A Pest in the Kitchen

I always try to figure out what a bug is before I decide if it is going to get squashed or fed to something or gently put outside to carry on with its life.

This evening I found something that looked like a slightly elongated yellow lady bug with very long antennae hanging out on my kitchen faucet.

A little searching around Google found the positive identification of this little critter:

The Spotted Cucumber Beetle (Diabrotica undecimpunctata)

According to the farming people, this guy is a pest with no redeeming qualities other than to be used as spider food.  Fortunately, I don't have a vegetable garden this year, so I'm not *too* worried about an infestation, though for the sake of the neighbors, I can't really let him go.

I had just about decided to feed him to one of the many spiders in our house when he became threatened by my proximity and persistent paparazzi-like-photo-taking and he flew to the ceiling where I could not reach him.  

He lives to munch again.

www.extension.org
wikipedia.org
BugGuide.net

Spring is Springing!

With respect to the good citizens of Massachusetts who have been hammered this winter with snowstorm after snowstorm, and my good friends in drought-stricken Southern California, I would like to present Spring in the Pacific Northwest this Valentine's weekend:

(These are photos snapped around our property on the 15th of February, 2015.)

Hellebore

Sedum

Hydrangea

Oat grass

Indian Plum (Oemleria cerasiformis)

Allium

Pieris japonica

Mosquito larvae!

Millipedes in May

I've noticed the millipedes have been out en force this weekend.

Here is one that I found skulking around my pots this morning (he was moving too fast for my poor camera to get a good shot):

I first learned about these 3 years ago, almost to the day.  I reprint here a 'Note' that I posted to my facebook friends entitled, 

"In case we’re all dead in the morning, here’s what happened:"

May 7, 2010 at 11:32pm
Children playing outside in front yard while mom prunes monster rhododendron bushes. Children find a “caterpillar”, want to keep it as a pet, “Mommy isn’t it cute, it’s only a baby, it’s so tiny,” etc. Mommy looks at “caterpillar”, is pretty sure it’s something else, tries to convince kids to leave it alone (“It KNOWS where to find its OWN food”), finally gets frustrated with disobedient children and chucks “caterpillar” into underbrush so children can’t find it again. Mommy ushers children to back yard where they promptly find another one. Mommy thinks she convinces the kids to WATCH this one to see where it goes, only to find them holding and playing with it soon thereafter. 

Mommy gets fed up and goes on the computer to find out what species it is. Turns out it’s a millipede:Harpaphe haydeniana to be exact. Oh, and by the way it is one of the species that secretes cyanide when it’s distressed. Mommy looks up to see the kids helping themselves to crackers, “DROP THE FOOD, GO WASH YOUR HANDS!!!” After a thorough hand-scrubbing session, mommy explains about “poison” and reads a first-hand account of a boy who got cyanide in his eyes after handling a millipede. Children duly impressed. 

Son (age 4) later caught sneaking out back door with something behind his back. Lo and behold the millipede in a plastic container. Daughter (age 6) had snuck it into her room while mommy was researching – she still wanted it as a pet until the whole poison thing was revealed – and convinced her little brother to return the pet to its natural habitat. 

We did take photos of “our” millipede, but the children appear to have hidden the camera. 



I later found the camera and these were the photos we took at the time:

Places to learn a bit more about this species of millipede:
Wikipedia
Evergreen State College
The Bug Guide - information and photos

Ajuga

Four years ago my British gardener friend was visiting and helping me plant up some of my flower beds.  We went to a local nursery (garden center) and she picked out one of her favorite groundcovers - Ajuga reptans "Black Scallop" - or Bugleweed.  She had put these in my garden in Essex, England as well before we moved to the USA.  After planting them in a flower bed close to the house, she noticed that it was actually growing wild in the meadow in front of the house.  She gathered up as many as she could and transplanted them all around.  I now have a carpet of Ajuga which sends up beautiful flower spikes at this time of year (April/May).

