Poor Eve's necklace

Our Eve's necklace (Styphnolobium affine) looks awfully sad right now. James noticed her condition this morning. I'm not sure what's going on, but I'm hoping she recovers. We've had her since October 2021 when our friend Matt Murrah gifted her to us. 

Yucca blooming!

Look! Our twistleaf yucca (Yucca rupicola) has blooms! It planted itself in The Meadow so it's definitely a neighborhood native. When we noticed the stalk coming up, James put a cage around it. Yep, you guessed why. Otherwise, the neighborhood deer (and axis) would have eaten it. Which has happened in years past. Not this time! James took the first three photos. Then I went outside and took a look-see myself. So beautiful! 

Three life stages of one fly

This story starts with a wild ruellia (Ruellia nudiflora). But not the one above. I'm just using the photo as an illustration. As I mentioned in a recent post, wild ruellias think they own our place so I often yank them. On one particular ruellia that I pulled last week, I happened to spot something odd. What was that mini potato-looking thing on the plant? Was it part of the plant? And why were the ants interested in it? I posted photos of it on iNaturalist and learned that – oh, my goodness! – it was the pupa of a four-speckled hover fly (Dioprosopa clavata). Here's a photo on Bugguide.net that looks similar to my potato. Since my lesson on fly pupa, I now examine ruellias before I pull them. On one, I did find an empty pupa case so that was cool. 

Pupa on ruellia

Last night, while going over my new iNaturalist observations, I discovered that I've seen the four-speckled hover fly in three of its four life stages: egg, larva, pupa and adult. Isn't that cool? I thought so. 

Larva on ironweed

Life on a hedeoma

You know how you pull plants because you didn't put them there or they're considered to be "weeds"? Well, I'm guilty of that. Quite often, in fact. I pull a lot of wild ruellias (Ruellia nudiflora) because – darn it! – they think they own the place! Recently, however, I made an interesting discovery on one. But I digress....that's another blog post I've just decided. Back to my pulling plants...the above-and-below photos of an uninvited garden resident is a slender hedeoma (Hedeoma acinoides). Before I would have pulled it and then gone on with my life. But this time, I let this plant stay. Why not? 

After supper yesterday, I wandered around the gardens with my phone and macro lens ready to snap whatever I might find. I stopped by the hedeoma and caught sight of a bug. And then another critter. And another critter. Pretty soon, I was on my bottom, trying to find as many different critters as I could on this one plant. It made me think of a blog post I wrote years ago about the diversity of life on a silverleaf nightshade. Why not write one about the hedeoma? It fascinates me how nature is so interconnected and not just random. What I perceive as an unwanted weed is someone else's HOME. [Note: My IDs of these little guys below are tentative and not 100 percent correct.]

Scentless plant bug

Probably a meshweaver

An ebony bug

A spider   (LOL!)

A true bug

Another true bug

And one more true bug

Some littles

A little orbweaver on a leaf.

A little running crab spider from Blanco State Park. 

A little crab spider on a zinnia flower.

A little bird grasshopper on a narrowleaf coneflower flower.

A little spittlebug on a salvia stem.

A little treehopper on a plant.

A little ichneumonid wasp that I fished out of a birdbath.

The life and times of giant lichen orbweavers

While walking in the back yard last week, I encountered a HUGE orbweb strung over a path. Well, right away I knew who'd made the web because of its enormous size –  a giant lichen orbweaver (Araneus bicentenarius). I also knew that in order to meet the architect, I'd have to return after dark. That's when these spiders emerge from their high retreats – usually under a roof eave or in a tree branches – to build or repair their orbwebs. Sure enough, I went out a night or two later and got some good photos of her. Isn't she beautiful?

I marked both sides of her web in the path with flags. But I forgot to tell James. He thought I'd marked plants (which I sometimes do) and walked through the web. Bad me! 

Alas, last Saturday I forgot to put my popsicle-stick raft back into our AC drip bucket. So I found a fatality at the bottom of the bucket – a male giant lichen orbweaver. I felt awful. See how much smaller he is than her?

 

As an aside, I used my new Ulanzi light accessory on my phone to get the photos of the orbweaver after dark. It worked great! I can't wait to blacklight with it! 

A fashionable lacewing larva

Last Saturday, I spied an interesting character on a pearl milkweed vine in our back yard. In years past, I've blogged about debris-carrying larvae of green lacewings. But THIS ONE would have won a trophy in a decorating contest! What caught my eye (and yours, too) is the bright yellow blob on its side. That's the carcass of an oleander aphid (Aphis nerii), which often infest milkweeds. The lacewing larva sucked the aphid dry, then stuck it on its back along with other insect leftovers and dead bits of foliage. Biologists believe that lacewing larvae disguise themselves like this to fool predators, including ants. I think they're funny looking. 

See the larva's head and mandibles?