{"id":250,"date":"2009-05-04T14:31:45","date_gmt":"2009-05-04T20:31:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/?p=250"},"modified":"2009-05-04T14:31:45","modified_gmt":"2009-05-04T20:31:45","slug":"bugs-and-flowers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/?p=250","title":{"rendered":"Bugs and Flowers"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is the season when all my plans for writing sensible, helpful, organized entries about this or that aspect of our project go blooey…because since we finally got some rain, the flowers (and their insect “friends”) are burgeoning and all I want to do is take pictures and say “Look!\u00a0 Look at this one!”\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 For instance, stiff-stem prairie flax,\u00a0 Linum berlandieri<\/em>, gold from a distance, but up close decorated with delicate, precise lines of dark orange.<\/p>\n

\"stiff-stem-prairie-flax058\"<\/p>\n

The flax is short–never more than six inches tall–and over and around it are other beauties, like this gaura (I think it’s white gaura, Gaura lindheimeri<\/em>):<\/p>\n

\"gaura053\"<\/p>\n

One of the many yellow natives we’re glad to have is Engelmann’s Daisy, Engelmannia peristenia<\/em>.\u00a0 It survived years of overgrazing to reappear just a couple of years ago.<\/p>\n

\"engelmanns-daisy-fly102\"<\/p>\n

I haven’t IDed that humpbacked fly on its petal yet.<\/p>\n

While working in the vegetable garden today,\u00a0 I noticed a red and black ‘bug’ of some sort on one of the sunflowers, so when I was through I went back to the house for the camera–and the insects were still there (on a different sunflower.<\/p>\n

\"weevil2-on-sunflower123\"<\/p>\n

From this angle, it just looked like a small colorful beetle,\u00a0 but from the other side of the leaf, it was clearly contemplating lunch:<\/p>\n

\"weevil2-on-sunflower121\"<\/p>\n

I think this is a weevil named Rhodobaenus tredecimpunctatus<\/em>…and I do know it’s got 13 spots.\u00a0\u00a0 And it’s a new species for our list.<\/p>\n

Also in the garden, I found this black flower scarab beetle with wrinkly elytra:<\/p>\n

\"black-beetle-on-mistflower129\"<\/p>\n

I planted that flower to attract butterflies, not beetles!\u00a0\u00a0 Another of the same species was nose-down in another Engelmann’s Daisy, and I’ve photographed this kind before, on both dogbane and cow parsley.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is the season when all my plans for writing sensible, helpful, organized entries about this or that aspect of our project go blooey…because since we finally got some rain, the flowers (and their insect “friends”) are burgeoning and all I want to do is take pictures and say “Look!\u00a0 Look at this one!”\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 For […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21,7,4],"tags":[13,39,38,32,70],"class_list":["post-250","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-photography","category-plantlife","category-wildlife","tag-beauty","tag-beetle","tag-insect","tag-native-plants","tag-photography"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=250"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":257,"href":"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250\/revisions\/257"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=250"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=250"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=250"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}