Myrmecochory: Ant Plant Seed Dispersal

It's that time of the year again. This is probably my favorite part about native plant gardening because it combines so many of our loved spring ephemerals with ants.

Ants are largely overlooked by gardeners despite being the most common insect (by number). Part of the reason gardeners don't appreciate ants is likely because they are generalist foragers. So it doesn't matter a whole lot what plants are growing in a garden, native or non; if you have soil and dead wood,  chances are ants live in your yard. 

They play a vital role in removing dead insects. So after those big pretty swallowtail butterflies are done laying their eggs and visiting the flowers in your garden, ants are more than happy to collect, dissect, and consume their expired carcass. Though on the other hand, ants are also happy to remove butterfly eggs from host plants and often kill early instars to a lot of species. Ants don't forage equally on certain plants though, so it can depend on what's nesting near the tree/plant. Many caterpillars have defenses against ants too, but they're not always effective.

I have a Hackberry sapling that's about as tall as me right now. My dream is to someday see some Hackberry Emperors using it as a host plant. Every year though I got out there and find ants (Lasius alienus, Camponotus pennsylvanicus, C. chromaiodes, C. nearcticus, C. subarbatus, Temnothorax curvispinosus and Nylanderia faisonensis) foraging on the tree. They're mostly doing what's called nectar scraping where they wonder the plant licking and scraping the surface of the leaves to collect the small amounts of sweet sap that bleeds out of the leaves with the changing temperature of the day. The foraging power of 1 ant colony is enough to put a dent in the number of Lepidoptera eggs on a sapling; this one has 7 different species and likely multiple colonies of each constantly foraging on it, so I won't likely be seeing any Hackberry Emperors for several years.   

To a lesser degree, ants also think pollinators are delicious. They're mostly an issue with solitary bees, usually ground nesting or mason bee nests when discovered by ants. Ants typically don't dig into structures in search of food though, so as long as the burrows or tubes are properly secured with mud the developing bee larva should be safe.

My favorite thing ants do in the garden is called Myrmecochory, or ant plant seed dispersal. Even here though ants can be considered annoying. Let's say you paid $20 for a rare Trillium species, looking to start a clump of them over the next decade, which is how long many Trilliums take to flower from seed. Often though Trillium seeds have the annoying habit of walking away from the plant thanks to packets of "Elaiosome," a lipid rich substance on the seed, attracting ants to come and carry them home. 

This is Trillium vaseyi, (I believe), which is pollinated by Vinegar Flies and other sorts of carrion insects. Note Vinegar Flies are sold in pet stores as "Fruit Flies" because that sounds better than Vinegar Flies. True Fruit Flies consume fresh fruit and tune delicious apples and berries into balls of maggots. Vinegar Flies target foods that have already spoiled, drawn in by the fermenting smell of yest, cider and dead fish, which is what this flower smell like.  

Lots of Trilliums are either pollinated by carrion insects or bees. In my garden this particular Trillium species isn't quite ready to produce seeds yet, though they flower every year. A rabbit or some other critter trampled through the Trillium garden and snapped the stems to the two plants of this species so I've yet to get photograph them. Fortunately I have 8 other Trillium species in my garden!

Trillium grandiflorum! This is by far the most common and easily recognized Trillium species. It's pollinated by bees and while I never witnessed any bees visiting my flowers I have seen honeybees visiting them in other gardens when planted in sufficient numbers. I'm certain Bumblebees and others must visit them on occasion too. Currently I have a clump of about 9 plants of flowering age. Each of which has a few off shoots underneath that will reach flowering age in years to come. I may even need to divide a few in a year or two. 

Admittedly things like Twinleaf, Violets, Blood Root, Hepatica, Woodland Poppy, and Bleeding Hearts have already dropped their seeds for ants to disperse. Trilliums are latest ephemeral plant in North America to drop their seeds as many of the ones I've mentioned are already dormant.

