Forcing Spring BUGS (Not Bulbs)!

Once in a while, an insect gets into the house.  OK, maybe it's more like once a day... at least, in the warm weather, if you live in some climate like we have here in Nova Scotia, Canada.  But you don't expect a crane fly to drop by in March.  Not to mention half a dozen or more to appear in your apartment, while the blizzards linger on and on outside.  (I don't need to say more about this past winter!)

     So, where did these critters keep coming from?  After a week of kicking one of these flying daddy-long-legs out, only to be replaced by another, I started looking for the source... in our apartment.

I'd had experience with this sort of thing before - I'll tell you momentarily - so I started looking at the larger plant pots. Such as the one above, with my Crapemyrtle in it (Lagerstroemea indica).  Yes, sure enough, here was the source of the crane flies.  Newly hatched from the earth.  See the shells of three individuals, half sticking out of the potting soil here?  

This plant spends six months of the year outdoors, and some enterprising fly planted her eggs in the lovely soil.  In the relative warmth of the indoors this winter, the young grew up ahead of schedule, recently surfaced, and 'hatched' into their adult form.  

Anyone else had this kind of experience?  And I know it is not just the crane fly that will do this.  Three years ago, I had a flock of tiny wasps arise from the colourful clusters of multiflora rose hips I'd brought in to brighten the house for the winter.  As the hips dried up, the tiny wasps hatched. I think the rose hip nearest the dime in this photo was one with the end eaten out by a wasp or two, escaping.

 Yeah, these wasps are tiny.  Note the next photo.  Poor things had expired, as you can see.  And I thought, if I got a dozen of these from of a few bunches of hips, I wondered how many millions of these wasps actually hatch each spring in my town, which grows in every abandoned spot with Rosa multiflora.  Then again, perhaps a big proportion of wasp larvae or pupae get eaten with the rose hips, as the waxwings and other birds feast on them in the winter. 

     I would never have seen these creatures, had not these few appeared in my windowsills.  

The funny thing is, I did know this species of wasp (though I have not stopped to try to identify and have a name for it).  

[OK... so, in this wonderful age of the internet, the briefest of searches gives me the hint these might be the Multiflora Rose Seed Chalcid, Megastigmus aculeatus var. nigroflavus.  Read some of their interesting details here.  Sounds like there is some hope that this tiny creature may help control the extreme weedy tendency of this Rose, though the presence of the wasp here does not seem to be hindering this shrub's rampant growth locally.]

     As I started to say... I'd seen these tiny wasps before. I had the same experience once in the 1990s with these tiny insects. They had mysteriously appeared in my apartment... which I had adorned at Christmas with clumps of small rose hips, tied with ribbon, hanging on the walls. 

   What I found my most unusual such visitor, 'forced' early into springtime life, like some bright branch of forsythia, were the grasshoppers.  Yes, very tiny grasshoppers appeared on a windowsill at our house in March of 2011.  Again, pots of plants that spend the summer outdoors were there in the light, and the tiny jumping insects appeared.  

I had never laid eyes on grasshoppers so small.  The poor things did not have a chance.  Indoors was not a good habitat, despite the many house-plants.  And the weather outdoors in mid March here is not the best for hungry babies just hatched from the earth plant-pot.  

     I'm sure, as the years go on, some new species will show themselves, haplessly coming on the scene early indoors.  Never intentional, always interesting, this all goes to show how much insect activity is going on just under our noses, all the time.  

   Again, I'm curious.  Has anyone else out there inadvertently 'forced' some insects into appearing?  

Southern Weeds = Northern Treasures

We just spent a pleasant week in Kentucky, for various reasons, and the vegetation was definitely a feast for the eyes.   Outside our first motel was this shrub bed, one of the few that was not well-weeded.  Its centrepiece was a Crape Myrtle (Lagerstroemia indica).  I have one here at home I am trying to nurse along in a big pot.  But, what were the weeds in this bed?  Some of the very plants I call exotic, and am trying to grow here in Nova Scotia.  

   Notice, on the lower left, above, a vigorous Redbud (Cercis canadensis) seedling.  And see, below, at the base of a rosebush, a Sassafras (S. albidum) growing.  Both of these were everywhere I looked in the countryside - in the woods, the fence-rows, and, yes, as a weed in the flowerbeds.  

Here is mine, below, at the cottage, growing very well this summer, after dying to the ground over winter.  I was thrilled to find this at a local nursery last summer.  It is a rarity here in Eastern Canada.

A real weed in the South is Paulownia tomentosa, Royal Paulownia.  Here is one getting a foothold in Mammoth Cave National Park...

it has been quite invasive in parts of the US, having been imported from the orient decades ago.  Here at home, I am struggling to get my seedling to flourish.  I started this from seed about five years ago.  It's growing slowly, and was half winter-killed before this past season. 

Next are a couple shots of other wild things in Kentucky and Tennessee that for me at home are special plants, receiving some attention and nurture at the Cottage.  I have not taken pictures of my plants; these are shots from the South.

