by Kate Redmond
Goldenrod Watch – Act III
Howdy, BugFans,
The places where the BugLady walks are yellow now – goldenrods (Solidago sp.) are at their peak on the prairie (so are brown-eyed Susans, sneezeweed, and wild sunflowers). She’s been poking around in the goldenrod, an exercise she recommends, because goldenrods support an amazing community of invertebrates. Many visit to lay eggs and will lay them no place else; some come for nectar and pollen; and some come to eat the insects that come for nectar and pollen. An article in Wikipedia calls goldenrod a keystone species (one that shapes its community) that “has been called the single most important plant for North American pollinator biodiversity.” It continues, “As many as 104 species of butterflies and moths use it as a host plant for their larvae, and 42 species of bees are goldenrod specialists, visiting only goldenrod for food.”
There are about 100 species of goldenrod in North America (and they readily hybridize) and the BugLady can ID seven of them – Grass-leaved, Stiff, Zigzag, Showy, Bog, and Elm-leaved (and Canada, if there’s a goldenrod ball gall on its stem). Canada goldenrod is what a gardener friend calls a “thug,” – it loves to take over – a native plant that can become invasive.
Besides being beautiful, goldenrod has a history of medicinal use for fevers, sore throats, snake bite, toothache, wounds, and more, and it was also used to flavor medicines and as a dye. The Ojibwe name for it means “sun medicine,” and the Mesquakie used it in combination with some other herbs to wash a baby who had not learned to talk or laugh, so that the baby “would grow up with its faculties intact.”
The BugLady has never been stung while taking mug shots of goldenrod critters, and it doesn’t make her sneeze, either (goldenrod pollen is heavy and sticky and not airborne, while ragweed, which blooms nearby and whose small, inconspicuous, green flowers produce abundant, airborne pollen is the hidden culprit of hay fever).
This is the third installment of the Goldenrod Watch series – about 15 species have been featured in each. When you go out and embrace a goldenrod patch, here’s what you might see:
SYRPHID FLY (OBLIQUE STREAKTAIL, Allograpta obliqua). Your reward for looking closely.
If the BugLady had a nickel for every syrphid/hover/flower fly she’s seen in the past week, she could buy a small island somewhere. Syrphid flies (family Syrphidae) are harmless bee and wasp mimics that, as their name suggests, hover over flowers (and over our sweaty skin, landing to sip the salt). Many are exquisitely patterned, and some make very convincing yellowjackets, though they do have funny-looking “noses.” https://www.bugguide.net/node/view/1063410/bgimage. The BugLady recommends the Flower Flies of Minnesota by Scott King.
SUMMER SPRING AZURE – What a dainty little butterfly. The “Azure season” starts in May with the Spring Spring Azure and continues from July through autumn with the Summer Azure.” What’s that all about? See https://uwm.edu/field-station/bug-of-the-week/small-blue-butterflies-2/.
FOUR-TOOTHED MASON WASP – Another solitary wasp, with a similar lifestyle involving making egg chambers, caching them (in this case with the caterpillars of micromoths), and then turning her back on the whole affair. They are not aggressive, but if you insist on grabbing one, she will deliver a sting like that of a Bald-faced hornet (in other words, memorable). The male of the species doesn’t exactly sting, but his nether regions are pointy, and he may stab the unwary, a rarity among Hymenopterans. Here’s the rest of the story https://uwm.edu/field-station/bug-of-the-week/four-toothed-mason-wasp/.
HONEY BEE – The BugLady has photographed lots of honeybees, but she doesn’t recall seeing one as dark as this one. From what she reads, bees have blackish bodies that are disguised by golden hairs, and older bees, especially those that work outside the hive, often lose the hairs on the thorax and their abdomens.
SPOTTED CUCUMBER BEETLE – The subject of Agricultural Extension WANTED posters from sea to shining sea, and from the Gulf north into Canada. Why? Crop damage to the flowers, leaves, and stems (the adults), and to roots of emerging plants (the larvae/grubs) of squash, beans, corn, cotton, and more. The very-fecund females may lay 400 eggs in a lifetime, but some overachievers lay three times that number. And the cucumber part? Sprawling over the tops of nearby goldenrods was a thicket of Wild cucumber vines https://www.minnesotawildflowers.info/flower/wild-cucumber.