Note how the leaves to the plants photoed above are singed at the tips. If you don't water your plants, they will fry right up and abort the seedpod entirely. You can plant Trilliums in full sun and they'll grow happily but probably won't produce seeds because of how much sun they get. You can compensate for this by adding water but there's only so much watering can do. It's best to plant them in the shade with a small amount of mulch and a low ground cover growing underneath such as Hepatica or Stone Crop. I like to water the roots to mine basically every time I walk past with the hose, or once every other day. Just put the water to the stem and count to 10 for each plant. Even doing this though won't guarantee success. Note the plant to the left didn't bother producing a seedpod at all. Of 9 plants only 2 didn't make seedpods, lack of pollination is likely the issue. Some that did make seedpods made smaller than average ones.   

You can tell a Trillium pod is ripe when you can see the seeds right through the pod. Another thing to look for is a change in color. Some go from green to purple, others go from purple to green, some ends up as bright red, depending on the species. Seeing these changes, and especially seeing the seeds within, mean you're within 2 weeks of the seeds being ripe. Seeds should be hard, like unpopped popcorn. The longer you wait the more likely the pod will become damaged, where ants, wasps, birds, and rodents will make off with the seeds. I've found seedpods completely hollow inside thanks to a small puncture hole allowing ants to gain entry.

Ants planting the seeds is not necessary for germination! This is just how the plants disperse their seeds in the wild. For gardeners looking to start a bed of these, I'd say go ahead and crack open a pod or two and just dump the seeds out in a shallow ditch and plant them yourself. Ideally the elaiosome should be removed before doing this, however that stuff is really effing on there!!! You can't just cut it off or take your finger nail to it. The risk is sometimes a kind of mold or fungus grows on the elaiosome and may kill the seed... I've never seen this happen to an extreme degree though. Maybe let the seeds dry out for two hours before planting. 

Personally I like letting the ants carry the seeds off. The consequence here is that I get Trillium seedlings coming up in the lawn and in unwanted places. These are easy enough to transplant when I notice them, but determining what species they are can't be done for many more years!

Shortly after a pod has become damaged, ants will more than likely find the seeds. Here a pavement ant, Tetramorium caespitum, has chanced upon the mother load.

Because dirt doesn't make for a thrilling background, I took the liberty of placing a seedpod on one of the stepping stones of my garden.

Nylanderia faisonensis is a nonnative woodland species that's slowly been invading areas rich in leaf litter. Nylanderia is a genus of tramp ants which are accidentally imported all over the world. Not all ants are ideal at planting seeds, and this is one of them. The ants are too small to carry the seeds anywhere, so instead of dispersing them as the plant wanted, the ants simply feed on the elaiosome where they found the seed. 

Tetramorium caespitum, Pavement Ants, do a better job but also are not native. Studies have been coming out finding that Nonnative Ants tend to favor the seeds to Nonnative Plants. In this case the Tetramorium were more than happy to disperse these seeds for me. (My yard also lacks any nonnative plant that has elaiosome on the seeds.)

Another risk facing Trillium seeds is the ants eating the seed along with the elaiosome. Trillium seeds tend to be rock hard for the first two years then soften up as they go to germinate. They are said to produce a fowl smell which is probably meant to encourage ants to move their nest elsewhere!

The ideal ant genus to be doing this seems to be Aphaenogaster which form abundant colonies of ~2000 ants throughout woodland settings. They're also very much in the habit of changing their nest location, so as the colonies move around they leave seed banks behind where plants like Trilliums tend to grow. There used to be a colony of Aphaenogaster rudis under this stepping stone which is why I picked it, sadly it seems the colony has moved on.

Two Pavement Ants trying to carry a Trillium seed home.

These ants are just big enough to handle the seed, though it still takes two of them to move it. Sometimes ants will actually give up after carrying the seeds a few feet. The seed is still dispersed from the parent plant but slightly at risk of being eaten by a rodent. Trilliums naturally grow best where there is plenty of leaf litter decomposing, and it's likely in these kinds of settings such discarded seeds are still successful. 

