.  You might think that a flower with a specialized pollen structure like that would have a system to make it easy, or even automatic, for any visiting pollinator to pick up and deliver that pollinia to the next flower.  After all, there are countless stories of flower types that facilitate pollination by forcing visiting insects to hit the right spots as they forage for nectar and pollen.

With milkweeds, not so much.

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