Above, Rattlesnake Master, Eryngium yuccifolium, and below, Paw Paw, Asimina triloba.  Paw Paws were everywhere as an under-story shrub, but the developing fruits were hard to find.  My plant is a mere two inches tall!

And, finally, some photos from home.  These plants I'm growing I got to see in their native sphere, mature and flourishing...

Above is one of my Osage Oranges, or Bodark trees, Maclura pomifera.  Started these from seed in the spring of 2012. 

     Below is a real "weed" in many cities and southern places, Tree of Heaven, Ailanthus altissima.  This is the species of the classic US novel "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn," by Betty Smith (1943).  It is also the plant nurtured in Canada by "Dave" in Stewart McLean's story, "Tree of Heaven" (2004). Dave finds a seedling growing in the dirt in on the floor of his car, and goes to extraordinary measures to keep it alive.  I'm so glad mine is flourishing, after mowing the three-inch stem off first thing this spring!  It's a foot and a half tall now.

Finally, I saw a few honeylocusts (Gleditsia triacanthos) in the wild, including seedlings, in the South.  Here at home, the one I purchased as a small seedling in Ontario years ago is finally taking off, and even bloomed, as it's four seed-pods can attest.

So, remember... some of your treasured specimens are weeds somewhere else on the globe; and some of your own weeds are highly valued by gardeners elsewhere.

Plant With Nine Lives

Perhaps the only way I have continued growing plants for 35 years, indoors and out, is thanks to the hardiness, toughness, and "will to live" that so many plants exhibit.  I'm a gardener who is very good at neglect and destruction.  This week's example: Crape Myrtle, Lagerstroemia indica. To me this is a very desirable plant: I've never seen it growing in Canada.  I got this little slip of a thing in 2011 from the Honey Tree Nursery in PEI - an amazing resource for unusual trees and shrubs here in the Maritimes.

One of my first blog posts, last spring, was about this little twig coming out of dormancy.  Who knows how hardy it might be in our Nova Scotian winters?  I keep it indoors in a cool place.  Last summer it leafed and branched out nicely.  It had managed to survive the winter in a closed-up bedroom.  As the azalea with it indicates, it dried out too much.  The Azalea died, the Crape Myrtle survived.  I'm a chronic under-waterer of plants.

This winter I housed it in a cold front porch.  I was hoping for a cooler and longer dormancy, and it fared very well.  I found it all leafed out a week ago, and decided to take it out the the unheated greenhouse.  

  Well, it's mid-April in Nova Scotia, and we had a night of -5 degrees Celsius.   Yeah, naturally, the fresh little leaves froze quite solidly.

Here it is.  But notice that one single branch did not freeze like the rest.  And that one stem has kept its leaves, while all the others rolled up and got crispy.  Funny phenomenon.  I've seen this before, with a tray of tender plants that I've left in the greenhouse in the fall.  One night, ninety percent of the succulent leaves froze to death, but the occasional rosette did not, and lived to die another day, with the onset of icy temperatures.  I must investigate this scientific curiosity.

With hopes that the budding twigs of my Crape Myrtle will come back from the grave, I rubbed off all the dead, dried leaves.  Here's hoping this little fellow will flourish again.  Perhaps, one year soon, there will actually be blossoms in the late summer.  And maybe, just maybe, I will venture to plant it out in the ground in a protected spot, and discover if it will live through our winters.  It has only used up about three of its nine lives so far, I'm guessing.

Dead or Alive

Tis the season for everything to wake up all over creation, but the spring heat wave we've had has helped speed things along, I'm sure.  (25 degrees C, halfway between the North Pole and the Equator)  It's a gardener's intense time for inspecting every creature to see what will live, and what will not.  We always get surprised, don't we?  Last year, after leaving an Agapanthus in the ground over winter, it sprouted up and bloomed in the summer!  I like to think where it is planted is zone 6, not merely 5b, but I did not think it would keep on keeping on even in z 6. 

A little yellow rose of some variety, planted nearby, did not survive.  Who'd have guessed?  At this moment, the Agapanthus pictured above is being preserved in a corner of the basement.  I guess I did not expect a miracle two years in a row.  I wonder if it might be wise to go ahead and plant it right away?

So, even the botanical critters in the house are "springing" to life... or not.  The pot below, kept in a cool spare bedroom, is a fine example. 

The azalea - whatever the type is that stays leafy and can't survive anything like 5b - seems to have croaked during the winter.  Undoubtedly thanks to a dry spell I provided.  But, I'm thrilled about the twigs that are budding out here: Crape Myrtle, Lagerstroemia indica. 

Outdoors, one waits, hopefully, patiently, for the slower perennials and bushes to show signs of life.  How much of the Trumpet Vine (Campsis radicans) will bud out, or has it died back near to the ground? 

Will this Aralia (Aralia cordata "Sun King") below be resurrected as it was last year, just when it looked as if it had totally rotted? 

 

As "life-and-death" as all this is, it sure is fun to watch and wait.  The plants that are already growing encourage us to hope for all the slowpokes.  We know there will be casualties, but for the moment, everything not yet sprouting is simply dormant.  :)