On a sunny, windy Monday afternoon (Sept. 28) I spent an hour at the Nature Park and took a look at the meadow area between the dog park and the highway. I like this spot because there is a lot of goldenrod and aster blooming in the fall, and there are always insects visiting the flowers. I found I had missed the main bloom of goldenrod, and many of the flowers had already faded and begun to form seeds.

The bumblebee wouldn't hold still for a good photo, but I managed a few photos of a pale green beetle on thistle flowers, which I recognized as a member genus Diabrotica. It turned out to be the Eastern Corn rootworm, which makes sense because of the cornfields nearby across the highway. Because of the weather, a grasshopper posed a little longer than usual, as well.

There are many insects that form galls and mines on goldenrod. I found several familiar ones here again, but also one that was new to me - small hairy flower bud galls that some quick research identified as caused by the gall midge Rhopalomyia anthophila. In the same small bunch of plants I also saw galls of the goldenrod bunch gall midge, the goldenrod stem gall fly, and the goldenrod cushion gall midge, which I had all photographed earlier in the season.

Three weedy species of Solanaceae were hiding among the grasses. The puffy husks of groundcherry are always interesting to see, but I hadn't noticed them in this park before. It turned out that the fruits inside were still barely develeped. Another plant I didn't recognize had broad, soft, fuzzy leaves, but seems to be in the same family, also.

I had seen a few leaves of wild parsnip here before, but here was a dried stem that had already dispersed its seeds. This plant has been spreading through the midwest during the last decade, especially along roadsides. It seems this nasty plant will be spreading more in the park in the coming years. Wild parsnip stems can be separated from their relative, wild carrot, because the stems are angular, as compared to the round stems of wild carrot. The juices of wild parsnip can cause extremely nasty rashes, so be careful around them!

Posted on October 8, 2020 03:33 AM by isaacwinkler