Natural Connections

“Their caterpillars eat woolly alder aphids,” explained Cade, as we both crept closer to the Harvester butterfly with our cameras ready. “And the adults sip on the aphids’ honeydew.”

I felt a little twinge of dismay. Woolly alder aphids are one of my favorite creatures! In the fall they float around like little fairies covered in wispy strands of white wax. I’ve written about them before. Just like most aphids, woolly alder aphids suck plant juices from a host. The alder shrub harvests sunlight, water, and air; the aphids harvest the alder’s sap; and then ants (and, I just learned, Harvester butterfly adults) feed on sugary honeydew secreted by the aphids. In return, ants provide the aphids some protection from predators…predators like the Harvester butterfly’s caterpillars.

It was like something out of a fairytale. Hundreds of tiny orange butterflies rose up in waves before me as I walked down the grassy path. Each fluttered delicately for a moment before sinking back to rest on the green blades, the lupine leaves, and almost every surface in the community garden.

Their name, however, gives them away as an interloper. European skippers are native to many places—Europe, Scandinavia, North Africa, and Central Asia—but they aren’t native here.

“Can’t you smell that?” asked Cade from the bow of the canoe. A warm breeze tickled the back of my neck and blew any odors away from me. He’d brought up a small piece of an aquatic plant with a similar structure to the bladderwort leaves I’ve examined recently. The central, green stem bore whorls of thin leaves.

As Cade placed the curiosity on the blade of my canoe paddle, the breeze swirled, and I caught more than a whiff of sulfur. “It’s chara!” he declared.

Also known as muskgrass or skunkweed due to its strong odor, chara is a type of algae that grows in clean, hard water with a high pH and lots of minerals.

“Oh!” I exclaimed happily, as a submerged plant caught my eye. Its thin, branching, bottle-brush leaves looked somewhat similar to coontail or even watermilfoil, but I knew better. “Bladderwort!” I exclaimed. I’ve written about this carnivorous plant with yellow snapdragon-like flowers before.

Pulling up the whole plant—this species grows as a free-floating leafy stem less than a foot long—I found the namesake bladders. Smaller than an apple seed and of a similar shape, the translucent capsules sparkled in the sun. That beauty is deadly.

Off the cuff, many folks would tell you that the white fluff flying on the breeze this time of year is from cottonwood. The thing is, Eastern cottonwood—Populus deltoides—is pretty rare in the northern third of Wisconsin. But, as it turns out, the white fuzz is a family trait, and local relatives abound.

Columnist’s Note: Anne Torrey, of Gordon, WI, participated in a Natural Connections Writing Workshop I led last fall, and is continuing to hone her craft. I hope you enjoy her unique account of witnessing a common event—the drumming of the ruffed grouse. While the first drumming reached our ears months ago, the subtle beats still echo through the woods as males assert their territories and make sure they’ve attended to all of the ladies.

–Emily Stone, Naturalist/Education Director at the Cable Natural History Museum.

It’s hard to imagine all of what goes on at a chemical level in nature. Here is a common plant, growing in mucky wetlands, that uses carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and energy from the sun to make food, chemical weapons, and pharmaceuticals.

Newly emerged queen bumble bees have strong legs and a long tongue that allow them to access the nectar hidden deep in Dutchman’s breeches flowers. These early flowers rely on fuzzy bumble bees for pollination—few other insects are active during cool spring days.

Dutchman’s breeches flowers hide their nectar away in the tips of their pantaloon-shaped flowers. Hungry bees who are too small to access the nectar properly will simply chew holes to access the nectar.

This episode originally aired in 2019. 

“Lakes are cradles for all sorts of babies as they grow up,” I told the group. “How many of you like to play in the mud and water as you grow up wild?” The little ones—only 3 and 4 years old, grinned. One student looked up at his teacher. “I love mud best!” I chuckled in agreement.

Then we all transformed ourselves into dragonfly eggs by hugging our knees. We wiggled, and grew, and hatched into crooked-legged-nymphs. The nymph stage of a dragonfly’s life is essentially their childhood.

The robin woke me up again today. He’ll likely be my alarm clock for the rest of the summer as he rushes to raise up to three broods of chicks. Hermit thrushes will soon join the chorus, too. Hopefully, as Thoreau predicted, “whenever he [or she] hears it, it is a new world and a free country.”