Native Gardening Project

     For those of you who are entomophobes and arachnophobes, this will actually be a fun post for you. No, really! It's all about plants.

     I've had a couple of people ask about native landscaping, and I've agreed to do research on a possible project: a woodland shade garden.

     The proposed site is currently full of pines and American sweetgum, with a few scattered Chinese tallows, winged elms, redbuds, and American beautyberry. The site is best described as part shade with variable moisture, which is nice because it should allow for a variety of different plants.
     I found a very informative blog post by Carolyn of Carolyn's Shade Gardens (https://carolynsshadegardens.com/2012/04/02/your-native-woodland-if-you-build-it-they-will-come/). I will provide a few important quotations I extracted (for more information, read her wonderful post), then I will make my own list of grasses, ferns, flowers, and shrubs that should thrive in that area.
     "It is really quite simple.  All you do is take one woodland area, mix with generous amounts of compost, add the appropriate native plants, and wait a few years.  The key is knowing which plants to use....

     "I started with the worst possible soil in the worst possible conditions.  Not only were the beds composed of the hard baked clay and rocks prevalent in our area, but they were filled with roots from 100-year-old London plane and—hold onto your hats—black walnut trees.  Add to that, years of trash, including roofing slate and coal furnace shovelings, dumped in the woods before municipal collection came along and construction debris from the 1960s....

     "Nature does not dot the landscape with precious collectibles but  “designs” with large sweeps of single types of plants, and that is what I have done in my woods  To create a woodland like mine, all you do is plant at least five but preferably seven and ideally nine [species] amended with generous amounts of compost, mulch heavily with ground leaves, and stand back and wait."

     To see what she has done in her woods, I have copied and pasted one of her pictures. Please view her blog post to see the other beautiful pictures she included.
                           

     Here is a list of good plants to use, from my own research inspired by Carolyn's list. They are all deer resistant, can stand a variety of light conditions, and grow best in medium/moist/wet soils.

1. Blue Wood Sedge (Carex flaccosperma).

            Moisture loving yet drought tolerant, this 6-10" tall evergreen sedge boasts a beautiful blue hue in shade, forming large, decorative clumps.  (Source: Missouri Botanical Garden). It already occurs naturally in the area, so it obviously would perform well.

North Creek Nurseries, https://www.northcreeknurseries.com/plantName/Carex-flaccosperma-.

               

Image mine.

     2. Inland Sea Oats (Chasmanthium latifolium).

             Like the blue wood sedge, the leaves of inland sea oats possess a bluish tint. Unlike blue wood sedge, it is known for lovely, ivory seedheads that are often used in flower arrangements. It also forms large clumps (2-4') of bamboo-like foliage which turn to yellow-gold in fall. It is "very popular as a low-maintenance shade grass," and should require no care after planting (it can be transplanted or grown from seeds). It has the potential to expand aggressively in the right conditions--but would be an unlikely lawn weed. (Source: Ladybird Johnson Wildflower Center.)

    

Sally and Andy Wasowski, https://www.wildflower.org/gallery/result.php?id_image=21916.

  

Smaller specimens I (gasp) wild dug. Image mine.

     3. Sensitive Fern (Onoclea sensibilis) 
             A fern that enjoys full or partial sun in wet soil, this deer resistant fern is a great all around plant. It is a great groundcover for open woodlands like the suggested area, spreading via rhizomes. (Source: Prairie Nursery.)

     
     4. Wild Ginger (Asarum canadense).
     A great native for the swathing designs Carolyn espouses, six inch wide leaves and a dense root network allow Wild Ginger to form a solid groundcover in three-ish years when planted one foot apart. It can thrive in many different types of soil, but you have to get close to said soil in order to see its pretty, dark red flower, which originates at the base of the plant. (Source: Prairie Nursery.)


                                    

Above images from Prairie Nursery. https://www.prairienursery.com/store/groundcover-plants/wild-ginger-asarum-canadense#.XQuY5VVKjX4.

             

     5. Golden Groundsel (Senecio aureus). This is one of Carolyn's favorite woodland plants. A hardy, adaptable plant that can endure anything from full sun to full shade, evergreen leaves, purple March buds, and dazzling flowers that last from April and May.  (Source: Carolyn's shade garden.)

Image from Prairie Nursery.