I love this shot.

The larger, ground nesting, Camponotus castaneus does a great job of dispersing seeds too. In the past I had assumed the seeds might get lost 4' underground where these ants like to nest. As it turns out though after bringing the seeds home, they're discarded a short while later, once the elaiosome has dried up typically. While the seeds may not be planted, they are dispersed and left in the colony midden pile (trash heap) which is still better than nothing.

These are one of the most elegant ants in my opinion and I love their chestnut brown and orange color tone. 

Some Early Myrmecochory Action

I so rarely get to see my specimens of Twinleaf, Jeffersonia diphylla, all flowering at once, let alone be pollinated by one another to see the seedpods. Normally the pods don't grow bigger than a nickle and shrivel up with nonviable seed inside. Today though I came across a fairly large seedpod. I reached down to see if it was soft enough to harvest and the darn thing broke right off the stem on me. Worst of all, the seeds weren't ready yet.... Waste not, want not.

Twinleaf disperses its seeds with aid of ants. Normally the seeds are rock hard and brown very much like unpopped popcorn. These had their little bit of elaiosome formed but the seeds were soft and green, like peas or green beans. The ants didn't seem to mind this and carried them off all the same. 

The elaiosome is what's treasured by the ants but with the seeds still soft it's likely they'll be eaten too. This is just as well though. I doubt they would have grown in this early state anyway. 

The ants here are Aphaenogaster rudis, which is actually a complex of several species. DNA analysis to count the number of chromosomes is required for a true species ID but overall they're the same. The species names are more or less scientific codes instead of Latin names, so the blanket term A. rudis works fine. They're all commonly found in woodlands across North America, they all nesting in soil and sometimes rotten wood in contact to the soil. They all form colonies with populations ranging from 2,000 - 12,000 ants. Nests are small and move around on occasion, making them ideal seed dispersers, along with their size.

Ideally the seeds would be rock hard and either discarded in the nest, or hauled out to the waste or midden pile where it would be buried in dead insects and other discarded seed husks anyway. Often plant seeds like this require two winters to germinate, where it's more likely the colony of ants has moved on, and or the garbage heap has decomposed into plant fertilizer. Some plants such as Trilliums emit a terrible odor when they germinate which likely helps encourage the ant colony to move along. 

The ants find nourishment everywhere they can, even among the seedpod itself. If the ants didn't come along to clean out the seeds, rodents, birds, and wasps would have. Rodents and birds love eating the seeds. Wasps go for the elaiosome just like the ants, but are unlikely candidates for seed dispersal. They may drop them on the surface for birds and rodents to find, or bury them too deep within the earth, or the seed could end up within the dead branch of a tree.

One plant that was right on time was the Woodland Poppy, Stylophorum diphyllum. The same idea of seed dispersal applies, however I can't get it out of my head how much the elaiosome to this plant resembles ant brood. It just looks like clusters of eggs and larva, which ants are more than happy to eat, especially if it doesn't belong to them.

The seeds, being ripe, are rock hard and firmly attached to the elaiosome packet. I have trouble removing it and I'm a human! It's unlikely the ants will be able to chew them into dust or "ant bread" so they'll be discarded within the nest and in a few years I'll likely have a patch of woodland poppy growing here.

Where this strategy of seed dispersal can go wrong though is when the wrong sort of ant finds the seed. This is an Acorn Ant known as Temnothorax curvispinosus. They're adorably tiny, with small colonies of ~200 workers that all fit right inside a hollow acorn, hollow plant stems, or dead plant matter. Not only do they nest in the wrong sort medium for starting seeds, but also the workers are too small to carry the seeds off. They're more likely to just recruit more workers from the colony and deal with the elaiosome where they found it, and the seed is simply left where it was beneath the parent plant. 

