Springtime and Gardening

[Dr Sardonicus]

My cultivated tomato plant is loaded, but the tomatoes are still green. I have a volunteer tomato plant growing in the footprint of a demolished shed. Its small fruits are turning orange.

My Carolina Reaper is producing well. Its peppers have reached almost full size, but are still pale green. My other pepper plants are producing well, but all peppers are still green.

My Zinnias have exploded, and have weathered the Japanese Beetles quite well. My Whorled Milkweed (Asclepias verticillata) is blooming. It became infested with Oleander Aphids (Aphis nerii) which are bright orange in color. I sprayed them with soapy water, and they drowned. While I had the spray bottle, I tried using streams of soapy water on Japanese Beetles, which were still favoring the Zinnias by my rain gauge, and then my Illinois Bundleflower, which is now blooming.

It turned out that what I thought was Poke Milkweed was actually a tropical milkweed, Asclepias curassavica which is undesirable because it harbors a protozoa which parasitizes Monarch caterpillars. I simply quit watering it, and it has died out.

My Liatris has bloomed and is now fading. Ditto my Wild Bergamot (Monarda fistulosa).

My Mexican Hats (Ratibida columnifera) bloomed in June, and some of them are now blooming again.

The Rocky Mountain Bee Plant (pic on left) is blooming and producing seeds. Some of them are well over six feet high. It has attracted some monarchs.

Gray-headed Coneflowers (Ratibida pinnata, middle pic) are blooming. My Missouri Ironweed is blooming, and one of them has grown higher than the approximately 6-foot high fence I put it by.

My orange Cosmos (Diablo or Bright Lights or a cross) are attracting Monarchs and Tiger Swallowtails. (Pic on right)

[Dr Sardonicus]

In the last couple of days, I got some decent pictures of a couple of my wildflowers. I have previously mentioned one of them, Mexican Hats (Ratibida columnifera). The flowers look like sombreros, hence the common name.

The other is Rattlesnake Master (Eryngium yuccifolium), a native prairie plant. The common name apparently is due to aboriginal Americans making a brew of its roots, which they applied to their bodies to prevent being bitten during the ceremonial handling of rattlesnakes.

Curiously, the plant is in the family Apiaceae AKA Umbelliferae, the family of carrots and parsley. Many familiar plants in this family have finely dissected leaves and flowers in "umbels." The flower stalks emanate from a common point and somewhat resemble umbrella ribs. The flowers form a flat or curved surface.

Not so with Rattlesnake Master! As the specific name implies, the leaves resemble yucca leaves - long, stringy, and swordlike. And the flower clusters (shown in picture) are globular.

[Dr Sardonicus]

My flowering tobacco (Nicotiana sylvestris, woodland tobacco) is in full bloom. One of the plants near my front porch is about to top six feet (almost 2 meters) in height. Its basal leaves are huge. The one pictured, however, is in a shady area and is only about 3 feet (1 meter) tall. It made a good photographic subject because it admitted a dim, fairly featureless background.

The seeds are almost microscopic, and get scattered all over. The plant seems to have "naturalized" on my property, coming up in a larger area each year. It continually amazes me that such tiny seeds can grow into huge plants in a few months.

Last year, tobacco hornworms (larvae of Manduca sexta, a large sphinx or hummingbird moth) appeared in force, and chewed up a great deal of the foliage. (BTW the leaves are too thin to make good smoking tobacco. They would dry out before they could "cure" properly.) The hornworms have not yet appeared this year. The adult moths are among the pollinators of the long-throated flowers. They are night fliers, coming out around dusk.

The flowers are strongly fragrant, but not during the middle of the day. The fragrance comes out around dusk. Curiously, this characteristic is shared by my old-fashioned vining petunias, which are also members of the nightshade family Solanaceae. The appearance and configuration of the tobacco flowers have inspired the common name "white shooting stars."

[Dr Sardonicus]

A few of my Carolina Reaper peppers turned orange, so I picked them. I thought they'd make a good photographic subject.

