Here is a perfect example of ‘why native plants?’ in the home garden. This is the first year of our new native flower garden in front of our new house. This spring we spent a good deal of money and time getting the old exotic evergreen bushes out of the beds and planting a new garden consisting of mostly native forbs and a couple patches of grasses. After a long and cool spring, we are finally getting some heat units on these mostly gladey and xeric species and a few are starting to respond nicely.
During my daily deadheading of some flowering Coreopsis and other asters, I notice new things from time to time. The arthropods are beginning to come. Since the original razing of the land that this subdivision sets on some 45+ years ago, these plant and insect communities have undoubtedly been rare. While my 100 square feet of natives won’t likely make a big difference, hopefully more and more of us will ‘go native’
About a week ago, I noticed these golden drops on the leaf of a Liatris spicata (marsh blazing star). After taking a few photos in situ, I decided to collect the leaf and see what the hatch might be. I figured it was a hemipteran of some sort and after a little research, I narrowed it down to the Coreidae family, or ‘leaf-footed bugs.’ If you can identify these to any degree of higher specificity, please let me know.
After three or four days in a jar, all of a sudden the leaf was alive with the movement of spikey mechanisms. I took a few photos on their cradle leaf, then moved a few to a Coreopsis sp. bloom. Afterwards, I let them go to feed as they like on our plants, maybe to see them another day.
-OZB
A Thousand Acres of Silphiums 