Flowering Bugs

As much as we like to control nature with our planning and our plows, we still seem to recreate it in our own backyards.  And I am no different, as I have been turning my yard back to a bit of weeds.  I have let an area of Queen Anne’s Lace go to it, which I may regret next year since one spontaneous plant in 2010 seemed to seed an area with a diameter of ten feet or so for 2011; I have a weakness for that plant, so soon it may fill the yard.  I have also planted some sensible natives, like butterfly weed, which is a member of the milkweed family with a shocking orange flower that would inspire a grandmother’s bonnet.  Robert Frost has a poem, “The Tuft of Flowers,” about finding one of these plants after a field had been mowed down by following the flight of a butterfly— Frost imagines the mower leaving this “leaping tongue of bloom the scythe had spared” from “sheer morning gladness at the brim.” Sounds like the stuff of poetry, doesn’t it?   I was expecting the plant to attract butterflies (since the scythe is seldom wielded at my house), which it did.  But tonight I found the plant has also attracted bugs an orange as vibrant as the flower once was.  Imagine Frosts gladness had he found the butterfly weed covered in cool bugs!

After a little googling, it looks like these orange busybodies are large milkweed bugs that breed and feed on the plant and tufted seeds.  Many milkweeds have chemicals that protect them from herbivory, but this bug like the catepillars of queen and monarch butterflies that also feed upon it, can utilize the chemicals for their own protection.  Their bright coloration is like wearing a bright orange vest to advertise your presence—predators see them and leave them alone because they are toxic.  Such a nice surprise to find when I thought the flowering was complete.  My little girl agreed.  It’s a new adventure every day, even if you don’t wander out of the yard.