AMBUSH BUG – One of the BugLady’s favorites strikes again. If you’re looking for bugs, look on flowers. If you see a bug that’s sitting very, very still, look for an ambush bug or a crab spider.
THICK-HEADED FLY – This odd little fly has a dark side. Mom hangs out on or near flowers, waiting for bumble bees. When she spots one (different species of thick-headed flies target different species of bumble bees), she attacks it, sticks her ovipositor between two of its abdominal segments, and inserts an egg, and her larva feeds on the insides of its host. When the fly larva is sufficiently well-developed, some genus members send a message (somehow) to their host telling if to bury itself (a very un-beelike behavior). The fly pupates in the bee and emerges from underground. For more information see https://uwm.edu/field-station/bug-of-the-week/tricks-of-the-trade-thick-headed-flies/.
BRACONID WASP – The BugLady thinks this is a braconid wasp, one of a large and complicated and important group of small wasps that, someday, she will write a BOTW about. If it’s not a braconid, it’s an Ichneumon wasp, and the BugLady is anxiously awaiting the publication of The Big Picture Book of Ichneumon Wasps (assuming she could lift it).
MONARCH – They’re on their way south now, slowly, and will take several months to reach the oyamel fir forests in the mountains of Central Mexico. They’ll feed on nectar from a wide variety of flowers as they go (only their caterpillars are tied to milkweeds). An adult Monarch newly-emerged from its chrysalis in Wisconsin has about 20 grams of fat in its body, but it will arrive in Mexico with 125 grams of fat, which will see it through a winter of inactivity on the cool mountainsides.
Here’s a Monarch update – https://wimonarchs.org/early-sept-an-exciting-time-of-year/
GREEN BOTTLE FLY – It’s a lovely, burnished bronze/green fly, but out of concern for the easily queasy, the BugLady is not going to describe the details of its life.
AILANTHUS MOTH – This spiffy little moth is often seen on goldenrod, but its caterpillar is a bit of a mystery. It is (allegedly) a native species (the BugLady says “allegedly” because its original range was south Florida, which has been a petri dish for introduced plants and animals for a very long time). There it fed on a few tropical trees, but it got it’s Big Chance when Ailanthus trees (Tree of Heaven) were introduced from China and started marching north, taking the moth with them (see that story here https://uwm.edu/field-station/bug-of-the-week/ailanthus-webworm-moth/). A mystery because although Ailanthus is supposedly the sole caterpillar host, there aren’t any Ailanthus trees where the BugLady typically sees the moth. A few sources say that the caterpillar eats the leaves of Ailanthus “and some other deciduous trees and shrubs” but don’t name them.
INCHWORM CATERPILLAR – Food for baby birds. Imagine how many of these it would take to raise a Robin!
SQUARE-HEADED WASP – A small, solitary wasp that uses her strong jaws to excavate a cell for her eventual egg in the tissue of a log or plant stem. When it’s ready, she cruises the flower tops for small flies, which she grabs, stings, and stuffs into the cell. When she judges that the pile of flies is the right size, she lays the egg, closes the cell, and begins working on another.
EASTERN YELLOWJACKET – (AKA “garbage bee”). She’s so pretty, sitting there in her golden bower, that it’s easy to forget what a pain yellowjackets can be. The good news is that she is a pollinator and that some of the insects she collects and masticates for her larvae are pests, and that old nests provide winter food for skunks and raccoons. We all know what the bad news is.
Here are the first two installments of Goldenrod Watch https://uwm.edu/field-station/bug-of-the-week/goldenrod-watch/ and https://uwm.edu/field-station/bug-of-the-week/goldenrod-watch-act-ii/.
Go outside – find some sun and some goldenrod!
Kate Redmond, The BugLady
Bug of the Week archives:
http://uwm.edu/field-station/category/bug-of-the-week/