Flies in (and out of) Drag

Because of the recent and ongoing ruckus about honeybees and colony collapse disorder, I've been watching carefully for honeybees on the various flowering plants we've got outside this year. So far, not a one, though that might just mean we're not growing anything they find appealing.

There are plenty of other insects to look at, though. A few are even bees. They're just not honeybees.

Is there any plant that looks more like fireworks than dill does?
We sowed some dill seeds this year, because I was hoping to get swallowtail caterpillars and/or butterflies (also I just really like dill pickles, so now I can smell them all the time). Nothing so far, but I don't have much of a grasp of when swallowtail butterflies are supposed to be in Iowa in the first place.

What's appreciating the dill instead are mostly green bottle flies (Lucilia sericata). Which I suppose I don't mind, since nobody else was using it, and bottle flies do have their positive qualities, but this was hardly the original plan.

I should probably also note that we've used the dill once, in cooking. Turns out that there is in fact such a thing as too much dill.

The cilantro (Coriandrum sativum) that came with the house keeps popping up here and there; it's gotten moved at least two times so far, but every year, enough seeds manage to survive to keep the population going. We haven't done any cooking with it, despite having had it around for four years: I'm not particularly a fan (though I can understand why people could be), and really my main interest in it is visual: the clouds of little white flowers appeal to me.

"Morning, Ralph."
"Morning, Sam."
They're apparently also appealing to ants. I really like that picture. Something about their posture, or something.

Flies are also really fond of the Coriandrum flowers. I don't know what species this is, but they are everywhere this year. I see them all the time on the marigolds and Portulacas as well. I don't know the ID; I haven't even been able to come up with a general ballpark guess on an ID. They're flies of some kind, and that's as much as I can tell you.

Sometimes, I don't even know that the insects are there, when I take the picture. Like, I didn't see this until I uploaded the pictures to my computer:

Oh, what a nice picture of a flower OH MY GOD WHAT IS THAT FUCKING THING GET IT AWAY GET IT AWAY GET IT AWAY.
After some searching on-line, I've tentatively identified this as the larva of Coleomagilla maculata, the spotted lady beetle. This could be better news: C. maculata is allegedly capable of surviving almost entirely on pollen, so it's not necessarily helping me out that much with insect pests. Not that I've seen much in the way of insect pests this year. (A few whiteflies. No pictures of those yet.)

OTHER WAY! GO THE OTHER WAY!
There is at least one actual bee so far this year; I don't know which one it is. (I tried looking it up, but there are so many tiny bees in Iowa that I didn't even know where to start.)

They're not very picky, whatever they are. I think this is the same species, on Tagetes:

And maybe again on a dandelion:

But the insect I started this post to talk about is this last one.

Because it looked enough like a honeybee at first glance, I initially got excited about this, but the longer I looked, the more it seemed . . . not quite right. Once I'd uploaded the pictures to the computer, and had a chance to look around a bit, I concluded that, whatever it might be, it was definitely not a bee -- no pollen baskets on the legs, only one pair of wings, stubby antennae, huge eyes, and it didn't seem nearly fuzzy enough to be a bee.

After some research, I think the genus is probably Eristalis (hoverflies, drone flies). One of the more likely candidates for the species is E. tenax. Which seemed fine, until I read the Wikipedia entry for E. tenax. Now that I have, I'm kind of retroactively grossed out by it: I could have been perfectly happy not knowing that there was such a thing as a "rat-tailed maggot." No wonder it wants to dress up as something else.

Animal: Chauliognathus pensylvanicus marginatus

The people who used to live in this house had a small garden in back, which I've mentioned before, and in the garden they'd planted some cilantro, which I haven't mentioned before because I was under the impression that it was parsley. But it's not. (I have to say I'm a little disappointed in y'all for not saying something when I misidentified it as such earlier. You guys are supposed to catch stuff like that.)

Anyway. Something else we had when we moved in was a low spot in the back yard, which bothered the husband something awful. So we spent the last couple years throwing grass clippings there, and if I had potting soil from dead plants to dump out, I'd dump it there too, and then this spring the husband got a bunch of compost from the city (Iowa City), and filled it in the rest of the way, so now it's more or less level.