Ajuga is native to Europe and Asia, but has been introduced to various parts of the USA. (The USDA website has a map showing where it has been introduced.  The New England Wild Flower Society also has a map and photos showing its distribution in that part of the country.)  It does produce seeds, but apparently the seeds don't always mature.  It spreads mostly by sending out runners, like strawberry plants.

It is a great plant for the Pacific Northwest because it is very hardy, is good in the shade and likes moist soil. It also has purple leaves which lets it stand out among all the GREEN. The deer, rabbits and slugs leave it alone. It holds its own against more aggressive weeds, but still plays nice with taller plants.  The photos below show it sending up flower spikes despite being engulfed by creeping buttercup (Ranunculus repens) and blackberry brambles (Rubus sp.) in one photo and grass and English plantain (Plantago lanceolata) in another.  It hasn't come up yet, but in the carpet of  bugleweed close to my house I also have columbine (Aquilegia hybrid) which emerges from the carpet and rises above it to bloom in mid-summer.

Ajuga reptans flower spike

Ajuga spike rising above the weeds

Ajuga among the grass and meadow plants

Some websites that have other information about Ajuga:

• Wikipedia - lists all the various species
• Botanical.com; a Modern Herbal - places Ajuga in its historical context discussing how it has been used medicinally over the years. (With the appropriate caution that historical use may not jive with modern medical knowledge!)
• Kew Garden's Fact Sheet
• Some information about a fungus that can affect cultivated Ajuga from the Pacific Northwest Plant Disease Management Handbook published by the Oregon State University Department of Botany and Plant Pathology.

Something You Don't See Every Day... Until NOW!

I was walking the kids to the bus stop the other day and my eye was drawn to a bright orange mass of something on the ground.  It's an area near several fir trees and a couple cedars and an old stump that has been colonized by ferns.  There are a fair number of fir needles and small downed branches, bits of cedar debris, etc.  It has not been "cleaned up" in any way other than to sweep organic debris from the road onto it.

Upon closer inspection the mass was made up of hundreds, possibly thousands, of little orange balls.  My first slime mold.  I was so pleased!  I've been watching its progress the last couple days.  Rather than migrating, per se,  it seems to be drying up and then a new colony sprouting up a foot or two away.  This may have to do with our weather at the moment.  Mornings are starting out quite "dewy" and cold (in the 40's Fahrenheit) and the afternoons have been sunny and dry (temperatures in the 60's).  We've only had a small amount of rain in the last week.

My limited knowledge of slime molds tells me that these are the fruiting bodies, though when I punctured one with a pin, I didn't get dry spores like with some molds.  These were creamy inside.

I'm having trouble figuring out what species this is.  Some of the reading I've been doing gave me the name, "Common Orange Slime Mold" but not a scientific name.  The early pictures don't resemble another common one, Fuligo septica or "Dog Vomit Slime Mold", though a later one is a similar color.  If any mycologists out there would like to chime in, I welcome your insight!

Here is the progression over the last several days:

This is how it looked when I first noticed it on the morning of the 29th of March.

By the evening of the 29th, the balls had elongated and turned darker in color.

Here, I've added a US penny to demonstrate the size.  These are each millimeters in diameter.

The next morning, March 30th, they were quite dry and starting to turn black at the tips.

I skipped a day and then Monday, the 1st of April, went to check and the original colony (on the left) was nearly all black and a new colony had sprung up nearby (on the right).

Close up of the new colony.

Close up of the 'old' colony - mostly black, dry with a few of the fruiting bodies collapsed or broken open.

2nd April - The first colony is almost completely black, the second colony is going the same way - dry, orange ...

...and a 3rd colony has sprung up about a foot away. (Apologies that the photos aren't well-focused.  The camera was not cooperating.)  Quite a colorful picture with the fir needles and the lichen for contrast, if I do say so myself!