     Prairie Nursery also sings its praise: "A glowing patch of Golden Groundsel is a cheerful presence in the early summer landscape. This easy-to-grow perennial is valued for its long and profuse bloom and ability to naturalize rapidly. The basal foliage is showy as well, with dense rosettes of heart shaped leaves with purple undersides. The central stalk is mostly bare, and lends a strong vertical line to massed plants."

     6. Virginia Bluebells (Mertensia virginica).
     Virginia Bluebells are missing one critical criterion for this list: they are not deer resistant. However, their beauty more than makes up for that unfortunate characteristic, and they are rabbit and black walnut resistant.
     "Pendulous, trumpet-shaped [1-inch] blue flowers" top a 1-2' mass of blue-green leaves. Before they bloom in early spring, pink buds dot the ovulate leaves. However, like many native spring bloomers, Virginia Bluebells go dormant in summer--hey, at least it protects them from deer damage! (Source: Prairie Nursery.)

Above Image from Prairie Nursery.

     7. And finally, Jacob's ladder!
      Endowed with fern-like summer-green leaves, Jacob's ladder has some advantages to Virginia Bluebells. It is mildly deer resistant and has similar flowers (although they bloom for a slightly shorter period of time). (Source: Prairie Nursery.)

Image from Prairie Nursery

Image from Prairie Nursery

     Additionally, oakleaf hydrangeas, asters, goldenrods, ephemerals, and shootingstars could be added for more year-round color.

    Another great idea would be planting Quercus spp. (oaks) and Prunus spp. (plums, cherries, and peaches are common examples), as these provide food for most common birds in the southeast. For instance, a single family of chickadees requires 6000-9000 caterpillars to successfully raise their young in the spring (they don't feed them any nuts or berries). As most birds are larger than chickadees, they require more food--and they typically need at least twenty different species of caterpillar within a fifty-yard range in order for a population to survive more than a few years. So it is important to plant trees like oaks (which are hosts to more than 500 different species) and Prunus spp. (hosts to around 200 species). (Source: Doug Tallamy, "Hope for the Wild 2019."  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=om4gKdODCwg.)

      I hope this was informative! I encourage everyone to begin preserving nature through beautiful, ecosystem-minded landscaping. 

A Rare Find, Giant Pet, and Macro Photography and Videography (on YouTube!)

Hello!

Since my last post, I've been pretty busy! And I still am, so I'll try to make this brief (as brief as I can with almost forty pictures) and interesting.

THE RARE FIND

A couple of days ago, I was looking for a stick to use as a stake for my Passiflora incarnata (purple passionflower). As I scanned the back of our property for a sufficiently large limb, I noticed a particularly twiggy stick--one that was wavy and had tons of small branches, well, branching off of it. I decided to leave it be, as it would be a waste of time to break the twigs from the main stem. I kept looking, but was unsuccessful, so I returned to the original stick and picked it up. A flurry of hair-thin legs caught my eye, and I held up the tip of the stick for closer inspection. My immediate impression was that it was one of the ubiquitous Tetragnathids that adorn every branch with their webs here in Mississippi, but as I held it up to the sun in the cool, but humid morning air, an idiosyncratic trait glared down at me: two immense, globular eyes. I gasped, lowered the stick, and (literally) screamed "no way!" over and over again for a solid thirty seconds. I whipped out one of my handy vials and blew the little critter in. 

I still was not 100% positive of my identification, so I snapped a few pictures with my macro lens and sent them to a mentor of mine who also happens to be a spider specialist--and, coincidentally, the first person to discover this spider in the state. Within minutes, he replied, confirming my identification. It was a juvenile Deinopis spinosa. 

The best picture I could get of the little fella.

It has a body length of half a centimeter and likes to camp out in places that are difficult to photograph, so that's the best picture I've got--for now. Hopefully, I'll have better ones when it reaches full size. 

The Giant Pet

Another cool find was this Dolomedes vittatus I stumbled upon at my nana's place. I was attempting to cross a great gully I encountered on my plant-digging expedition, and first hurled my shovel to the far bank, so as to cross more gracefully. I took a deep breath, adjusted my glasses, and threw all the power of my coiled legs into the ground. As I leaped sublimely through the forest air, I felt a slight tugging sensation on my right foot. OK, perhaps "slight" is an understatement. My graceful, parabolic arc quickly began to look like the third quadrant of a circle: some conniving poison ivy had snaked its way around my ankle. 