That spot also erupted in tomato and cilantro seedlings this spring, so I guess at some point the husband also moved some dirt from the garden to the low spot. I don't understand why he would do that, but one of us must have, because:


So far, everybody seems to be pretty happy about this. The cilantro grew fast enough that I haven't had to do a lot of weeding (and it's been a cool, wet summer so far, so it's not too terrible when I do try to weed), the husband doesn't object because it's that much less to mow, and it's pretty. But our appreciation is nothing compared to the appreciation of the insect world: the blooms are always covered in various flies and beetles and gnats, the most conspicuous of which is Chauliognathus pensylvanicus, or the goldenrod soldier beetle Chauliognathus marginatus, the margined leatherwing. [UPDATE: the insect in question was initially misidentified.]


I was worried when I first saw these; I figured them likely to be a pest of something or another, and didn't want to be sheltering something that was going to go next door and eat all the neighbors' cucumbers or something. But as far as I can tell, they're not -- the adults eat pollen, nectar, and small insects; the larvae eat other insects or insect eggs. In fact, it's deliberately encouraged near corn fields, says a book I have here (The Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Insects and Spiders, 3rd ed.), because they eat corn earworm (Heliothis zea) caterpillars. So I don't have to feel bad about that. [UPDATE: the Audobon Guide does not include an entry for C. marginatus, but the one for C. pensylvanicus says that "several species" of Chauliognatus are used for controlling corn earworms, so I'm guessing that the information remains essentially correct.]


There's a slight question in my mind about whether I have the ID right -- the coloration is a little lighter than most of the reference photos I found; they have darker and larger spots on the wings and head. I didn't see anything that looked like a better match, though.


There may still be problems with this at some point, but I'm all for plants that attract beneficial wildlife and require almost nothing from me, especially if they're going to be this pretty. (I'm aware that they'll be less pretty later on, but I don't think they're terrible-looking even then.) Weirdly, the last time I was at the ex-job, the cashier told the person in line ahead of me that she had really horrible luck trying to grow cilantro. Is that normal? I can't imagine how it could be difficult.

Pretty picture: Petroselinum crispum (parsley) Coriandrum sativum (cilantro) flowers

[EDITED 8 June 2011: The plant I thought was parsley, Petroselinum crispum, turns out to be coriander/cilantro, Coriandrum sativum. Which doesn't make the flowers any less pretty, but it does kind of explain the lack of swallowtail caterpillars. It's still growing in the backyard, more than ever, as of 2011, because I like the look of it and it's not like we're doing anything else with that space. Plus it's self-maintaining.]

Okay. It's time to admit that the vegetable garden is not working. The peppers have flowers here and there, but are small and yellow and clearly unhappy; the whole garden is full of couchgrass and goosefoot, and it turns out, unsurprisingly, that I really don't like weeding. (I know: mulch. But do you know how much mulch costs? Actually, if you're reading this, odds are that you do, I guess. And that's bad logic on my part, because mulching in spring is cheaper than buying corn on the cob in the summer. And weeding is cheaper than both. So I'm just stupid.) I will be surprised if we get any corn out of this at all. Bad experience all around, don't intend to repeat.

However.


I'd planned, before we moved, to plant some parsley at the new place, because swallowtail butterflies like it, and I like swallowtail butterflies. When I actually got here and looked at the garden, there was already parsley planted here, but for some reason I forgot that I wanted it, so I pulled a bunch up, and then realized about 3/4 of the way through that, oh shit, I just pulled up stuff I was going to buy.

Fortunately, the survivors have thrived, and it appears that there were also a number of parsley seeds in there that had just not sprouted yet during the parsley holocaust, so I've gotten a healthy crop anyway. Which have all flowered. I suppose the flowering makes them inedible, or less edible, or something, but I don't like eating parsley anyway, and I'm guessing caterpillars don't care. And the flowers are pretty, and smell nice, which surprises me.


So fuck the corn and the peppers. Next year, I'll just grow parsley. And maybe milkweed. We'll have a parsley-milkweed garden. And I'll throw in some Asclepias tuberosa seeds, 'cause I like them. Just give the whole thing to the butterflies.