As a disclaimer I will admit all of these photos were staged to a point. You'll notice I just opened the seedpods and spilled them on a stepping stone where an Aphaenogaster rudis colony happens to nest. I just don't have the time to wait for this to happen naturally in my yard, but trust me it does. There are plenty of Woodland Poppy plants with open seedpods on them right now that have spilled their seeds in the garden. I typically find Tapinoma sessile and Crematogaster cerasi stealing the elaiosome from the seeds where they fell and don't disperse them. The occasional Aphaenogaster forager does find a few though and bring them back to the colony. Since they've been self seeding in my yard for the past three years now I've been finding Woodland Poppies coming up in places where ant colonies tend to nest, and or have been dragged away from the parent plant a short ways at least. Sometimes the ant carrying the seed home gives up or gets disturbed by a spider or something. 

Turkey Corn, Dicentra eximia, will likely be the next plant who's seeds do this to ripen in my garden... sadly I missed my chance with Hepatica this year, but they seem okay about germinating where they fall anyhow. So though a plant uses this strategy to disperse its seeds, it's not always required for success, simply a way to give them a leg up.

A Native Garden Growing Old

One of the absolute joys of having grown native plants for close what has to be ten years now is finding some of the more finicky plants reproducing in the yard.

It's nice when nurseries tell you the lighting conditions and how much moisture a plant loved but there's so much more to plants than that. What's the moisture supposed to be like over the winter? Do they like sandy soil, rocks, clay, loam? If so, is it just that they're tolerant of it, or is this a soil type they would naturally like to grow in? It's things like this that often leave gardeners wondering why certain plants never establish or do well in some locations.

I've found a lot of native plants are drought tolerant, but sometimes that's at the cost of them flowering and or going on to produce viable seed. 

One of the first natives I planted was a Hepatica acutiloba. Just one. This is a little seedling of that plant that's come up adjacent to that original plant. While I've since moved the parent, I still occasionally find seedlings sprouting up in that location.

When I found this species in the wild it was several plants nestled in a rocky slope on the shady bank of a river, just above the flood line. The seeds do have packets of elaiosome on them indicating that ants are the ideal method for planting them, however I've never been able to see this in action even after handing the seeds to the ants! The ants mostly ignore them, except for the invasive pavement ant, Tetramorium caespitum, but I'm 99% certain they'd eat the seeds instead of discard them in the nest for planting. This can happen even with native ant species too, it's just odd I haven't found a species that takes interest in the seeds to this plant. Maybe I'm using the wrong Hepatica species?

Something else I find odd is that the plant would produce a hairy stem this early on. I've read that the hair on the stem are to prevent ants from stealing nectar from the flower.... so why is it on a fresh stem, to a leaf, on a first year seedling, that's no where near a flowering age? The flowers on adult plants are produced higher early in the spring before any new leaves are pushed out.

And speaking of adult plants, the new ones I installed are finishing up their bloom phase. Soon they'll be pushing up new leaves. These flowering stems will lose their petals and slowly lean outward as the star-like cluster of seeds develops. When they're ready, the star of seeds basically falls apart. (I wonder if the seeds have to be wet for ants to take interest in them as the elaiosome isn't stored in a pod.) Another theory as to why the ant seed dispersal hasn't worked is the lack of cross pollination. Well this year I've seen mason bees working the flowers on sunny mornings so I might be able to rule that out, assuming they don't require a specialized pollinator.

Another page in the joys of seeds walking away from me comes in the form of Trilliums. Here a new Trillium seedling has pushed up its first leaf right in the lawn. (Either that or its a Pikmin) Thankfully it's a shady spot that never needs mowing, and also they're pretty easy to transplant. I've been growing Trilliums for years now so it's great to finally see this occurring.

Many of the Trilliums I've been growing have either diminished in root size or otherwise fluctuated between good and bad years but never really expanded. I believe this was because the soil wasn't healthy enough for them to really establish well thus their population stayed steady. Something that I started doing was allowing the leaf litter to stay on the flower beds I had Trilliums planted in. It's taken forever but finally the leaf litter has mulched itself in and I'm starting to see the established plants doing a lot better. Some of the smaller plants that never flowered before are dividing like crazy this year. I've got at least two plants that are pushing up a dozen stems, and even some of those have blooms on them. They're still pushing through the soil so I don't have an exact count but I'm impressed with the progress.

