Left by Leafhoppers

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I’m a tolerant sort towards insects in the garden. Insects get a bad rap, but many are good guys-n-gals and fulfill important roles in the ecosystem. Other insects are meh–not necessarily anyone’s favorites, but not problematic, either. A very few insects are monsters and no gardener wants to see the beasts messing up their slice of paradise. I’ll squish aphids if they’re covering foliage but I don’t use insecticides at all. When I garden for vegetables (a rare thing these days), I’ll spray water on plants to knock off aphids or other sucking insects, but most of my veggie garden problems come from birds and squirrels; they like their veggies, too, one bite at a time.

Because I prefer native perennials and shrubs, as well as non-native plants who’ve proven their worth in the challenging conditions of Central Texas, I don’t have many malevolent insects wreaking havoc on beloved plants. That is until this spring.

Along with all the other weird things that 2021 has delivered to my garden, it’s finally also experienced damage due to some naughty bugs and the bad germs they carry and spread.

I love Purple Coneflowers, Echinacea purpurea. I don’t grow quite as many as I once did, due to shady conditions because these cheery aster plants are sun lovers! But I still have some and enjoy the beauty they bring to the garden.

Coneflowers are a favorite among the pollinators and frequently have one in attendance.

Grey Hairstreak, Strymon melinus nectaring on a Purple Coneflower

My native coneflowers bloom from April until July, turning crispy and dropping seed during the hot summer months. Once they’re tired and worn out, I prune the plants to their base foliage and await the fall bloom, which is less dramatic, but very welcome.

Recently, I was observing some pollinator action and taking photos of this charming group of coneflowers, when I noticed an oddity.

Some of my coneflower sported leafy green hats!

Other mini-leaves covered the whole of the central globe, hiding the bracts where coneflower seeds develop. Also, the lavender rays were weird, short and misshapen.

As I looked at groups of coneflowers in other parts of the garden, I found more crazy coneflowers. Some had no purple or pink to them, they were all green: green centers, green rays, and a few green, strangely shaped leaves. The diseased plants were all shorter than the healthy coneflowers.

This discovery of individual bizarre coneflowers rang a botanical bell for me, though I’d never seen this kind of growth before in my garden. I recognized (from some reading, sometime in the past) that the deformed coneflowers were victims of a disease process and recalled that it is one brought on by an insect.

As I researched the problem, I came across the term Aster Yellows, and remembered reading other gardeners who’d removed their aster plants (not necessarily coneflowers) because of this disease. Removing the diseased plant is the only recourse and those plants shouldn’t be placed in compost, but disguarded from the garden completely.

Leafhoppers are common in my garden and I would normally place them in the meh category of insects; they’re around, but don’t present much of a problem. It seems that leafhoppers survived our February snowpocalypse and in early spring, at least a few of those leafhoppers carrying a mycoplasma engaged in some munching on the emerging coneflower plants. The mycoplasma which causes the unusual growth is spread by the leafhoppers feeding on the plants. Fortunately, only a few individual plants were impacted. You can see one in this photo at the base of a gloriously healthy plant.

Coneflowers are in the Asteraceae or Aster family, but many kinds of plants are affected by this mycoplasma disease process. According to Texas A&M Agrilife Extension, Texas Plant Disease Handbook, Aster Yellows impacts 300 different species of plants, from over 40 different families of plants.

I haven’t seen any more obvious problems with my remaining coneflowers (or any other plants), but it’s likely that next spring this issue may appear again. I’ll be quicker at diagnosing and removing the sick plants now that I’m aware that my garden could be hosting the insects and their germs.

Because of the devastating February freeze, a large shade tree died in my front garden and it will be removed in late fall. As well, my Red Oak trees in the back garden have also suffered some freeze damage; less foliage means more sun in my back garden. I’m sorry about the trees–trees are life giving entities–but more sun will mean more coneflowers in the garden. I just hope they’re all healthy next year and will continue to provide for food pollinators and joy for the gardener.

Coyote Cloudywing, Achalarus toxeus, resting on the rays of a Coneflower

Metamorphosis

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More than a collection of color and collaboration of texture and form, a garden is the base for life. Providers of pollen, donators of nectar, and deliverers of foliage, plants are foundational partners for biodiverse ecosystems. Insects, as well as other wildlife, are direct beneficiaries of the botanical bounty, frequently repaying that bounty with their own pollination and reseeding gifts.

This green gathering of groundcovers all serve as fuel for others in my garden’s seasonal story.

The plant with the petite sky-blue flowers is a Leadwort plumbago, Ceratostigma plumbaginoides. It meanders through several areas of my garden, dollops of blue attracting small native sweat bees. The bright green, lobed foliage at bottom left of the photo belongs to Gregg’s mistflower, Conoclinium greggii, which is currently not blooming. Its fuzzy, lavender-blue blooms will be available for the late summer/autumn migrating monarchs, as well as for a wide variety of other butterflies and bees. The groundcover with the charming clam-shell, variegated leaves–the majority plant in this particular group–is a White-veined Dutchman’s Pipe, Aristolochia fimbriata, a common non-native host plant for the Pipevine Swallowtail butterfly, Battus philenor.

Alongside some dainty pops of blue on the plumbago, the White-veined pipevine feeds Pipevine caterpillars, like the chubby fella below. This year I have enough of the pipe vine that the cats haven’t completely denuded it as they munch their way to adulthood, but they certainly have eaten plenty of leaves to the stems.

