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Tate’s Hell & the Apalachicola River Delta |...
Kayak Scouting Mission on the Ochlockonee Water Trail
Merritt’s Mill Pond | Kayaking and Spring Caves

The WFSU Ecology Blog

  • Home
    • About
    • EcoAdventures
      • Kayak and Canoe Adventures
      • Hiking
      • Wildlife Watching
    • Observations From the Field
      • White Pelicans Visit Dr. Charles L. Evans Pond in Tallahassee
      • An April Walk at Ochlockonee River WMA
      • Nesting Raptors at Honeymoon Island State Park
    • WFSU Public Media Home
  • Documentaries
    • In Their Words: Black Legacy Communities in North Florida
    • EcoCitizen Show | Seasons in South Tallahassee
    • Red Wolf Family Celebrates First Year at the Tallahassee Museum
    • Roaming the Red Hills
    • Oyster Doctors
    • Testing the Ecology of Fear
    • EcoShakespeare
    • Stories from the Apalachicola
    • Classic WFSU Ecology Documentaries
  • Habitats
    • Estuaries
      • Oyster Reef
        • The Effects of Predators and Fear on Oyster Reefs
        • Apalachicola Oyster Research
        • Animal Species in a North Florida Intertidal Oyster Reef
        • Oyster Reef Ecology | On the Reef
      • Salt Marsh
        • In the Grass- Salt Marsh Biodiversity Study
        • Plants and Animals of a North Florida Salt Marsh
        • Salt Marsh Ecology | In the Grass
      • Seagrass Bed
        • Predatory Snails, and Prey, of the Bay Mouth Bar Seagrass Beds
      • In the Grass, On the Reef Glossary
    • Waterways Big and Small
      • Aucilla/ Wacissa Watershed
      • Apalachicola Basin
        • Apalachicola Bluffs and Ravines | Virtual Field Trip
        • The Age of Nature Screening & Discussion | The Future of the Apalachicola
        • Apalachicola River and Bay
        • Apalachicola RiverTrek | Kayaking, Camping, & Hiking the River Basin
    • Longleaf Pine & Fire Ecology
  • Backyard Habitat
    • Backyard Blog
      • My Year in Bugs: the 2022 Backyard Blog
      • Backyard Ecology Blog | 2021
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      • Backyard Blog February 2019
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      • The Backyard Bug Blog 2018
    • Backyard Flora and Fauna
      • Bees of North Florida and South Georgia
      • The Seasonality of Bees (and Bee Plants) in North Florida
      • Woody Vines of North Florida
      • Flies of North Florida are More Diverse than You’d Think
      • The Case for Weeds, Our Unsung Florida Native Plants
      • Devil’s Walkingstick: Your New Favorite Thorny Pollinator Plant?
      • Florida Native Milkweed | Tips for Growing Your Monarch Friendly Garden
      • Mistletoe | A Parasite for the Holidays (But Maybe We Like it Anyway?)
    • Florida Friendly Seasonal Planting Guide
    • Pollinator and Gardening Posts
    • Gardening Web Resources

Backyard Blog February 2019

by Rob Diaz de Villegas July 2, 2019
Backyard Blog February 2019
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I’m finally getting to this after a few months.  The EcoCitizen Project was a huge undertaking, so this slipped through the cracks.  Luckily, it was a project that had a focus on backyard ecology.  So I learned some stuff, and our project partners gave us a lot of good material to share in regards to making our yards wildlife friendly.

It was a warm February, though insects never got very active.  However, the weeds in my yard were.  It was a good opportunity to use iNaturalist to help me figure out what weeds to keep and which to pull.

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Identifying Weeds: Friend or Foe?

Possibly a Pennsylvania Everlasting (Gamochaeta pensylvanica), a non-native weed.

Possibly a Pennsylvania Everlasting (Gamochaeta pensylvanica), a non-native weed.

Pennsylvania Everlasting (Gamochaeta pensylvanica)

Here’s an interesting dilemma.  On the one hand, this is a non-native plant.  On the other, this cud weed hosts American Lady butterflies.  In this case, I’m excited about the possibility of having a new caterpillar species in the yard, so I let these grow.  Spoiler alert- writing this months later in July, those ladies have yet to visit.  It didn’t help that many of these plants got zapped by hotter temperatures later on.

Common Vetch (Vicia sativa)

Common Vetch (Vicia sativa), another non-native weed.