Another issue I was having was, some species weren't getting enough moisture over the summer months. So they'd come up and flower pretty but they couldn't maintain a seed pod once the summer heat set in, and watering them didn't seem to be helping much either. The leaves looked like they were cooking in the sun almost, despite the full shade conditions. I've since transplanted these to a different garden bed and they seem to do okay, though I won't know for sure until I see them flower and seed this year. At any rate they're getting more shade and are closer to the hose now.

Jeffersonia diphylla, Twinleaf is the other gardening triumph this year. I started with three plants, only one of which would flower. I was having the same issue where some years I'd lose the seed pod to lack of watering over the summer so I decided to move the one that flowered into a wetter flower bed and it died! The other two I basically ignored until last year when I noticed one flowering. It had a single bloom on it if I recall and this year it's produced eight!

This is one of the hardest wildflower to find flowering in the wild. From the time the blooms open you have roughly 8 hours to 2 days to see them and get your pictures in. Something as simple as a windy day will make them drop their petals and that will be it for the year! Because of this, pollination, and especially cross pollination isn't that common. I'm not sure that cross pollination is necessary to produce seed but I've heard it does help the plant make larger packets of elaiosome to entice more ants to transplant the seeds. My fingers are crossed that the seed pods develop because I'd rather not risk transplanting them again.

I've since found a wholesaler for Twinleaf, and Trilliums, and I'm reasonably happy with the product they sent me this year. It's just great seeing plants I've established are also trying to save me money.

A Tour of New Moon Nursery

Being a member of the New Jersey Native Plant Society came with an unexpected perk this year. They held a fund raiser where we got to tour New Moon Nursery. They're a wholesale nursery native plant nursery, family run, started back in 2003. They do dabble in a few nonnatives but only under contract.

Before then the property used to be a chicken farm, and you can sort of see it in some of the buildings. Also they keep a couple dozen chickens around.

This is their shipping department, which was I believe they said were originally chicken cages from floor to ceiling. Basically one day a week, they go out and collect the flats to plants customers have ordered. They then take empty trays and assemble the orders from these flats and load them up into trucks or set them aside for customers to arrive and pick up.

It's at this point in the tour that we were given our free reign to fill up a flat of our own with with up to 50 plants, including a few things they had listed as limited supply and not available! The only real restriction was they had to be plug sized. This was a gift for just a $100 donation to the NJ Native Plant Society made well in advance. The nursery has 5 heated greenhouses, 10 row cover house, and a few outside areas filled with several hundred species of plants. Basically everything was up for grabs!

The tour continued into the greenhouses where they showed us how they start up seedlings in trays. I found it neat to learn they then take small cuttings of the seedlings after they germinate and root them to double plant production. The end product still maintains genetic diversity and they're able to mass produce cultivars that way.

Seedlings were a small part of the overall products they had. Pretty much everywhere else had hundreds of trays of plugs that we were free to take. It was actually fun just walking around the greenhouses, letting your hands glide across warm season grasses, rushes, Amsonia, and other perennials.

Around back they had an area setup for shade plants. These were mostly sedges which are more cold and shade tolerant than most grasses. They are also larger than plug size and thus not up for grabs, though each species was represented in the greenhouses where we were free to take them.

There was a small garden area back here where one native plant stole the show.

Spigelia marilandica, Indian Pink, is a shade plant with a brilliant red and yellow flower. Despite the slight warning "It will spread on you," this perennial remains one of the more expensive and in high demand native plants around. This is something of a contradiction that I don't know the answer to. (Probably should have asked while I was there, whoops.) I think the demand is created by the fact that so few growers grow the plant.