They may not be completely ripe (they're supposed to become bright red). But there are plenty more on the way, so no worries.

It is a hybrid of the Naga Viper and the Red Habañero, devised by a South Carolina man named Ed Currie, AKA "Smokin' Ed." The Guinness Book of World Records determined it to be the hottest chile pepper on earth, at an incendiary 2.2 million Scoville units.

Articles I have read describe their flavor as "sweet and fruity" like Habañero - until the heat blows the roof off your mouth.

I'm thinking of making most of them into powder. I'll probably give some of them some applewood smoke before they go to the dehydrator.

Meet the Reaper!

[Dr Sardonicus]

Some of my annuals achieved impressive heights this year. The tops were far enough out of my reach that using a tape measure was hopeless - it would flop over before I could extend it to the top. I finally resorted to a folding or zigzag ruler which extends to six feet. It was stiff enough that I could hold it up with one hand until it reached the top of the plant, put my other hand at the bottom, and then measure how high my hand was above the ground. This just barely worked with my tallest sunflowers - I had to lean the top of the ruler against one of the flower heads!

And those sunflowers are about 11 feet (3.35 meters) tall. That's not unusual for sunflowers - some varieties can grow at least 15 feet tall. But I'm not sure exactly what kind my tall ones are. I didn't plant any tall ones this year. This year's specimens are volunteers. Last year, I did have some tall ones - hybrids with a single huge flower head at the top, its center a pale green. The tall ones this year are branched, with multiple medium-sized flower heads with dark brown centers. One has pale yellow rays ("petals") and one has deep yellow rays. They're either crosses, or a case of hybrids not breeding true. In any case, they are very nice. As the seed heads have developed on them (and my other sunflowers) the goldfinches have come in to feast, sometimes joined by sparrows. The other day I saw Mr. Cardinal checking them out.

One of my Rocky Mountain Bee Plants is about 7 and a half feet (2.29 meters) tall. This is significantly more than the "2-5 feet" indicated by references.

But the most surprising are the feathery-leaved, purple to lavender and white Cosmos along the south side of my house. They're all volunteers, descendants of Picatee and Sensation Cosmos planted in years past. I have seen this type of Cosmos reach six feet tall many times. But a couple of this year's volunteers apparently decided that that wasn't tall enough. They just kept reaching for the sky. I measured one that had a lavender flower blooming at the tippy-top. It was a jaw-dropping eight and a half feet (2.6 meters) high! I've never seen anything like it.

I also have the same type of Cosmos in my back yard. Most of them volunteered in one of my garden paths. There was another way around, so rather than try to transplant them, I just let them grow. They're close together, so formed a "jungle." They're not especially tall, maybe five feet. But they have provided solid evidence of why I have had difficulty gathering seeds from this type of Cosmos. When I have walked near the Cosmos jungle recently, I have seen squadrons of goldfinches fly out. They really go for the seeds of this type of Cosmos. They must feel a certain sense of safety in the dense foliage.

[Dr Sardonicus]

My orange cosmos are winding down as fall approaches, but they are still attracting Monarchs. Painted Lady butterflies (Vanessa cardui) have begun visiting them in appreciable numbers. I have yet to take a good picture of them. Some Sulphur butterflies have also been feeding on them recently.

Another species long absent, but now showing up at least two at a time, is the Common Buckeye (Junonia coenia). The Variegated Fritillary (Euptoieta claudia) has also been making sporadic visits to my orange cosmos.

I have noticed that when butterflies come to a patch of a single flower species with a lot of blossoms, they will stick to that kind of flower for quite a while. Sometimes they visit so many of them, and stay on each one so long, I wonder just how much nectar they can actually drink.

I managed to get decent pictures of a Variegated Fritillary and a Buckeye yesterday.

