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| Septoria Leafspot (fungus – Mycosphaerella rubi) |
The theme nowadays...
Harlin sent us this note and the next several images:
I have a book with many pages of drawings of bee fly wings. Whenever I take a picture of a bee fly I thumb through those pages in the manner of looking at mug shots, and I found a couple of pretty good matches for the pattern. Not so much as a smidgen of exact science was involved, but the illustrated fly’s wings change in several different directions and so it makes an interesting puzzle to search for a pattern that is close. I found two which seemed like good candidates. One of them was for a basically African genus which eliminated that one. The other had several species which occur in Texas. In fact, Poecilanthrax lucifer is very close in terms of shape, color, and various kinds of fuzziness. Here are some examples:
http://bugguide.net/node/view/100421
But maybe “bee fly” is close enough.
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| Lemon Beebalm (Monarda citriodora) |
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| Checkered White (Pontia protodice) |
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| Great Purple Hairstreak (Atlides halesus) |
And here's a video clip of a great purple hairstreak dining on a black eyed susan (and that's indeed a chicken coop and shed being constructed from old pallets there in the background).
The larvae of this butterfly feed primarily (exclusively?) on our mistletoe plants which themselves feed largely on our hackberries, cedar elms, mesquite, and juniper. Herein is part of the web in which we find the lives of butterflies, parasites, and ourselves beautifully caught.
And a random spider.
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| Silver Longjawed Orbweaver (Tetragnatha laboriosa) |
Harlin wrote us this:
As you can see from the scans these plants can be pegged as Plantago from the moment you lay eyes on them. However, at crouching-down-beside-them distance they start to look like two different things. And then when magnified a little Plantago wrightiana has four translucent petals and silky hair on the sepals of each flower, and P. rhodosperma has dried-up looking yellow petals which stick straight up and course hair on the sepals. In fact, at close range the Wright’s plantain might even be generally regarded as something to see.
So far the seeds have not been mature on the P. rhodosperma, and I would like to make sure they are indeed “red seeds” to verify that I have the name correct.
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Wright’s plantain (Plantago wrightiana) |
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| Wright’s plantain (Plantago wrightiana) |
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Redseed plantain (Plantago rhodosperma) |
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| Redseed plantain (Plantago rhodosperma) |
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| Close-up of some pepper-grass (Lepidium) |
Harlin wrote us today (April 28, 2012) that pepper-grass makes it onto the Plant List as number Two Hundred Eleven.
