"Winter" Wildflowers II

Prairie Mimosa, also called Illinois bundleflower, has these interesting clusters of dark brown pods. They smell vaguely onion-y; as I was drawing them, I kept looking around for wild onion until I discovered that the odor came from the plant on which I was focusing!

"Winter" Wildflowers I

The prairie in late fall and winter is a brown place. Many shades of brown to be sure, but largely monochromatic. What I like about that is that it gives you a chance to really focus on other things besides eye-catching color... shapes, negative space, shadows, textures... It's actually good for a person like me, who draws everything in pencil. (Yeah, that's right... not a good pencil, either. A cheap but comfortable-in-my-hand mechanical pencil, which are supposed to be terrible for shading. But is seems to work for me. I have thought that I should get some good art pencils... but I don't know if I could still draw with those fancy things!) Phenologically, it's not that exciting. I mean, this particular phenophase will be here unchanged for months (assuming snow isn't deep enough to cover it). But artistically, it's a nice time.

At any rate, today I drew this "winter wildflower," which is a native plant called foxglove beardtongue. Its seed capsules had an interesting shape to me. I'm going to try and pick one interesting-shaped plant each day and draw them for a few days... so here's the Winter Wildflower Series I:

Blah.

3:45 pm and it's like night time outside.

And, the rain finally came yesterday afternoon and most of today.

All Out of Gall Puns

(Maybe I could start spelling it Gaul and making France puns? But it's not that important.) Anyhow...

I really didn't think I'd be able to find the insect inside these woolly oak galls that grow on the underside of the leaves. They are, after all, quite small, and consist mostly of fuzz. Beneath the fuzz is a hard kernel about the size of a sesame seed... and I managed to cut into it and find the larva inside (it's small and whitish, see it?). I should have been a surgeon.

These galls turn into wasps, I believe.

And speaking of oak trees, why are they so awesome? Among other things, check out these branches. They're twisty, gnarled, craggy, crooked, knotted, like the bony, arthritic fingers of a crippled old woman. I mean, look at those shapes!

The Gall of that Fly.

Goldenrod galls are probably not the most common around here, but due to their size and relative common-ness, they are definitely the most "famous," and when I say "gall," this is what students think of. The sketch above shows what they look like this time of year -- I love that the leaves (now just little nubs where leaves used to be) continue to grow out of the stem where the gall is... These galls are housing flies, which spend nearly a full year inside the goldenrod stem, if they are not interrupted by a mean teacher with a pocketknife. The adult flies, with a lifespan of less than a month, mate in the warm months of the year. They lay eggs inside of the goldenrod stem, and the larvae begin eating the stem immediately upon hatching (10 days later). Their saliva contains an enzyme that causes the plant to the protective gall. The plant functions around it, and the insect is completely protected. As it eats, it makes more space to grow and puts down more saliva, causing more stem swelling. As winter approaches, the gall flies dig a tunnel almost to the edge. In the picture below, you can see the the larva in the very middle, and the tunnel it has made going up between 1 and 2 o'clock. But it won't finish eating its way out until the spring... over the winter, it will stay in its protective plant case and produce some anti-freezing stuff. When spring arrives, it will pupate and emerge through a hole in the gall.
ps -- never rained yesterday, now they're saying today...

A Funny Thing Happened...

So this week, some of my classes will be looking at galls. I actually started with one class on Friday, and it was pretty neat. We found them, cut them open (which, I know, is committing insecticide, but we just cut open a very small percentage of them) and saw what was inside. Some galls are empty at this time of the year, but others have critters that overwinter in there, and we made some very cool discoveries. Expect some more gall postings this week, assuming I have similar findings with other classes.

Well, I had this oak leaf in my office. I picked it up a few weeks ago because of the shape and the veins, I just liked it and thought I might sketch it at a later time -- never happened. But the leaf happened to have a gall on it. On Friday after my class, I was thinking that it might be a good idea to have a "sample gall," so kids would know what to look for besides just the goldenrod galls, with which they are familiar. I put the oak leaf on my desk so I would remember to bring it to class.

This morning, when I arrived, I noticed right away that the gall had become less round, had flattened a bit. I inspected it, and found that the gall itself had a hole in it -- there was not one when I left on Friday, of this I am certain. And there was a tiny spider near the hole. (Either it emerged from the gall... or it ate whatever did and decided that the gall was good hunting grounds.) There are about 800 types of galls that live on oak trees... 800! Just on oak trees!!!... so it's entirely possible that one of those 800 types is a spider and does come out around now.

See it right there, above the gall in the photo? The actual size of that gall is about 3-4 mm. So I thought that was pretty cool; the gall "hatched" right at my desk. I put the spider and gall in a bug box to show my class today, but then I will release it and let it take its chances in the wild, so as to keep the arachnacide(?) to a minimum.

UPDATE: 2:42 pm. That spider has been safely released. I cut open that type of gall and discovered that the spider did, indeed, come from inside that gall. Cool.

Feelin' a Little Blue

With the sun at a low, nearing-solstice angle, its rays catch the seedheads of the little bluestem. The plants seem to have halos; the prairie a is holy place.

That photo is from Friday. After a week of mild, sunny weather -- we've had October in November so far... anyhow, today is cloudy and chilly, and tomorrow promises cold rain -- my favorite! (Or not).