Once the caterpillars eat their fill and morph through their various instars, they follow their chemical signals and settle in a place to metamorphize into a different form of themselves. This one strung itself to the limestone just outside the frame of my back door. It traveled far from its feeding place to get to this spot and I wonder: why here, adjacent to the door? It’s an open spot. potentially vulnerable to predators, less hidden than on a plant, like a stem or an under-leaf. Chrysalises are much better camouflaged in the garden than attached to an open wall. Nevertheless, the caterpillar was resolute in its choice, working to moor itself there on its journey to a new, winged self.

The caterpillar also chose to begin changing during a stormy 48 hours; it strung its string, but remained in the J formation through that cooler, wetter period.

In time, the chemical changes happened, the chrysalis formed, and it remained stationary–though not static–for almost two weeks. The chrysalis emitted light and color as it transitioned, sometimes golden, sometimes green, sometimes dark, but always a little different from the day before.

I missed the debut of the adult, having overslept a bit during the premier morning; butterflies emerge with the sun’s rise; gardeners, not always. At 8am, it was there, drying its wings, waiting for the right time to take flight.

The butterfly did fly later that morning, though I’m not convinced it was entirely ready. I bumbled out the door, focused on some back garden chore, and the startled insect winged its way off of the limestone and over the garden, the remaining drops of its successful chemistry experiment scattering in the sunlight.

I’ve left the shell of the transmutation in place, the remnant of caterpillar observable in form, the memory of brilliant butterfly in warm, gauzy colors.

The Big Move

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My back garden forms an odd, pie-shaped situation and for the past decade, has become increasingly shady, especially in the back corner section of the garden.

These two photos are several years old and most of what is blooming in the shots either no longer exists or doesn’t bloom due to the shady conditions. Some bloomers here include Turk’s caps, with their summer tiny, twirled flowers, a Mexican Honeysuckle bush, whose orange flowers appear when the mood strikes, a leaning Frostweed which blossoms as it reaches for autumn sun, and a few small, shade-tolerant perennials and grasses. This darkened corner is best suited for foliage and, as of March, the beehives.

When Bee Daddy built the Langstroth hives five years ago, I see-sawed about which would be a better spot for the two hives: in the back, shady corner, a generally out-of-the-way spot, or in one of the opened graveled sections of the main part of my back garden.

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I opted for the main area of the garden, and while that wasn’t a mistake–it was easy to work around the hives and they received some nice bits of sun–I’ve come to accept that it’s better to have the bees tucked in a part of the garden where no one but yours truly ventures.

In autumn, I decided to move the hives to the back section of my garden. Really, it was only one hive that needed moving, because Buzz absconded last spring, the hive sitting empty for the year. Picking up and transporting Buzz’s truncated hive–base and roof–was a snap. In the new beehive spot, I also expanded the limestone border between the negative space and the garden, enlarging the beehive area a bit. I intended to mulch or gravel, but February’s snow storm and the months-long cleanup which followed, plus a bum back to boot, rendered that segment of the project incomplete before the two colonies of bees moved in, Woody in March, the new one in April. I added a few more shade-tolerant grasses to the garden itself.

In this photo, taken in January, you can see short little Buzz sitting all alone in its new cul-de-sac of the neighborhood, while tall, stout Woody, remains in the original spot.

There are about 17 feet between the two hives. Our plan was to suit up and smoke Woody sometime after the first couple of winter freezes, then move Woody 2 to 3 feet a day for 5 to 6 days. It’s best not to move bee colonies more than a few feet at a time because bees use visual clues and pheromone signals to exit the hive and return. If hives are moved too far, too quickly, bees are lost.

After the move, the two hives would then sit side-by-side in their shady, corner garden. I knew that as we moved Woody, we’d need to traipse across some plants, but accepted that the few evergreen plants bothered wouldn’t be particularly damaged. The awful February storm made one thing easier: all my perennials, even the so-called “evergreens” were knocked back completely. So after I pruned all the plants to the ground that were in the hive’s pathway, it was time to move Woody.

What fun.

The big move progressed reasonably well for the first 4 or 5 days. The hive is ponderous and awkwardly tall with its two brood boxes and two honey boxes. Bee Daddy did most of the “heavy lifting” while I skootched the hive along, keeping it vertical. The last day was, for whatever reason, the worst. It was chilly, which should have made it easier because the bees are slower in cold weather, but it took us longer to get the hive set and leveled in its new place. When working the hives, I wear a full bee suite, with veil, and Bee Daddy wears jeans, boots, and a jacket with a veil. As we were finishing up, Bee Daddy’s bum fired up in pain; he realized that he’d forgotten to put a belt on his jeans and, well, you can guess what happens when the jacket rides up, the jeans slip down, and bees find a way into clothes and onto bare skin.

Poor Bee Daddy.

Ouch! Itch!

In April, we hived a new colony and renamed the hive Bo-Peep. If you’re familiar with Pixar’s ‘Toy Story’ franchise, you’ll know who Bo-Peep and Woody are–a great pair!

Drat! I wish I’d had the time to mulch before we moved the hives. The weeds are going to drive me nuts this growing season!

Both hives are thriving. We continue to feed sugar water to Bo-Peep, as she’s still combing out the frames, but she’s almost done so the supplemental feeding will end soon. Bo’s queen is laying eggs and she appears to be off to a good start in colony life. Soon (we should have already done it!), we’ll remove one of the two full honey boxes from Woody and add an empty one for them to fill during the course of the blooming season. Then we’ll have another gallon or more of honey to process; we already have an embarrassment of riches in that category.

From both a garden aesthetic and a practical positioning, I’m glad the hives are in the back of the garden. The bees don’t care where their hives sit as long as there is plenty of nectar and pollen available, and honey to make and hoard.

In our subsequent hive checks, Bee Daddy hasn’t once forgotten to put on a belt! Lesson learned!