September is a month of transition. Depending on the year, it’s usually when the hot days of summer finally give way to cool breezes drifting through our cracked windows at night. The fireflies may have disappeared, but they’re replaced by migrating chimney swifts, the first hints of fall color, and, of course, apple picking!
If you’re curious about what else has been happening outdoors, I hope you’ll join me on a quick virtual stroll through nature!
Walnut mycena
This past weekend, Groundswell was fortunate to have the Madison Mycological Society out for a morning of mushroom hunting at Patrick Marsh. For several hours, these fungi fanatics searched high and low for as many different species as they could find. I heard folks tossing around terms like “stinkhorn egg” and “leathery veil,” saw mushrooms in shades of purple, smelled a few that I never want to smell again (along with some that actually smelled wonderful), and learned a ton along the way.
The fungus pictured above was one of my finds. I spotted it growing on a walnut, which turns out to be a common place to find this species, appropriately named the walnut mycena. These fungi have evolved a specialized relationship with walnuts, feeding on their nutrient-rich husks, which are naturally difficult for many organisms to break down. It was just one of the many fascinating discoveries that morning!
Banded garden spider
If you’ve wandered aimlessly, or even purposefully, through a prairie this month, you may have noticed quite a few banded garden spiders out and about. Their webs are incredibly strong, and I often find surprisingly large grasshoppers tangled up in them. The evening I found this particular spider, the sunlight was hitting its web just right, creating such a striking scene that I had to stop and take a photo.
I did a little research on banded garden spiders and discovered that they often orient their webs from east to west. They also tend to hang head-down with the dark underside of their abdomen facing the sun, allowing them to absorb as much solar heat as possible late in the year. In other words, this spider’s positioning wasn’t random at all!
Bottle gentian
One of my favorite plants to find in a prairie this time of year is bottle gentian. The rich blues and purples of its flowers are stunning, and they’re surprisingly easy to spot, as long as you’re looking down at your feet.
As the name suggests, bottle gentian flowers don’t open up like most other flowers. Instead, their petals remain tightly closed, resembling a sealed bottle or jar. In fact, large bumblebees are among the few pollinators strong enough to push their way inside and reach the pollen hidden within. Check out THIS VIDEO to see a bumblebee in action!
Viceroy butterfly (left) and monarch butterfly (right)
Lastly, I’ll leave you with this photo of what appears to be two monarch butterflies. Recently, we tagged monarchs at Westport Prairie and Patrick Marsh to help document individual butterflies before they begin their long journey south to Mexico. Before tagging each butterfly, we take a wing measurement, determine whether it’s male or female, and, of course, weed out the impersonators!
The butterfly on the left isn’t actually a monarch. It’s a viceroy butterfly, one of the monarch’s most convincing lookalikes. You can tell the difference by looking for the black line that runs across the hindwing of the viceroy. Viceroys are also generally a bit smaller than monarchs.
Like monarchs, viceroys are unpalatable to many predators because of the plants their caterpillars eat. Monarch caterpillars feed primarily on milkweed, which contains toxic compounds that make monarchs distasteful to predators. Viceroy caterpillars feed on plants such as willow, poplar, and aspen, which contain salicylic acid and related compounds that can also make them taste bitter to birds.
Well, I hope you enjoyed this month’s virtual tour of nature as it’s happening. See you next month!