In looking for information about the species I found a couple websites/blog posts about slime molds that I found helpful:
The Mushroom Expert
BTweenBlinks (Washington State)
WiseAcre Gardens (New York State)
UC Berkeley Museum of Paleontology -- Introduction to the Slime Molds
The Hidden Forest (New Zealand)
Tom Volk's Fungi of the Month (Wisconsin)

Here is the 3rd colony this afternoon (3rd April) going the same way as the others.  No new colonies have appeared.

On the 4th of April it started raining again after 6 days of mostly sunny and dry conditions.  When I checked the slime mold this morning (5th April), I struggled to find the first two colonies - they pretty much blended in with the rest of the detritus.  The 3rd one also was quite black and the individual nodules had shrunk.  About a meter away, however, there was a small new colony.  It was on a brown leaf, dropped from a big leaf maple.  This one had veins!  My nerdy biologist self giggled with glee at the flowing protoplasm:

"Flowing" slime mold forming a new colony with a baby slug added for interest.

Spring Babies

My husband cut down some trees a couple months ago and the stumps have been lying on the ground ever since.  Over the weekend he decided to tidy up that area and found someone had made a home in the rotting wood:

They're baby mice.  We carefully replaced the top part of the log that had been covering them.  When we checked on them the following day, they had gone - hopefully mommy moved them to a new location.  We do have garter snakes, and other predators, however, so they could easily have been eaten as well.

I'm not sure which species our mice are.  They are grey with a slightly lighter grey undercoat.  They don't seem to match any of the pictures I find on the local wildlife websites. They live outside - underground and in the wood pile and occasionally come into the house in the spring to find food.  Our current cat has been an excellent deterrent, so we haven't had any food stolen for the last 2 springs.

Local resources with information about wildlife:

• Burke Museum Mammals of Washington
• Washington Nature Mapping Program

Harbinger of Spring

There are certain plants that define certain seasons for me.  In England, I would watch spring approach by watching the bulbs come up.  First the snowdrops, then the crocuses and, finally, the daffodils.  Once all the daffodils were up, it was truly spring.

In the Pacific Northwest, my Early Spring Plant is the Indian Plum (Oemleria cerasiformis).  This is a lovely native shrub that sprouts up on the edges of the forested areas on our land.  My neighbor has a whole bank of it that borders the main road.  I posted pictures back in February of the leaf buds that were starting to emerge.  In the last week, the flowers have erupted.  They dangle down from the stem like ragged little bells, but are so cheerful that they fill me with delight whenever I see them.

I will be forever grateful to Shirley at Tadpole Haven Native Plant Nursery in Woodinville for posting a picture of Indian Plum on her website.  I had noticed the plant in my yard a couple years ago, but had no idea if it was a weed. She posted a photo of the flowers right at the same time mine bloomed and described what it was.  I was so excited!  I went to visit the nursery at their next open day to talk with her about the plant.  

Shirley also taught me to tell the difference between the male and female plants.  I couldn't find anything on ANY website describing the difference. You have to open one of the flowers.  The female plants have ovaries at the base of the stigma while male plants only have the stamens.  Reportedly insects pollinate the flowers to produce the fruit, but I haven't found anywhere that indicates which insects do the deed.  The plants also have to be quite close together to get any appreciable pollination action and resultant fruit. Some insect certainly likes to munch on the leaves, as you can see above, there are quite a few small holes in the leaves.

Female flower on left; Male flower on right.

I have found one report of the flowers having a smell.  When I read this I went out to check, since I never noticed before.  There is a *faint* aroma when you get your nose RIGHT up close.  The author describes the male flowers as having a skunk smell, with which I'd agree, and the females having a "cucurbitaceous" smell, which I had to look up in the dictionary and means having to do with the gourd family - i.e. pumpkins and cucumbers (http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/cucurbitaceous). Not sure about that one.

What I DO know is that spring is truly sprung now that these flowers have arrived - oh, and there's a daffodil!