Bringing Nature indoors; autumn insects
Nov. 20th, 2011 10:07 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
neverspentHowever the trees and other creatures were affected by this year's drought, the oaks in the city have managed to produce a bumper crop of acorns. Some places, it's hard to walk without becoming a cartoon-style slipping-on-marbles casualty.
Every spring, I see crowds of adorable little oaks coming up beneath the white oak trees across the road from my apartment, and I think about trying to dig up a couple and raise them. But it never works out. So this fall, I thought I'd start from the beginning, with the acorns. I chose a few of the large, solid-feeling warm brown nuts and carried them home in my pocket. I put them on a table until I could decide what to do with them for the winter. Put them under some leaves in a pot of dirt, I figured. But a day or so later, my dog started barking at what turned out to be a tiny, white worm on the carpet. It looked like a beetle larva, but I didn't find out for sure until the next day when I discovered some suspicious holes bored in a few of the acorns...
...and two more escapees crawling away from them. One of the larvae actually turned around again, inched its way back to its nut, and started burrowing against it like it could roll its old home away to safety. I'm impressed with the ability of such a tiny, soft-looking thing to bore through a hard nut shell! And amazed that the mother hid her entry so well; I hadn't seen any indication that the acorn wasn't entirely whole before the larva came out. I deposited them all outside where they belong, but I'm still going to try with the remaining acorns. I've now learned that I should have done a "float test" right after bringing the acorns home, and discarded the ones that didn't sink in the water.
Speaking of insects, I'm sitting outside right now watching a few. We're in our autumn weather cycle: a few crisp days then several more warm, muggy ones. We've had two frosts, but nothing hard enough to really kill plants or send bugs hiding for good. This morning, there's a ladybug crawling on the balcony rail and a large, beautiful red wasp floating from the roof line to the nearest sweet gum tree and back. Wasps love warm autumn days. To be more accurate, they're probably hungry and they need to find sugar. There's not much nectar around anymore and they're going to die soon. (Only the next year's fertilized queen survives the winter.) I'm not sure if this is true of Polistes perplexus, the larger of the red wasps, but some adult paper wasps eat a nectar secreted by the larvae after the adults feed the larvae masticated animal protein. It's a nice arrangement, until there are no more larvae left in the nest.
Every spring, I see crowds of adorable little oaks coming up beneath the white oak trees across the road from my apartment, and I think about trying to dig up a couple and raise them. But it never works out. So this fall, I thought I'd start from the beginning, with the acorns. I chose a few of the large, solid-feeling warm brown nuts and carried them home in my pocket. I put them on a table until I could decide what to do with them for the winter. Put them under some leaves in a pot of dirt, I figured. But a day or so later, my dog started barking at what turned out to be a tiny, white worm on the carpet. It looked like a beetle larva, but I didn't find out for sure until the next day when I discovered some suspicious holes bored in a few of the acorns...
...and two more escapees crawling away from them. One of the larvae actually turned around again, inched its way back to its nut, and started burrowing against it like it could roll its old home away to safety. I'm impressed with the ability of such a tiny, soft-looking thing to bore through a hard nut shell! And amazed that the mother hid her entry so well; I hadn't seen any indication that the acorn wasn't entirely whole before the larva came out. I deposited them all outside where they belong, but I'm still going to try with the remaining acorns. I've now learned that I should have done a "float test" right after bringing the acorns home, and discarded the ones that didn't sink in the water.
Speaking of insects, I'm sitting outside right now watching a few. We're in our autumn weather cycle: a few crisp days then several more warm, muggy ones. We've had two frosts, but nothing hard enough to really kill plants or send bugs hiding for good. This morning, there's a ladybug crawling on the balcony rail and a large, beautiful red wasp floating from the roof line to the nearest sweet gum tree and back. Wasps love warm autumn days. To be more accurate, they're probably hungry and they need to find sugar. There's not much nectar around anymore and they're going to die soon. (Only the next year's fertilized queen survives the winter.) I'm not sure if this is true of Polistes perplexus, the larger of the red wasps, but some adult paper wasps eat a nectar secreted by the larvae after the adults feed the larvae masticated animal protein. It's a nice arrangement, until there are no more larvae left in the nest.