Around the front was the Pièce de résistance. This is where most of their plants are kept that are ready for sale. At this point the tour basically fell apart as everyone went and started filling up their trays.

Naturally I'm drawn to what brings in the pollinators, and this time it was a surprising number of cultivars. 

I had to just marvel at the number of Scoliid Wasps on their goldenrod they had. There must have been a thousand of them on this one patch.


Two Hours Later, here's what I brought home:

5 Helianthus angustifolius, my favorite Swamp Sunflower.
5 Spigelia marilandica, Indian Pink.
5 Senecio aureus, Golden Ragwort, which I'm trying out in the meadow garden.
5 Sedum ternatum, Stonecrop, which I'm giving a try for the first time.
5 Symphyotrichum laevis 'Bluebird', which I've seen in action among black eyed susans and they look great together. 
5 Symphyotrichum oblongifolius 'October Skies' which I have blooming now in nice fluffy domes of flowers out in the meadow.
5 Symphyotrichum noave-angliae 'Purple Dome'. This New England Aster is a compact cultivar, similar to S. oblongifolius.  I was going to alternate this with 'October Skies' to make a boarder.
5 Caltha palustris, Marsh Marigold, I've been trying to establish for years now and think I have a spot it might like to grow. 
5 Sisyrinchium angustifolium, Blue-eyed Grass.
2 Eurybia spectabilis, Showy Aster, was a last second decision. The flowers are larger than most Asters and certainly are showy, but I recall the overall plant not being that impressive.
3 Chrysogonum virginianum 'Superstar'. This is a selection of Green and Gold which is another first for my yard. It's a shade loving ground cover that blooms from April into June.

All and all I'd say it was a great trip.


Also Photographed:
In the cardboard are plants from Bluestone Perennials.
3 Solidago 'Fireworks'
3 New England Aster 'September Ruby'
I bought these two because they flower together and I love the combination of red and yellow.
(Also not photographed are a few dozen Tulipa clusiana 'Lady Jane' bulbs which I'm giving a try next year. I'm curious to see if species tulips are better at attracting pollinators.)


And a native Pitcher Plant which had some Sundews flowering in the moss. This came as a free gift from Aquascapes Unlimited. 

Myrmecochory: Turkey Corn (Dicentra eximia)

Turkey Corn, Dicentra eximia, is a ... wildflower? I don't think it dies back technically until the autumn so it's not an ephemeral. The peak bloom is in the springtime though alongside the majority of our ephemerals in North America. A lot of people mistake this for Bleeding Heart, Lamprocapnos spectabilis, but that's a different genus and it's not native; it's also more commonly sold by nurseries but both tend to be available if you look hard enough. Turkey Corn is better though because, despite the flowers not being as heart shaped, it actually blooms year round until it goes dormant in the autumn.

Maybe 4 to 6 weeks after flowering seed pods will form on some of the blooms. Oddly enough though I've never seen any pollinators tending to the flowers so perhaps nocturnal moths are what it attracts? Seeds are tiny black beads with packets of elaiosome on them. 

Elaiosome is a lipid rich substance that ants find irresistible. Nutritionally speaking, it has more in common with a dead insect than nectar or honey, thus the ant thinks it's just found a dead bug, or eggs. It's been found that this substance effects the caste system within the colony. Some species will produce more new queens while others produce more workers over reproductive. So colonies will either go bigger or spread faster depending on which ant we're talking here. Both can benefit the plant in the long run. A bigger colony will plant more seeds in a central location; colonies also move and change location every year or two thus multiple patches are planted over the years. New queens produce more colonies overall so the seeds from one patch of plants can be taken in multiple directions potentially.