I face-planted into a small plateau of moss, mud, and... more poison ivy, almost landing on the shovel I had tossed ahead of me for safety. My glasses, which had been firmly fastened with an eyewear container, flew a short distance--into the mud. I stood up, readjusted my glasses, muttered "confound it" (as profane as I'll get), and adjusted my glasses again. My leg hurt. I had probably sprained or even broken it on that long fall. I decided to test it. I could move it just fine. "Confound it." 

It still hurt a little bit, enough to justify my being angry. So, in a fit of manly rage, I seized my shovel and plunged it into the soft, steeply inclined bank a few feet away. I was about to hurl myself up the embankment to collect one more blasted plant when I noticed a blur of motion.

The shovel featured in the upper right hand corner.

I had been about an inch away from bisecting the biggest Dolomedes spider I had ever seen. 

Ignoring the searing pain in my left leg, I calmly pulled out a vial and, with hands that never trembled, scooped it up in one fell swoop. Actually, my leg was feeling just fine by then, and I could hardly hold the vial from the adrenaline rush, and it took me about five minutes to capture it... but I got 'er done. The spider, which I originally deemed to be a D. tenebrosus, was pretty fast--I had to catch it in one of the larger buckets I had brought.

I brought her home and proudly presented her to the world via Instagram.

.  

After a few weeks of fun, she died of an undiagnosed disease. She had began to act strangely, walking around at the bottom of her enclosure instead of skimming the surface. She had plenty of food, clean water, a good habitat for molting, and plenty of hydration (obviously). It was a very tragic experience.

She is, however, alive and well somewhere. No, it's not spider heaven and it's more than my heart. Check it out.

MACRO PHOTOGRAPHY AND VIDEOGRAPHY

My new channel on YouTube is Nate V. So, if you want to see the Dolomedes vitattus (whom I sadly never named), check out videos of her munching on leaf footed bugs and battling vicious beetles. And don't be the second twerp who reports me for "graphic content." They're bugs. They're fine. They don't feel pain. 1

Please click this link, like, and subscribe (even if you don't watch the videos): https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmAypqtpc85E6Su1kIN6DCQ?view_as=subscriber

I created the channel primarily because blogger no longer supports videos. So, if you want the content of this post as advertised (the Macro Videography part), check it out.

Next, because it is getting late, I'm just going to post all my good macro pics with little commentary other than if it was digitally enhanced (--not faked... that's totally different).

Alypia octopunctata. Edited.

Anisota virginiensis. Color saturation slightly increased

Sinea sp. Juvenile assassin bug.

Leucauge venusta. Orchard Orb Weaver. Edited.

Alypia octopunctata. Edited.

Juvenile mantid.

Juvenile stink bug.

Anolis carolinensis.

Hymenopteran pupal exoskeleton with ants emerging. Not sure if they ate it or if they're just checking out an empty shell.

Odonatan. (I'm bad at identifying dragonflies.) 

Euphorbia corollata L. Flowering Spurge.

Chrysomelid. Leaf Beetle. These fellas are tough to id. 

Physostegia virginiana L. Obedient plant.

Sisyrinchium rosulatum. Annual blue eyed grass.

Halysidota sp. All these tussock moths look the same to me.

Prosapia bicincta. Two lined spittle bug.

Chauliognathus sp. I think. Soldier beetle.

Leucauge venusta. edited.

Callistethus marginatus. Margined Shinning Leaf Chafer.

Physostegia virginiana L. Obedient plant. Edited.

Physostegia virginiana L. Obedient plant. Definitely not edited.

Hemerocallis sp. Daylily. Edited.

Hydrangea quercifolia. Oakleaf hydrangea. Edited.

Hydrangea quercifolia. Oakleaf hydrangea. Edited.

Halysidota sp. Tussock moth. Edited.

Pterophylla camellifolia. Common true katydid. Edited.

Hydrangea sp. You should be able to guess the common name. Edited.

Hydrangea sp.  Edited.

Linnaea x grandiflora. Glossy abelia. Edited.

Cerambycid. Longicorn beetle. Striving for the light. 

Oncopeltus fasciatus. Milkweed Bug.

Thanks for reading!

References

1 Most insects don't possess nociceptors, and therefore cannot feel pain in the same way that we do. (The only real exception is fruit flies, but who cares about them, anyway?) You have google as your reference. A lot of people will say that the presence of nociceptors is not a good indicator of a creature's ability to feel pain, but there's no empirical evidence to believe that they do.