Where Are The Butterflies!!?

ProfessorRoush tries to be a good gardener, and a gracious host of garden fauna, but once in a while he is incredibly oblivious to the obvious and dense to the details.  I've been so focused on catching up with spring--weeding, trimming, spreading 80+ bags of mulch, watering and weeding again--that I've been focused on the ground and the work and missing the big picture.  Well, to be accurate, I've missed the fact that the big picture is missing something.



 As my 'Blizzard' Mockorange (Philadelphus lewisii 'Blizzard') began to bloom, however, it finally dawned on me that I haven't seen a single butterfly yet.  Not a skipper, not a fritillary, not a hairstreak, none, on any flower yet this year.  My 'Blizzard' is usually covered with them while it blooms.  Let alone a Painted Lady on the 'Blizzard', like the beauty above that I photographed in 2012, I haven't seen any butterflies at all this year.   My 'Blizzard' is in full bloom as captured two days ago in the photograph at the left and there is not a single butterfly on it. 






What's going on?  As I think back, my alliums have all bloomed and past, and yet I saw no butterflies like this Painted Lady pictured on the 'Globemaster' allium at right, again from 2012.  Honeysuckle, roses, Knautia macedonia, all are blooming now without their usual halo of winged angels.  It's not like I've been puffing the insecticides around this year.  I use a little in the vegetable garden when I'm desperate, but I haven't broke open the carbaryl dust on the potatoes yet this year, and I don't use it in the rest of the garden ever.

Frankly, I'm more than a little worried.  I knew we had a rough winter, dry and cold, because  I lost a number of roses and more than a few long-established shrubs.  But was it really that dry and cold?  We have fallen deeper into drought this spring, with every storm passing just to our east or north, like this one I captured on radar from 2 nights ago, slipping to the east without raining here.  There have been no ground-soaking rains since last September and already the temperatures are climbing to the 100's (today the temperature hit 102ºF in my garden).   My front lawn is beginning to dry up and looks like the browning turf of late July or early August instead of the usual lush green of late May.   Are the timing or sequences of butterfly and bloom off?  My allium and mockoranges bloomed together in 2012, yet this year the alliums bloomed and faded a week before the mockorange opened the first blossom.  Has any of this environmental variability affected the butterflies?  Am I to witness no joyous fritting about of a fritillary this entire year?

Is anyone else missing their butterflies? 

I'll let you know if, and when they arrive here.  Until then, I'm at a loss to know if this is a variation of normal, or an omen of the world's end.

Crane Fly Interlude

When ProfessorRoush spots an unusual insect in the garden, some chitinous-shelled life form beyond his ken, he takes note of it.  When it's on a rose plant, and particularly on a rose bloom, he moves into panic mode (or as close to it as he ever gets), and he looks it up as soon as possible. 

This week, in the garden, the unusual insect was this six legged, winged creepy-crawler that I believe I've correctly identified as the adult form of a "crane fly," Family Tipulidae,  known colloquially in England as a "daddy long-legs," or in other quarters, as a "mosquito hawk."  I first spied him on a bloom of 'Snow Pavement' as I was searching for the first appearance of Japanese Beetles, and then saw a second one nearby on the foliage of "Foxi Pavement."   A quick check of Internet sources tells me that it has no relation to the eight-legged monsters that I knew as granddaddy long-legs that infested the tents of my childhood, seemingly reconstituting themselves inside tents stored for decades between uses.  I also found that its diet does NOT include mosquitoes.  In fact the adults, which only live to procreate during a life-cycle span of 2 weeks, normally don't eat during that period at all.  They can reportedly copulate for up to 2 hours (who actually watches and times such things?), which would be pretty neat but would also make me pretty hungry, so unfortunately I'd conclude that the extended pleasure is not worth trading for the stomach cramps.

So what are they and what kind of fresh H-E-double toothpicks are they starting in my garden?  First, I learned quickly that these little morsels won't damage the rose blooms, much to my relief since I have few left to damage.  It may be the larvae, known as leatherjackets, that I have to worry about, if any.  The larvae live in the top layers of the soil and feed primarily on decaying organic matter, although they sometimes also feed on the roots, root hairs, and crowns of crops, stunting growth or killing the plants.  Bloody heck, in 1935 the little buggers invaded Lord's Cricket Ground in London, caused dead patches on the wicket, and the pitch exhibited unusual spin through the season.  What a balls up!

I've decided to leave them alone, as crane flies are also likely important in the soil ecosystem, improving microbial activity and recycling oganic material and because they serve as prey for other predatory insects and spiders, perhaps providing a food source to keep them alive long enough to consume other, more rose-harmful insects later.  I don't think I can blame them for the loss of so many roses to Rose Rosette Disease, and they're so much more dainty and delicate than the blundering Japanese Beetles I was expecting.  I'll consider the crane flies as my guests until they start tracking up the carpet or leaving the toilets unflushed.

Corpse Flower, indeed

Despite our existence in the "flyover states," there were many fantastic activities in Manhattan Kansas this weekend.  The Bill Snyder Half-Marathon, for instance, tied up a number of city streets and traffic policepeople for most of Saturday morning.  For those hip individuals in the know, however, the real attraction was the imminent blooming of a Titan Arum, Amorphophallus titanum, right here in the Little Apple.