Certain Plants Compete for Ants

A new study came to my attention today titled "Competition as a Merchanism Structuring Mutualisms" by Robert J. Warren II¹, Itamar Giladi², and Mark A. Bradford³

I haven't read it fully yet however I think I got the gist. They setup two plots of Asarum arifolium (Wild Ginger) and Anemone americana (Hepatica), two plants that disperse their seeds via Myrmecochory. Basically a substance called elaiosome (ant food) is attached to the seed, the ants find the seeds and are encouraged to bring them back to the nest where they are planted. The authors point out that the Hepatica flowers earlier and produces smaller seeds than the Wild Ginger which flowers later and has slightly larger seeds. They suggest that larger seeds are always favored by the ants, and true enough larger seeds tend to have larger packets of elaiosome on them. Thus the Heptaica produces smaller seeds because it can get away with it and not have to compete with the larger seeds of the Wild Ginger.

This study could be expanded had they included Woodland Poppy and Trilliums which also follow this pattern, but Wild Ginger seeds are larger than Woodland Poppy... and then their argument falls apart completely when you include Violets which have seeds smaller than Hepatica. Twinleaf also has Trillium-sized seeds so there isn't a whole lot of support here.

We've already known that ants favor larger seeds because they plants produce better seeds and a higher quality of elaiosome on those that were pollinated better than others. Open a Trillium seed pod and you'll see some seeds are half the size of all the rest and even some that didn't even develop at all.

I'll read the rest of the study in full later on.

Bees, Butterflies and Blooms (Videos)

So here is a series of neat videos that took place, I believe, a year or two ago. It takes place in Europe so their idea of a Meadow and what plants should grow there are different than our North American Meadows. A lot of what they're planting seem to be seed mixes that are available in the nursery trade pretty much anywhere in the world. They're really well done videos, and watching them makes me feel annoyed that we don't have anyone like this making documentaries like this here in the US... that I'm aware of.

The emphasis is on feeding pollinators While this is great, the truth of the matter as I understand it is that natives are always better. They are the plants that the native pollinators evolved with to pollinate, many are very selective in their diet. Some bees are very select in the nutritional value of the pollen and nectar they take in, to the point where their young my not develop if they're fed the wrong diet. Given the choice though it is always a thousands times better to grow a random seed mix over a lawn. While the ideal nectar and pollen source may not be present, at least the pollinator has a selection. Of course there are tons of generalist pollinators that you can find in just about any garden. These don't have as selective pallet and are happy to be on most flowers. Most of the plants featured in these videos are offered at local garden centers thus very generalized. So while it's good they're providing food, I believe that if they had a wider range of native plants available to them it would help fix the issue of native plants having a shorter bloom time. Enjoy.

Phoenix dactylifera Back From Extinction

Wow 2,000 year old seeds still viable.
Extinct tree grows anew from ancient jar of seeds unearthed by archaeologists.
Something for the religious minded to read up on. Apparently the Roman Empire tried destroying this plant before they'd accepted Christianity as the one true religion of the empire. 

This is actually a cultivar of the true species which still exists today. But the real headline here is that the seeds are still viable after 2,000 years! This reminds me of the school down in Texas where a professor burred seeds in jars with instructions to dig them up at certain intervals. The findings thus far show that seeds to many plants can still be viable 50 or even 200 years later but I'd never heard of anything 2,000 years old before. Neat.

Planting Native Seeds

Seeds germinate best on bare ground and meadows that are overgrown with established plant life don't always see new individuals each year. This is why the first step in establishing a meadow is to destroy the previously existing plant life, often by smothering the area with plastic for a full year. (Chemicals work too but aren't for everyone.) If you're impatient like I was then just planting plugs or potted plants can help give your natives a fighting chance against the lawn and weeds that are established. This is the method I went with because my lawn has lots of switch grass and weeds that spread by underground corms on the roots. What's happened though is as my native plants die of old age they're replaced with this invasive grass instead of native seedlings. The only thing that does well in these patches are Spiderwort, and taller plants like False Indigo and Tall Coreopsis. The thing is False Indigo and Tall Coreopsis don't spread that fast and Spiderwort dies back to the ground by August. I'd like to see other things seed in like the Milkweed, Liatris, Asters and other Coreopsis species.