[Dr Sardonicus]

I recently harvested a goodly number of my red, ripe Carolina Reaper peppers. Wearing nitrile exam gloves, I split, seeded and deveined them. It took me about an hour. They have a "citrusy" smell like Habañero peppers. But they are much hotter. I could tell from how much more my nose was running, tickling, and burning and how much I was sneezing than I ever had been when doing the same with like numbers of Habañeros, that I was in uncharted territory.

And, although the gloves had worked perfectly with the Habañeros, not so much with the Carolina Reapers. I don't know whether capsaicin can actually penetrate nitrile and the higher amount made the difference, or if my gloves have deteriorated. But about an hour after I finished with the Reapers - and I was out running errands - I began experiencing the unmistakable "glowing hands" sensation. It was not bad, but I knew I had to be careful about what I touched. At least twice after I got home I poured a bit of cooking oil on my hands, worked it in well, removed as much as I could with dry paper towels, and washed my hands thoroughly. There was capsaicin on my hands, and the oil was dissolving it - I proved this by sticking the tip of my tongue on my oily hand. The treatment greatly reduced the problem. (I had previously had a worse case of "glowing hands" when I had peeled and seeded some medium-hot peppers without using gloves, and someone suggested rubbing my hands with sour cream. I tried it, and it definitely took the edge off.)

I will try double-gloving, possibly with clear vinyl gloves inside, to prevent a recurrence.

Meanwhile, my flowers are winding down. My New England Asters are blooming, a sure sign that the show's almost over for the year.

My Spotted Jewelweed is still blooming a fair bit. The hummingbirds really go for the tubular flowers - probably the more so because it's in dense stands, forming annual hedges along the north sides of my house and the south fence of my back yard. With the cooler weather, they become more tolerant of other hummingbirds feeding nearby than they are during the hot summer weather. In cooler weather, they can't afford to burn a lot of calories fighting. They need to keep feeding just to stay warm.

I got a decent closeup of two of the flowers - one in profile, the other looking right down its throat. They are about 1 and 1/8 inches (2.86 cm) from front to back. I think you can see where the "Spotted" part of the name comes from...

[Dr Sardonicus]

My large area of New England Asters (Aster novae-angliae) is in its prime, and attracting butterflies. I managed a few decent shots. One is of a tiny Skipper, most likely a Fiery Skipper (Hylephila phyleus). One is of a Suphur, either a Common, or Clouded Sulphur (Colias philodice) or possibly an Orange Sulphur (Colias eurytheme). One is of a female Monarch (Danaus plexippus).

[Dr Sardonicus]

Yesterday, I got pictures of more of the happy little pollinators taking advantage of the late-season bonanza afforded by my large patch of New England asters (Aster novae-angliae). In the cool of the morning, the butterflies weren't very active yet, but the bees were out in force. A very placid worker honeybee (Apis mellifera) was unperturbed when I came in close for a macro shot.

Later on, the butterflies were active. I finally - finally - got a good shot of a Painted Lady (Vanessa cardui) with its wings open. Up until then, it seemed like the universe was conspiring to deny me this. I'd see a good subject, and then... before I could get it in focus, it would fold its wings. Or it would abruptly fly away. Or the light would change. Or, it would be on a flower, and a sudden breeze would bend the plant, taking the subject out of the viewfinder. Or a bee would fly in to the same flower, and the subject would suddenly be gone.

The Painted Lady may well be the most widely-distributed butterfly on earth. It undergoes mass migrations between Mexico and Canada, and between Northern Europe and Africa. The latter were a mystery until relatively recently. As fall approached, they would simply disappear from Scandinavia, and some time later reappear in northern Africa. Their migration in between went unobserved. It was finally discovered that IIRC a mile or so up, there was a river of moving air to which the butterflies would ascend, and be carried to where they were going. Sometimes, their migrating swarms are so large, they are picked up on weather radar systems. In some years, I have seen them show up in huge numbers in the fall. But not, alas, in several years now.

I also got a decent shot of a female European Cabbage White or "Cabbage Butterfly," the pestilential Pieris rapae, feeding on my asters. Females have two black spots on the dorsal side of each forewing, males one black spot.