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| Look what I spotted on the purple milkweed vine! A monarch caterpillar! But wait a minute...it can't be. Once I started looking a photos of Danaus plexippus caterpillars, I realized I was wrong. For one thing, this child has red tinges of color, which monarch caterpillars don't have. A little nosing around on the Internet, and I found the answer: it's a queen (Danaus gilippus)! Another clue: Monarch caerpillars have two sets of tubercles (those antenna-looking appendages) and queens have three. I guess it's been a LONG time since I've seen a queen caterpillar. Cool! |
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| Texas bindweed (Convolvulus equitans) |
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| Waiting for help from Jerry Stacy, a fellow Texas Master Naturalist, for the ID of this mystery plant. Aren't the tiny flowers sweet? UPDATE–What a sleuth! Jerry figured out my mystery plants: Knotweed leaf-flower (Phyllanthus polygonoides). How'd you do that, I asked him. "A big book. Flora of North Central Texas," he wrote back. That IS a BIG book! I've seen it! Thanks, Jerry! |
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| Carolina snailseed (Cocculus carolinus) |
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| I've seen this plant for years and always ignored it. In my email, I asked Jerry if he could ID it, too. "Looks like prostrate euphorbia," he wrote. "Ground spurge." He's right! Euphorbia maculata is "a late-germinating, low growing, mat-producing summer annual," according to Michigan State University's Turf Weeds.net. Another mystery solved! Thanks, Jerry! |
7 comments:
Oooo, I hate that ground spurge! Comes up in my decomposed granite drive every year. I don't use chemicals, so have to pull every one of those suckers up by hand.
You know, that plant you're waiting for an ID on looks like a TX native mock orange. Are the little star blooms white and aromatic?
Hmm, I looked up Texas mock orange, and the species looks like it grows larger. Does it? You'd miss this little plant in our Meadow unless you looked really hard. Which I had to do this morning when I went looking for it. Grows like a "weed."
Sheryl, I got my TX mock orange this year. It is about 18" tall now and no blooms yet. I found it at the Medina Native Plant Nursery, where I was told it enjoys a caliche soil and that I should find a place where I hadn't amended the soil too much with compost. The stems and leaves look very much like your plant. I didn't grasp the small size of it in your photo, though I should have from the grass around it.
We've been there! Neat place. And how's your mock orange doing?
Pull the spurge... it multiplies by the bazillions over night. But enjoy the caterpillar, I'm so jealous. I check my milkweed daily for eggs/caterpillars... so far no such luck.
I'm just glad to know what it is. It's really kinda fun to be able to walk through the Meadow and call everyone by name! :-)
Sheryl, the native mock orange is doing well, and I'm pleasantly surprised. Medina Nsry says it is not an easy plant to grow. I like challenges ... I'll let you know when (if) it blooms. The flowers are supposedly very small but pack a delicious aroma. I really love the large-flowered mock orange, too. Though not a native, it does well here and is so beautiful. I'm not a "natives only" gardener, but do avoid the invasives.
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