So I've come up with a simple method of getting these plants to hopefully establish better. Because seeds germinate best on bare soil, I'm creating some bare soil. This comes in the form of several 1 and 3 gallon pots I was using to grow pepper plants and tomatoes here and there wherever they'd fit. These food plants are annuals so the soil is just going to go to waste anyhow. So I collect seeds to whatever looks ready and massage them into the soil.

Last year I noticed one of my asters had a stem fall right into a potted plant. I also had a cutting from another Aster that had fallen into a hanging basket. In both cases I found new Aster plants germinate and grow the following spring. This reduces the need to have to over winter seeds in the fridge or basement room or grow them out in the green house and have to water them in the winter. So hopefully I get some success with this method. I'm even tempted to plant specific combinations that look nice in the same pots so I can plant them that way on the following year. Pink New England Asters go great with medium height Goldenrod species for example.

Milkweed Beetles Stepping Up

Well, this year was abysmal for Monarchs in my garden. I don't recall them ever being that prevalent even before I started planting their host plants. We usually didn't see them until August when they'd already started migrating back south. They tended to gather more along the coastal parts of New Jersey and in old fields and ditches where milkweed grows wildly. I live more inland on the Delaware River side of NJ and there aren't a whole lot of fields or ditches to speak of here. They're still around of course but mostly they'd just pass through and be on their way.

The first native plant I decided to buy was actually Swamp Milkweed, Asclepias incarnata. I bought them originally because I wanted an environmentally friendly nectar source for my honeybees. I didn't know squat about plants at the time and bought them from Forest Farm Nursery, which I've found to be rather expensive but they have a great selection if you need something. They were planted just after July I think, which is past their usual time for flowering, especially for transplants that had been shipped from California (Oregon?). While I was bummed that I wouldn't see any bees on them, I eventually found out they were the host plant to the Monarch Butterfly. I remember thinking "Oh that's neat." So I go outside to look at them and wouldn't you know it, there's a female Monarch out there fluttering around and dotting the underside of leaves with her eggs, like right then and there! About a month or so later I found a chrysalis right on the plant, which is unusual because they normally abandon the host plant in the last instar. Yet more unusual was the fact that I then watched that same chrysalis hatch ten days later. Truly, I've never had the stars align so perfectly before in my life. I was brought to tears watching this first butterfly hatch (which is a little odd for a male in his 20's). This moment really stuck with me, watching it unfold its wings and attempt to fly with a passing breeze, and then finally fluttering off never to be seen by me again.

I've tried to create this moment by sharing it with friends whenever I can but for whatever reason they're not taken by it the way I was. It's always "Oh that's neat," and they think nothing of it. Meanwhile I've spiraling into a plant buying obsession over the years and regularly spend $500 a year on plants. This year's bill was more than $800!  

While I've seen Monarchs flying around, none have decided to grace my garden with caterpillars this year. Their seeds are now blowing in the wind, and I hope to get more plants established in the yard. The plants haven't gone to waste though. Swamp Milkweed Beetles are really starting to become common in my yard.

The year started out with just one nibbling on the buds to my Purple Milkweed... which I then relocated to a Swamp Milkweed. Presumably she was a female because now there are dozens of them all over my plants. I've found their larva (grubs?) which look sort of like Potato Bug larva if you've ever seen those. They're in the same family of "leaf beetles" which require specific host plants the way most moths and butterflies do.

They nibble on the leaves, well past the life span of the bright orange/yellow Oleander Aphids. Here you can see the aphids have all died; one chilly night in the 40's and they're dead it seems. The beetles persist on though. (There was also a cluster of Milkweed Bugs which the cold may have done in too! I don't see them in the garden anymore.)

Adults over winter in leaf litter and shallow burrows in the earth. They emerge early in the spring with their host plants. They then lay their eggs for the next generation, and die.

While I can't do much about illegal logging in Mexico, or Herbicide use in Texas, hopefully I'll get to seem Monarchs in my garden again someday.