Daisy Drama

As I have mentioned in previous posts, bees and butterflies aren't the only insects that use flowers. Here are two insects whose life-cycles intersect on the reproductive structures of flowering plants, in this case, a daisy. 

The larger black and white bug is called a pirate bug (Hemiptera: Orius spp.). Pirate bugs are predators, but when prey is scarce they will feed on plants to supplement their diet. They us a sharp pointed straw-like mouthpart to pierce the bodies of their prey and suck out the contents (mmm, insect milk-shake).  Pirate bugs eat a variety of other insects including aphids, spider mites, and thrips. This one is probably looking for prey on this flower.  Immature thrips can often be found hidden among the flower parts of composite flowers such as daisies and other asters. 

On flowers, thrips (pictured below) feed on the flower parts and in large numbers they can do a great deal of damage.  They will also feed on other parts of the plants and thrips are serious pests in many crops, especially those grown indoors (e.g. in greenhouses). This is an adult thrips.  Immature thrips are lighter colored and much more difficult to see.

Many thrips come to flowers to find mates, and they will lay their eggs here too, so that their offspring can use the plant for food. Likewise, the pirate bug may decide to lay eggs here if there are enough thrips to provide food for her young. Thus these two insects are linked by the daisy in a life-and-death drama. Maybe not quite as exciting as cheetahs and gazelles on the African savannah, but this is happening everyday in your backyard.  Pretty cool if you think about it.

Green tomato salsa (no insects)

We found ourselves at the end of the summer with an overabundance of green tomatoes, so we decided to make green tomato salsa.

We based our recipe on this one, to make sure we had the acidity right, but we had to improvise a little here and there.

We started with green tomato puree that we made in the food processor.  We peeled the tomatoes first, then just whizzed them in the food processor and put them in the pot.

We had about 13 cups of tomato puree.
Next we took some cayenne peppers and some serrano peppers from our garden, and a handful of garlic cloves.

 We seeded the serranos and chopped the garlic.

Then, we chopped the peppers and put it all in the pot.  Then we added about this much chopped cilatntro,

 this much chopped onion,

 2 Tablespoons ground cumin (this ended up being too much cumin!),

 about a Tablespoon of oregano,

2 teaspoons of salt,

 2 teaspoons of black pepper,

and lime juice. We had to use one plastic lime-ful of lime juice from concentrate plus one and a half   real limes to get enough juice (1 cup).

Then, once it was all in the pot, we heated it to a simmer, let it simmer for about 30 minutes,

put it in our sanitized jars, lidded them, let them sit overnight to cool, and we were done!

Springtails!

Springtails (AKA: Collembola) are really tiny insects that live in the soil, leaf litter, and even on the water's surface. They are an extremely important part of the soil food-web, mainly because the help speed along the process of decomposition. We spotted this one on the underside of a shelf fungus that had fallen onto the ground. 

This is what they look like close-up. 

Of course there are many thousands of species of springtail and not all of them look like this. They got their name from their predator escape behavior.  When disturbed, springtails can release a special spring-loaded appendage on their underside that propels them into the air very quickly. 

This one might need to use its "spring" pretty soon if it gets attacked by the spider crouching nearby!

Most springtails eat microorganisms such as fungi, bacteria, or nematodes, but there is one species called the lucerne flea (Not a flea at all!) that is a pest of alfalfa and some grains. Generally though, we can classify springtails in the good bug category!