northeast-flora-and-fauna

For Throwback Thursday let's take a look at a tree that's not native to NJ but is native to the US. The Kentucky Coffeetree  originally comes from the midwest; despite having Kentucky in its name, it looks like they're much more widespread in Missouri/Illinois/Indiana. Kentucky Coffeetrees are trees in the legume family . This means that a Kentucky Coffeetree is more closely related to a string bean plant than it is to oaks, hickories, or maples. But they do have tree relatives; just in this area, Honey Locust , Black Locust , and Eastern Redbuds are fellow legume trees. I also talked about legumes in this American Senna post . Of the legume trees around here, the Kentucky Coffeetree is the one that produces the most robust pods with the largest seeds. They're supposed to be poisonous, though in theory you can roast them and then make a non-caffeinated beverage from them. March 5, 2022 at Duke Farms Photo 6535361, (c) jpviolette, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC) March 5...

Here is a butterfly that's moved into the area fairly recently, the Sleepy Orange . Presumably within the last 10 years, some adventurous pioneer butterflies flew northward and found a home at Duke Farms. AFAIK they aren't yet found elsewhere in Somerset County, though there is now a healthy and robust population at Duke Farms that it seems like only a matter of time before they'll colonize other parts of the county and state [1]. They are (generally) similar to but smaller and more vibrant than their Orange Sulphur cousins. Though they're probably the sulphur butterfly I saw the most at Duke Farms this year, they were only 3rd during our butterfly count. (Other sulphurs were spotted a lot in the Community Garden and the Skeet Shoot/Duchess Farm parts of the property.) When their wings are open (not their typical resting position), their yellow-orange wings framed with near-black around the edges really can be fairly striking. July 28, 2022 at Duke Farms Photo 22206704...

Yesterday I talked about American Senna . Well here's a Cloudless Sulphur caterpillar on a senna. The caterpillar blends in pretty well with the senna plant. It sounds like for these caterpillars they are what they eat; eating the yellow flowers makes them yellow, and eating the green leaves makes them green. This coloring no doubt helps them avoid the attention of predators. It's hard to say how many predators they have though, since sennas and cassias (2 commonly used food sources as caterpillars) are considered poisonous, and eating them transfers some degree of poisonousness to these caterpillars. On the other hand, they'll also use some other legumes as host plants. Maybe these butterflies are sometimes poisonous and sometimes not? August 16, 2021 at Duke Farms Photo 152592112, (c) jpviolette, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC)

Here's an American Senna  (aka Wild Senna), a native plant in the legume family . This is an interesting family of plants. It's the 3rd largest family of land plants behind only the orchids and asters (who are in a close race for 1st place). And while we might be most familiar with them for the beans and peas we eat, they're all around us and in various sizes: Clovers are usually low to the ground wildflowers. Sennas are up to 6 feet in height and straddle that area between wildflowers and shrubs. Kentucky Coffeetrees are trees. This indicates that there are some trees that are more closely related to the string beans in your garden than they are to other trees like oaks, maples, etc. Trees do not form a clade ! The largish, healthy population of American Senna at Duke Farms is suspected to be the reason that a butterfly rarely seen in the rest of Somerset County - the Sleepy Orange - is commonly found there. They and other sulphur butterflies like the Cloudless Sulphu...