On the Wild Carrot

Goldenrod Soldier Beetle (Chauliognathus pensylvanicus)

Jagged Ambush Bug (Genus Phymata)

Clouded Plant Bug (Neurocolpus nubilus)

Greenbottle Fly (Genus Lucilia)

Down by the parsnip

There is only one patch of wild parsnip in any of the naturalization areas. Three, 6ft tall plants are in the 2010 planting area by the raspberries. In one respect it is a bit like the Mara river on the Serengeti: it is a very convenient spot to photograph the wildlife.

Typocerus velitinus (Banded longhorn)

Orthops scutellatus (Carrot Plant Bug)

Brachiacantha ursina (Orange-spotted Lady Beetle)

Depressaria pastinacella (Parsnip Webworm Moth)

Podisus nymph (Spined Soldier Bug)

Polistes fuscatus (Northern Paper Wasp)

Cosmopepla lintneriana (Twice-Stabbed Stink Bug)

Eupithecia miserulata (An Inchworm)

Misumena vatia (Goldenrod Crab Spider)

A mystery caterpillar

This last caterpillar is a bit of a mystery. It is all over the wild parsnips and behaves much like a parsnip webworm. Even though it has quite distinctive markings I wasn't able to find it in the bug guide or elsewhere on the web. It is probably the caterpillar for some small, nondescript moth.

Two-Spotted Grass Bugs

It was a very hot first day of summer today. We are in a bit of a heat wave the past couple of days. All the plants are growing vigorously but I'm sure they were water stressed in the mid-day sun. These Two-Spotted Grass Bugs were all over the Timothy this afternoon. They stayed in the shady side but scuttled over to the far side of the panicle whenever the camera came near. It seemed to be the motion that disturbed them. I could take the close-up shots by holding the camera steady and twisting the grass stem around to bring the bugs into view.

I've been slowly learning my grasses this week. Here is a useful grass identification document. I am making slow progress but I really wish there was the equivalent of the bugguide.net around for plants. The bug guide has dozens of very good pictures of the common bugs with which you can compare your specimen to the range of photographs taken by others. The Two-spotted Grass Bug for example seems to be quite variable in colouration; some are black with a bit of orange, like the one below, while others are more yellow with a bit of black. I have yet to find an online guide that would provide the equivalent image quality for grasses. I had been misidentifying Quack grass with Ryegrass until today because the identification photos online were so poor.

Plant Bugs hiding in plain sight

This little bug hanging out on a grass seed panicle is a Megaloceroea Recticornis. It is an import from Europe hanging out on another import from the old world: a tall fescue. It is amazing how foreign this common roadside environment is; practically all the grasses are non-natives, and when I attempt to identify a bug or insect it often turns out to be a non-native as well. I suppose it makes sense that the non-native bugs would do well among these alien plants. The one to the right already has the elaborate camouflage to mimic a green grass spikelet. They probably are well suited to this grassy environment in many less obvious ways, such as their digestive system and the timing of their life cycle.


To the left is a photograph of another Megaloceroea Recticornis. You can see its feed tube through which it is sucking up the grass's juices from the spikelet. These insects can only feed while the seeds are still green and growing. The bluegrass which is the most common grass in the naturalization area has already turned brown. This has probably concentrated the remaining grass feeding insects onto the green fescue and the timothy. The insects are particularly easy to spot on the tall compact spikes of the timothy. Right now it seems like every timothy panicle has a variety of plant bugs crawling all over it.

Megaloceroea Recticornis is named for its large straight antenna. Antenna are sensory organs for insects that they may use to smell or feel, but somehow I don't think those conventional uses are the reason these antenna are so large. These insects don't have to hunt for their food as grass seeds aren't hard to find. Because the antenna are so rigid and over-sized they must make navigating among the grass stems a pain. Perhaps the antenna have more in common with deer antlers than the superficial similarity the name implies.