The flower with four yellow petals is the yellow meadowbeauty and it’s one of the earliest meadow beauties that bloom where I live. Followed by the purple meadows beautifies and a white one as well. The purple ones have very finicky petals that I’ve seen fall off from a insect landed on it. The pods they leave begin are about 1/4 inch long and look like wooden tavern mugs. But that’s a few months away.
The orange one is a Orange Milkwort. Also known as Bog Cheetos. ( not edible as far as I know but I’m not sure )
The picture with a crimson ( white top ) pitcher plant was amusing because it’s a Smilax that will slowly kill the pitcherplant. Well it will kill that leaf anyway. So it’s a plant strangling plant killing a animal drowning plant.
The white flowers on the tree is the Sweetbay Magnolia.
I want to get a good picture of the red winged blackbird. Only time I see them is when I’m drying past this pond with lots of cypresses, southern cattails and other plants I gloss over when driving past. I don’t actually have a camera yet but sometime this year I’ll get a good one and some various lenses. I’ll end up riding my bike, it’s only like 6 miles away, and I’ll just plop down off the road somewhere and wait.
Hemiscolopendra marginata The eastern bark centipede. I thought that was what it was but was not sure until I verified it. Venomous, though not fatal. Supposedly it has a super bad sting. Ive yet to feel it. Ive handled maybe a dozen of these. Perhaps next time will be the sting.
They essentially work as a vacuum. The “bladders” float in the water along with the rest of the plant and things get sucked in and trapped. The things then die and eventually decompose inside the bladder and is absorbed. The bladders are modified leaves. It essentially has no roots. It’s a suction trap as opposed to a lobster trap, flypaper trap or pitfall trap. There are a few other types of traps but I don’t remember them. They also eat pollen and other things too that floats in the water.
Would be fun to post photos of different types of traps. Ant lions are not out yet but I will keep my eyes peeled and look out for these types. Thanks for teaching
Was just admiring cicadas from a book @SkovandOfMitaze was sharing on the Pithy Quotes thread. Started wondering how many people here are hearing the cicadas from the current hatch-out in the Northeast US. Here are some public photos from this year’s batch online. Couldn’t find a still showing the empty casings of the emergent form which the cicadas emerge from before flying off.
There was this piece from the PBS Newshour for this year’s emergence of a 17 year hatch-out in the Northeast.
I bet it is a mess. We just have the usual annual type cicadas here, and a little early for them. I was reading on a RV camping page how the windshields of cars and trucks in the area of the hatch are a mess.
I’ve driven through clouds of butterflies which made visibility challenging. Whereas a wet rag was enough to handle that carnage I imagine one would need a putty knife at least to clean these guys off.
