Autumn progresses.

Tags

aster, waterlily

It’s one of the ironies of gardening in temperate zones (at least, around here) that there’s more to do when the weather is less conducive to it. Spring here is cold and wet: spring cleanup, hardening off, planting out. Autumn here is cold and wet: autumn cleanup, harvesting produce and seeds, winter preparations. On the other hand, summer here is warm and sunny and all there really is to do is watering and occasional pruning. (Pest management and weeding are constant throughout.)

I packed up the water lilies for winter today. The larger of the native fragrant water lilies (Nymphaea odorata) was threatening to split its pot, so I decided to repot it now rather than in spring; it’s one of the hazards of growing rhizomatous plants in containers, and N. odorata is quite the vigourous grower. A few bits of rhizome broke off, so I brought them in and now I have yet another experiment in indoor water gardening. I’m going to pot most of them up and put them in storage, but I’ll drop a few into the aquarium to see what happens over winter.

Other than that, the tomatoes are cleared out, the excess sky-blue asters (Symphyotrichum oolentangiense) are cleared out and such potted plants and bonsai that have gone dormant are coming in.

One next-door neighbour has a large Norway maple (Acer platanoides) that’s just begun to shed its leaves. We try to discourage people from planting those, as they’re very invasive to the local ecologies and they often create problems in gardens. This one, I have to admit, is quite beneficial to me because it shades the western side of my house nicely in summer and provides literally a windfall of leaves in autumn. A lot of homeowners dread autumn leaf-fall, but dead leaves are like gold to gardeners. Usually I just rake them into the beds and let them break down, but this year I’m going to collect as much as I can into a cubic metre bag and let them turn into leafmould over winter. That stuff is better than compost; it’s easier to make but takes longer.

Maple leaves break down relatively quickly; I wouldn’t be able to get away with it with oak leaves, for example, which have high levels of tannin and can take three years to decompose. Conifer needles take even longer. Next to the maple tree is a white birch (Betula papyrifera) that unfortunately probably won’t last much longer. Birch leaves break down quickly too.

Final thought is that it’s the third week of October and while it’s been chilly there hasn’t been a real frost here yet. Enjoy it while it lasts.

End-of-summer colour (and I don’t mean red and yellow).

Tags

aster, giant blue hyssop, milkweed, moss

The sky-blue aster (Symphyotrichum oolentangiense) is starting in full bloom now. I love how they look like a cloud of blue flowers just standing there, so I’ve been a little permissive about leaving volunteer seedlings in the past. They’re all over the place now, so I’ll have to be merciless in clearing them out. After blooming, that is. The local birds don’t seem to be interested in the seeds, so it’s no loss to the wildlife if they don’t set seed (I think). The American goldfinches (Spinus tristis), on the other hand, love the giant blue hyssop (Agastache foeniculum) seeds. Those seeds are tiny, like a grain of fine sand, so it baffles me that they think it’s worth the effort of picking them out.

Speaking of seeds, I’ve got a nice bagful of swamp milkweed (Asclepias incarnata) seeds collected, and will soon collect from the butterfly milkweed (Asclepias tuberosa). The Mississauga Master Gardeners take part in seed drives in spring, and the seeds have to come from somewhere. I particularly like convincing people to grow swamp milkweed, because even though it’s pink, it’s very adaptable and hardy and smells unbelievably good (think nasal orgasm). I don’t find the butterfly milkweed as impressive, and despite the name the butterflies always seem to prefer the swamp milkweed.

Also, like all milkweeds it’s a host plant for the Monarch butterfly caterpillar (Danaus plexippus). The Canadian government, in its infinite wisdom and incredibly well-considered policies, declared the (also native) common milkweed (Asclepias syriaca) a noxious weed. I have yet to find a clear and legal definition for “noxious weed”. Regardless, the loss of milkweed populations both here and further south is accompanied by a commensurate decrease in Monarch populations in this region.

There’s no point to that little rant aside from the content of the rant itself. Milkweed seeds have a little downy parachute attached to let them float in the wind, and of course it was a breezy day when I collected and cleaned them. By the end of it I looked as though I’d been plucking chickens.

The moss trick seems to have worked. It took all season, but there’s definitely more new growth in the test areas than anywhere else. Next experiment: try it out again now, in autumn, and see what the result is in spring.

