Winged Pollinators

It is time to celebrate those busy insects, not just bees, that are so actively collecting the sweet nectar from flowers.  They don't care that they are also spreading pollen, acting as sexual agents. 

Here is a simple bumble bee on Allium "Millenium' with its small compact globes of lavender flowers.  I have been very pleased with this allium, since it is well behaved. It blooms over a very long period in the hottest and driest part of the summer, and doesn't seem to be spreading seeds all around.

The most popular of the flowers for all of the butterflies are the Verbena bonariensis.  A tender perennial, the verbena has self-seeded across the garden, coming up wherever the soil doesn't have any mulch.  Sometimes plants will survive a mild winter, but usually it is better to encourage newly sprouted seeds.

Here is a Zebra Swallowtail Butterfly, which relies on pawpaw trees, with the females laying their eggs on the leaves, and the larvae feeding on those leaves.  So there is another benefit of the many pawpaws on the slope.

It is amazing what can be found on the Internet with a little patience.  This small butterfly is a Pearl Crescent (Phyciodes tharos) according to the Gardens with Wings website.  It is very small, only a couple of inches across the wings, and is here feeding on marjoram flowers.  It is described as very common, and the host plant is asters.  There are certainly a number of those in the labyrinth garden.  I just hope the caterpillars don't do too much damage, since my asters are not particularly strong plants.

Back to the verbena banquet.  Here is what appears to be an American Lady (Vanessa virginiensis), again according to the Gardens with Wings website. 

And what a useful resource it is!  On the identification page, there are different starting points, based on the wing shape, colors, common names, and size.  I only wish it allowed you to select more than one characteristic at a time, to narrow down the options a bit more.

This little fellow feeding on one of the cone flowers, is probably a  Variegated Fritillary (Euptoieta claudia).  There are a lot of these to be seen.  The host plants are supposed to violets and stonecrop, which I don't have in the maintained garden area, but I know that there are violets growing in all of the wild areas.  Since they are a smaller size, they do not attract as much attention, but the multitude of them can create a small cloud of movement and color.

The final picture is of a Silver Spotted Skipper (Epargyreus clarus).  This is an oddly shaped butterfly, and the description of it being a combination of butterfly and moth certainly applies.  It has a much larger body, and short wings.  I am not surprised to learn its host plant is false indigo, since there are many of these planted in the labyrinth area and on the sides of the ravine.  I didn't realize that I was also providing butterflies their preferred diet!

This has been a fun research project, and I hope to have more pictures of other varieties.  There was one dark blue swallowtail that moved too fast to get a picture, either a Spicebush Swallowtail or a Pipevine Swallowtail.  There were also a number a very interesting black wasps, but they will have to wait until I can get a good shot and confirm their identity.

Crocosmias!

I have been in love with the dramatic color and form of Crocosmias for years.  Starting in the middle of June, when the late spring flowers are bowing down to the heat of the summer, these glorious perennials start blooming.  By having different varieties, that bloom can extend for several weeks, through July, and even into September.

I will start with 'Lucifer.'  The brilliant red-orange color, on the top of 3-4 foot tall stems hold their color in the intense sun that straddles the summer equinox.  Having a garden which only receives shade from the small tree planted in its center, it is important to select colors and plants that can deal with the intense sun. With the wiry stems, the flowers seem to be floating above the long, narrow leaves.

This large clump of plants started a a few corms 4 years ago.  In that short time they have multiplied and spread out rapidly, creating a large drift of foliage.  In fact, one of my favorite nurseries warns that Lucifer "actually crowds itself out so quickly that it rarely flowers after the first year in warm climate gardens."

I have not had that problem, yet, but I have had the problem of too much sun. Here you can see that same foliage, just weeks later, after it has endured too much sun and too little water.  I once thought that if I just watered it enough, everything would stay green and beautiful. But I no longer think that is true about this variety.  I need to move this into somewhere else in the labyrinth with less sun.  If is really does keep multiplying too fast, requiring annual sorting and replanting, I will probably get rid of them. It would be  shame, because I love it, but there are many others that I have been trying.  So, there are three others.

Here is the clump of 'Walrhead' which I purchased and planted in spring 2010.  Again, there were 2-3 corms, which have multiplied somewhat, but not as aggressively as the Lucifer.  The plants are much shorter than the Lucifer, with leaves reaching up to about 2 feet.  I am disappointed in that the flowers begin blooming much more down within the foliage, but it is still early in its bloom cycle.  The flowers didn't begin opening until the second week in July, almost a month after Lucifer.  Last year the period of new flowers was relatively short, but it was still establishing itself, so I hope it will live up to the description that it will continue to bloom until September.

Here is a close-up of the flowers.  The petals open up wider, and face outward, creating a more substantial presence than the tubular and upward facing flowers of Lucifer.  The color is not a bold, but still keeps its power when the full sun hits them. More importantly, there seems to be no problem with the foliage turning brown from either too much sun or too little water.  I hope that is true, because I cannot control the sun, and even with our attempts to keep things watered, there is little that can be done when there are periods of drought, like this summer.  The soil is very sandy, and doesn't hold water.

But there are more to discuss, so moving on.

Here is 'Star of the East' which was purchased last year.  Plant Delight nursery describes this as a 1912 introduction, which says pretty amazing things about its good qualities.  What I have noticed is how far it has thrown out new plants in just the year.  I only planted one set of corms, and you can clearly see two clusters about six inches apart, and there is a third behind them.  It has yet to reach the 32 inches in the catalog description, and there are only a few flower stems, but it has only been one year.  I planted this near the bench, and the flowers really do well with a close inspection.

See!

As you might have figured out by now, I have a lot of pictures to show.  That is because I kept taking pictures, but never got around to putting them up for you to see.

So jumping ahead, the final Crocosmia is 'Solfateree' which was also added into the garden last year.

This is clearly a much later blooming variety, just beginning to open its flowers past the middle of July.  It is significantly less prolific than the other varieties, with only a few new corms in the year.  It is staying much shorter than the others also, and I am uncertain about how it will do in the labyrinith.  So, I will need to just watch, wait and see.