northeast-flora-and-fauna

Here's a Common Yarrow I saw last spring. I'd consider it a mid-sized wildflower, maybe getting 3 feet tall but frequently shorter than that. I personally think they look a lot like a completely unrelated wildflower, Queen Anne's Lace (the "wild carrot"). Both plants are mid-sized, and both have umbels of small white flowers. But there are differences: While both have pinnate (fern-like) leaves, Common Yarrow leaves are each more like a single fern while Queen Anne's Lace leaves comprise multiple fern-like leaflets. Queen Anne's Lace will usually have a red (or black if it's old enough) spot in the middle of the umbel. You'll usually see them at different points in the year, with Common Yarrow being most a springtime wildflower while Queen Anne's Lace is more of a summertime 1. I mentioned they're unrelated; Queen Anne's Lace is in the parsley/carrot family while Common Yarrow is in the aster/sunflower/daisy/composite family . Whil...

In case you're thinking that the Plainsboro Preserve is all about the dragonflies I've been posting, there was also some butterfly action there too. First I met a Monarch butterfly getting a sip of nectar from what looks like Wild Bergamot , a very popular drinking spot for the pollinator community. July 23, 2021 at the Plainsboro Preserve And a little afterwards, I met this Eastern Tiger Swallowtail at another pollinator "watering hole", one of the Joe Pye Weeds . July 23, 2021 at the Plainsboro Preserve Photo 148594293, (c) jpviolette, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC) That pretty much wrapped up this trip to the Plainsboro Preserve, where I got lots of dragonfly pictures, a few butterfly pictures, and also got a slightly uncommon bird.

Just to show you that Monarch Butterflies also like Joe Pye Weed , here's the evidence. The taxonomy of the Joe Pye Weeds has changed a bit in recent decades. My Newcomb's Wildflower Guide (generally considered a good book for keying out species of wildflowers) puts the Joe Pye Weeds in the same genus ( Eupatorium ) as the bonesets/thoroughworts. But it looks like these days the Joe Pye Weeds have been spun off into their own genus: Eutrochium . It's still recognized that these two genii of wildflowers are related though; they're still considered to be together in a monophyletic group . My book was copyrighted in 1977, so this classification change occurred sometime over the last 4 decades. August 18, 2020 at Duke Farms

Here's a Silver-spotted Skipper I met, and it looks like it's taking advantage of the nectar from a Joe Pye Weed  wildflower. You could probably make a case for a common name of White-spotted Skipper; the large white spot on the wings inspired their name. (Admittedly "silver-spotted" sounds more prestigious than "white-spotted.) The skippers are frequently small, non-descript butterflies that probably do get mistaken for moths. The Silver-spotted Skipper is less small and less non-descript than most skippers, and are relatively common. When they're caterpillars, they spend a lot of time eating and pooping, the latter called frass . In order to prevent predators from spotting them from their frass, they're able to expel it up to 38 body lengths away. They use a variety of - but not all - legume plants as host plants when they're caterpillars. And although human agriculture grows plenty of legumes, Silver-spotted Skippers aren't considered to have...

 Last summer I got pictures of a Cloudless Sulphur (pictured), an Eastern Tiger Swallowtail, a Monarch, and a Silver-spotted Skipper in approximately 15 minutes. And they were all attracted to the location by Joe Pye Weed wildflowers. I've seen them mistaken for a milkweed, though getting up to 7 feet tall they'd tower over our local milkweeds. (And if you break a piece of a leaf, you won't see that milky-looking latex oozing out.) These wildflowers are pretty popular with pollinators, no doubt for similar reasons as milkweed and goldenrod are popular: there are lots of flowers on a single plant. That means a lot of nectar without having to travel much. These wildflowers are sometimes fairly colorful, and probably would make a reasonable garden flower while in bloom. If I had a yard, I'd try and incorporate them into the yard somewhere. August 18, 2020 at Duke Farms