Common Vetch (Vicia sativa)

Here’s another non-native with beneficial characteristics.  It’s a nitrogen fixer, those plants with the ability to take nitrogen in the air (free nitrogen) into nitrogen that can be used by plants (ammonia, nitrates, and nitrites).  Like all legumes, vetches enrich the soil with this usable nitrogen, to the benefit of surrounding plants.  Other legumes include foods we grow, like peas and green beans, and lupines.  Like the cud weed above, this was growing in my wildflower patch, so I was happy to have the soil there be a little more fertile.

Possibly nursery bittercress (Cardamine hirsuta).

Possibly nursery bittercress (Cardamine hirsuta).

Possibly nursery bittercress (Cardamine hirsuta)

And yet another non-native that volunteered in a pot.  Evidently, this plant’s seeds are commonly carried  by nursery plants.  It’s a bitter herb, and it’s in a pot.  So I let it stay.

I sure did go easy on a lot of non-native plants, didn’t I?  A few months back, we interviewed the Leon County IFAS Extension Agent, Mark Tancig, about Florida Friendly gardening.  When it comes to weeds, he says “It’s all about, do you like it or not?”  Part of that is learning what each plant is.  Not all non-natives become invasive, taking over your garden.  The plants above are plants I can eat, or butterfly caterpillars can eat, or they enrich the soil.  So they add to the garden.

New Plant Growth in the Garden

Plants that went dormant over the winter have started sprouting leaves and flowering… over the winter.  And that’s not atypical of Tallahassee.  Nor would it be atypical if it started a month later, or like a couple of years ago, started in January and then got hit by freezing temperatures later.

Milkweed plant resprouts leaves.

Milkweed plant resprouts leaves.

I was happy to see milkweed plants sprouting leaves.  While shooting our segment on the Monarch-Milkweed Initiative at the St. Marks Refuge, we spotted a mating pair of monarchs and spotted several eggs on aquatic milkweed.  The question was, would I have enough leaves when monarchs made it to Tallahassee?

In addition to caterpillar food, some people food was getting started in the garden:

Meyer lemon flowers buds.

Meyer lemon flowers buds.

Blueberry flower buds.

Blueberry flower buds.

Identifying Insects in the Garden

Eastern Calligrapher ( Toxomerus geminatus)

Eastern Calligrapher (Toxomerus geminatus), a type of hoverfly.

Eastern Calligrapher (Toxomerus geminatus)

I promise, later in the year I started taking better cameras out into the yard when I did my gardening chores.  Anyhow, I had my phone on me when I saw what I thought was a species of native bee.  Instead, this is a species of hoverfly, or syrphid.  These are bee mimics, and their larvae feast on aphids.  Pollinators and pest eaters- that’s a double beneficial insect.

I had suspected that they might also eat younger monarch caterpillars, a behavior I haven’t observed, and that hasn’t been documented by anyone else.  But they do eat milkweed aphids, which eat milkweed.  So they can stomach the plant’s toxins.  I keep an eye on them.  Mostly, I try to keep aphids off of milkweed plants to not draw any beneficial insects to them.  After all, a monarch caterpillar, to the milkweed plant, is a pest that will strip the plant of all of its leaves.

Lastly, a less than great photo shot through my kitchen window and its screen.  But I love what I’m seeing here:

Carolina wren with nesting material.

Carolina wren with nesting material.

That’s it for a quiet February in the garden.  Much more to come!

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An iPhone with the iNaturalist app open.

Apps and Citizen Science mentioned in the Backyard Blog

iNaturalist

Identify plants, animals, lichens, and fungi in your yard. Other users correct your identifications if you’re wrong, and even if they don’t, it can be a good springboard to further research.

Seek by iNaturalist

Instant identification, and it doesn’t record your location. This is a good option for kids with phones.

Monarch Larva Monitoring Project

Enter information about monarch caterpillars in your yard, and help researchers get a sense of the health of the monarch population that year, and how and when they’re migrating.

Great Sunflower Project

Record the number of pollinators visiting your flowers, and help researchers map pollinator activity across the country.


Close up of monarch proboscis sipping nectar from Brickellia flower.

Dig Deeper into Backyard Ecology

What can we do to invite butterflies, birds, and other wildlife into our yards? And what about the flora and fauna that makes its way into our yards; the weeds, insects, and other critters that create the home ecosystem? WFSU Ecology Blog takes a closer look.


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iNaturalist

iNaturalist became a part of the WFSU Ecology Blog during the EcoCitizen Project in 2019.  Since then, we’ve used it to help identify the many plants and animals we see on our shoots.  And on the Backyard Blog, we show how it can be used to identify weeds and garden insects, to help figure out what’s beneficial or a possible pest.  Below is the iNaturalist profile belonging to WFSU Ecology producer Rob Diaz de Villegas.

iNaturalist


View robdv’s observations »

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