Bits and bobs.

Tags

aster, beetroots, bottle gentian, elder, onions

The bottle gentian (Gentiana andrewsii) is open. And by open, I mean not open. Bottle gentian flowers never open; they remain looking like oversized purple buds. It takes bumblebees, which are heavy and strong enough to force their way into the flowers, to pollinate them.

Harvested the last of the onions today. Fresh onions are good. And a few beetroots. Also the elderberries (Sambucus canadensis) are coming in. Now all I need are some Grue Goo and human bones to grind into meal for elderbury pie. (Don’t mind me, it’s from an old computer game.)

The mystery eggs on the sky-blue aster (Symphyotrichum oolentangiense) have hatched, but I’m no closer to an ID for them. The caterpillars are still tiny and don’t look like anything I’ve been able to find pictures of, but often caterpillars will change appearance and behaviour dramatically as they get older. Of course, there are larvae that look like caterpillars but aren’t.

Triumph and tragedy.

Tags

aster, crescent, monarch, senna

Found some eggs on the sky-blue asters (Symphyotrichum oolentangiense, formerly Aster oolentangiensis) today. IF they’re butterfly eggs, they’re most likely to be from one of the crescents, and probably the Northern Crescent (Phyciodes cocyta). The eggs are pale pink, which rules out the very similar Pearl Crescent (P. tharos), which lays greenish eggs. On the other hand, it could be something else entirely. I brought the cluster in, so when (if) they hatch I’ll know more.

Man, I was so wrong about the Monarch chrysalis in my post last night. Instead of eclosing in two to four days, it eclosed this morning, no more than a day later.

This is the chrysalis, roughly thirteen hours after the previous Monarch picture. The pattern of the wings is now clearly visible through the cuticle.

…and here it is ten hours after that. This is Day 32 since the egg was laid. Obviously it has long since eclosed, after which the crumpled wings get pumped with fluid from the body to straighten and smooth out. Monarchs usually eclose early in the morning and spend most of the day hanging to spread their wings and firm up their exoskeleton. If it’s a warm sunny day, they can be ready to fly off by midafternoon.

Although this one’s wings are fully spread, they’re still soft at this point.

…otherwise it probably wouldn’t sit so sedately on my finger. It spent some time just flexing its wings to strengthen them and its wing muscles. In this picture you can see that it’s a female because it lacks the male’s androconiums, which show as a black spot on each hind wing. Also, the venation of the female’s hind wing is much wider than the male’s.

Four hours later, sitting on the wild senna (Senna hebecarpa) and sunning itself. Then goodbye.

After a butterfly finishes stretching out its wings and finalising its body shape, excess fluid gets voided. This fluid is called meconium, and Monarch meconium is reddish brown. I seem to remember reading or hearing once that someone tried to explain alleged rains of blood in Texas (or Mexico or somewhere) as mass eclosure of Monarchs, which to me is a curious mixture of knowledge and ignorance. The person had to know about meconium in general and Monarch meconium in particular, but didn’t know that meconium gets voided before the butterfly even flies off.

Just for the sake of interest, the old chrysalis shell, still bearing the gold dots as when it was occupied. The pattern of splitting is characteristic.

 

 

And here’s the tragedy. Sometimes a butterfly ecloses with deformities, and wing defects are, if not the most common, then among them. This Monarch was the first one I found this year, as a caterpillar when I found the egg of the subject of the previous pictures. It eclosed about four days ago, and for some reason its wings never stretched out properly. Possibly they were deformed to begin with, but it’s hard to say. It also seemed that the mouthparts were deformed; butterflies have two palps: one on either side of the proboscis to protect it. I’m not sure what happened, but that didn’t look to be the case with this one.

It’s sad, but there’s nothing you can do about it. Release it or keep it somehow and either way it dies. It kept trying to flap its stubs and it was heartbreaking to watch. Eventually I placed it on a Black-Eyed Susan outside; it won’t be able to join the Monarch migration south and if something doesn’t kill it first, it will die of starvation or exposure and fuel the cycle of life. Such is nature.

Oh, in case you were wondering why they only have four legs instead of six, that’s a common characteristic in the Nymphalidae, or brushfoot butterflies. In fact, the front pair of legs is drastically reduced, so they look as though they have only two pairs.

And that’s it for the Monarch diary.