I was alerted to the potential bloom from Tuesday's K-State Newsletter, and I made a trip over to the greenhouses soon after that, so I would know where the darned thing was when I needed to get to it.  The picture at the upper right is from that Tuesday visit.  Believe it or not, the white line running into the bloom was the work of a chemistry graduate student who was taking a baseline sample of the air in preparation for the stench.

Live Camera Feed 5/18/2018

Soon afterword, the digital wizards at K-State placed a live camera feed on the plant so that extreme nerds onlookers could monitor when the actual bloom occurred, including a clock in the venue so you could see that it was live.  Being the nerd that he is, ProfessorRoush bookmarked the camera feed and began checking it several times daily.

Image property University of Wisconsin

The Titan Arum, native to Sumatra, is the largest inflorescence (made up of many flowers) in the world, the record for the "shapeless phallus" being 10 feet or so tall.  This lime-stone-loving rainforest plant stinks like a rotting corpse (hence the common name) to attract the carrion beetles and flesh flies that pollinate it during its one-day bloom period.  Every botanical garden that has one makes hay (sic) when it blooms, because of the crowd drawn to the stench and the fact that a plant takes 7-10 years of growth before it can support a bloom.  Most recently, the Chicago Botanical Garden's Arum provided some delayed gratification after several teasing incidents and finally bloomed in April, 2018.

True to the prediction of the local expert, Dr. Chad Miller, our Titan Arum began to bloom Friday evening, slowly opening to reveal its blood red center.  Can't you just feel the excitement?  The Titan Arum grows from a corm that typically weighs over 100 pounds and can weigh over 300 pounds, the largest corm in the world.  When it blooms, the temperature within the flower rises to 98ºF, to better volatize the odor around the area.

Titan Arum in full bloom, K-State, 5/19/18

On Saturday morning, Mrs. ProfessorRoush and I ran pell-mell over to see it in person.  The stench at that time was not nearly so bad as advertised, but I'm told it was at its strongest around midnight the previous evening.  According to the chemistry gurus, the odor is caused by dimethyl disulfide (Limburger cheese), dimethyl trisulfide, methyl thiolacetate, isovaleric acid (think sweaty feet) and  trimethylamine (rotten fish).   A regular one-day chemistry factory, this inflorescence.









During our visit, I noticed this glass jar containing blue desiccant in the bottom and, upon inquiry of Dr. Miller, learned that he planned to pollinate the flower within the next hour.  The pollen in the jar was from the recent bloom at the Chicago Botanical Gardens ("fresh pollen") and he was giving it more time to dry since it was a little moist and clumped.  The male flowers in the base of the inflorescence open up about a day after the female, a natural barrier to self-pollination as the female flower has begun to fade at that point and has presumably already been pollinated.  I didn't voyeuristically stay for the grand pollination, but I'm sure it was a satisfying moment for everyone involved.

ProfessorRoush is happy, however, a Nerd in Paradise as-it-were, to have finally seen a Titan Arum bloom, a horticultural bucket-list checkoff item at its finest.  I had always wanted to experience the stench first hand, ever since I read about it years ago from Henry Mitchell, writing in One Man's Garden, who, having seen one in 1937, said "Sometimes you don't need to paint a picture, but should just stand there amazed at one plant..." and termed the Titan Arum a "miraculous thing to behold, and it didn't paint any picture, it just sat there by itself."  Clearly, a thing worthy of missing the Bill Snyder Half-Marathon just down the street.

Bee-careful Out There

Such oblivious creatures, we Homo sapiens, we naked apes of tools and dreams.  We trod through millennia, intent on food, shelter, and water, occasionally motivated to art or to walk on the Sea of Tranquility, yet unknowing of the intricacies of the surrounding world, incapable of recognizing life on different scales than our own.  Civilized human-kind conveniently forgets the constant struggle of life at large.

ProfessorRoush has spent the past few days capturing flower photos, digitally preserving the blooms of 2018, as happy to welcome summer as an otter discovering a brisk stream.  I was seemingly, in fact, entranced this week by honey bees, happy to see them out and about, thrilled to know they haven't all disappeared into extinction.   A noon walk to the K-State Gardens on Thursday brought me green tranquility and the simplicity of the bee above, ensconced on a single bloom of Rosa eglanteria.  Later, I was drawn into the massive bounty of a full-grown and trellised 'William Baffin' and enticed further into the blooming mass (at left)  to capture another industrious worker strutting around its food source.



At home that night, however, I was starkly reminded of the dark side of bee life.  I had just noticed this motionless and soundless bee on 'Polareis' and began to look closer when it suddenly moved beneath the flower, all without wiggling a wing or leg.  Perplexed, I changed my perspective and exposed the true tableau, the bee expired and in the grasp of a victorious crab spider.   It is tempting at such times, to judge the spider as evil, but more correct to recognize merely life as it is, sometimes brutish and quick, unaffected by how we wish it to be.  I suppose the spider has its own reason to exist, just as the bee.  It's just that I like to root for the bee.




This is the real life of my garden.  I think only of flowers and prunings, mulch and plant combinations. To the bee, each flower could be nectar or death, each flight from the hive success or oblivion.  For the spider, each day may bring feast or hunger, no guarantees beneath the sunniest skies.  I've forgotten again the drama beneath, the life of a garden in constant flux, predator after prey, ultimately death for all.

Now reminded, I still am rooting for the bees.