Got allergies? Don't blame the goldenrod!

It's mid-September and the goldenrod is now in full bloom -- right about the same time that the pollen count hits the roof.  Over and over, I hear people blaming their hay fever on goldenrod.   But they are wrong!  Read on...

A field of goldenrod on my land in Minnesota --
haven for many butterflies & other insects

 Everyone can see the bright yellow of a field of goldenrod plants in full bloom.  As they look at all those yellow flowers along the road, they visualize clouds of pollen choking the air.  Just the sight of it all is enough to make some people sneeze.

But the fact is, goldenrod pollen is not spread by the wind at all.  This is why weather reports that include a pollen count never even mention goldenrod as a source.

A Goldenrod flower

Don't believe me?  See for yourself: Touch a goldenrod flower and you will not have any pollen on your hands.  Shake one and you won't see any clouds of pollen hitting the air.  It just doesn't blow around.   It spreads by sticking to the bodies of insects.  Unless you are a bug with lots of tiny hairs on your body to pick up the pollen, it doesn't leave the plant very easily.  Ecologically speaking, Goldenrod is an important nectaring flower for wasps, bees, butterflies, and other beneficial insects.  So please -- don't yank it out!

Ragweed plant in full bloom

The real culprit is ragweed, a coarse weedy green plant that blends into the background in fields and woodland edges.  Unlike the showy flowers of goldenrod, the rather nondescript flower stalks of ragweed are just loaded with pollen, and it does indeed spread on the wind.

Ragweed is not particular about habitat, and will grow just about anywhere.  The plant in this photo grew next to my compost pile, so it got to be over 6 feet tall from all that rich chicken manure.  Along the road you might see flowering ragweed only about a foot high, eking out an existence in the hard-packed gravel on the shoulder.  But once you learn to recognize it, you'll see it growing just about everywhere.

(Well, maybe not in the high desert -- but it crops up in irrigated areas like Las Vegas.  In fact, according to The 30 Worst Cities for Ragweed, Las Vegas ranks #2.  The top city on the list is Phoenix, Arizona.)

The stuff is very easy to pull up, so if you learn to to recognize it before it pollens out, you can at least eliminate it from your garden.  But with all the acres and acres of wild areas where it can flourish, you will probably have to wait until frost kills the plants before your "hay fever" finally goes away for the season.  Just don't blame your misery on the innocent goldenrod!

Typical distribution of ragweed pollen in
the USA in September

Meteors and Memories

Last night I finally got to watch the Perseid meteor showers.  I say "finally" because the previous nights this year were cloudy, and last year it rained the whole time.  But last night was perfect.  A clear sky with no moon.

About half an hour after midnight I turned off all the house lights to avoid light pollution in the yard, then took a sleeping bag and a pillow outside and lay down on the front lawn.  (My wife originally wanted to go, too, but was too tired when the time came, so she wished me well and went back to sleep.)  I was soon joined by two of my cats, who came up from hunting rodents by the chicken coop to sit on me and purr.

I did not have to wait long to see a meteor.  I counted 23 in an hour, several of them big bright streaks, but none to compare with the fireball my wife and I saw several years ago.  But even with the excitement of seeing a meteor, it was still a slow, quiet activity, with a lot of waiting between sightings.  You can't push nature, you just have to go with her pace of things.  As I lay there waiting for the next one to streak across the sky, I was reminded of when we did this at summer camp many years ago. It was a pleasant time to reminisce.

I also saw what was probably a satellite moving across the sky -- or was it maybe the space station?  I remember back in the late 50s and early 60s, when satellites were a new thing, there used to be schedules in the paper about when they would pass over.  My father and I would go out in the yard to try and spot them.  It was a big deal back then to spot a passing satellite -- way before GPS and satellite TV, long before anybody felt a need to "unplug" because nobody was as plugged in and speeded-up like today.  What we watched were just little orbiting balls reflecting the sun, the very beginnings of space flight.

The night was chilly and getting downright cold -- unusual for mid-August here, but welcome, because there were no mosquitoes.  The ground was getting damp though, and my old bones were feeling the lumps in the ground.  so after another half hour, around 2am, I went inside and called it a night.

OY VEY! All this milkweed and NO MONARCHS!

For the past 16 years I have been allowing Common Milkweed to naturalize on my land for the Monarchs butterflies. This is just one of several big patches that I maintain.  (I am now in the process of certifying my land as a Monarch Way Station through Monarch Watch.)

Normally I could walk out there and within minutes find the whole life cycle of the Monarch butterflies.  This year: zero-zilch-nada.  I found only THREE EGGS, which I brought in to raise for my grandson to watch.  Only one hatched.  It is now a pupa.  The question is, when it emerges as a butterfly, will it be able to find a mate?

As for adult butterflies, I've only seen one Monarch all summer.  Other species are scarce, too.   Normally this field would be teeming with all kinds of butterflies, as well as bees and other insects.  This year there are very few.   According to a March 18, 2013 article on the National Geographic News site, this year has hit an all-time low for Monarch populations.

The most common butterflies on my land this summer seems to be the skippers and  fritillaries, but even those are few and far between.   I saw on the news that we have lost a whole generation of Monarchs down around Texas, due to bad weather.  Parts of the country were so cold this spring that there was no milkweed for the Monarchs to breed on when they arrived.  Here we had rain every day for a month, followed by an unseasonal heat wave.  Now it is chilly again, breaking record lows all over the state.   Yes indeed, global weirding is a reality!

We have also lost a lot of Monarchs over the years due to loss of habitat.  Monarchs migrate north in stages --as many as four generations per summer -- and if one of those generations can't find milkweed to breed on, well, you end up with no butterflies going further north.  Like this year (sigh).  As I always do in all my Monarch reports, I strongly encourage everyone to save a space in their landscaping for some milkweeds to feed the Monarchs.  If you don't want Common Milkweed (which spreads by underground runners that can be invasive in small spaces), then try one of the many other kinds.  The so-called Butterfly Flower (formerly "Butterfly Weed") comes in a variety of colors that will fit any garden.  And it stays put in a pretty clump.

The Torah (Leviticus 19.27) says:

"When you reap the harvest of your land, do not reap to the very edges of your field or gather the gleanings of your harvest.   Leave them for the poor and for the foreigner residing among you. I am the LORD your God."

Of course, this originally referred to the human poor gleaning the fields for leftover crops.  However, I would like to suggest that we extend this to include to other species on our planet.  We need those "wild corners" for species like Monarch butterflies to survive.  Maybe this is also something that God had in mind when he told us to leave the corners of our fields.  Nowadays, very few people actually go out and glean fields, but a lot of wildlife species benefit from leaving space for them to live.  We do not need to squeeze out every bit of profit from every inch of land.  Leaving the corners for God's creatures benefits us all.  Keep this in mind when you plan your garden.

Crickets chirping: That sweet, sad sound of summer's end

NOTE (added July 22, 2015):  My blog stats show that people keep getting here by searching for pages about crickets chirping in spring.  Crickets do not not chirp then, because they do not yet have their wings to make the sound.  So if you are hearing high-pitched chirpy sounds at night, it is most likely you are hearing Spring Peeper frogs or some similar species.  These make one of the first night sounds in early spring.  Read below about how and when crickets do chirp.

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I heard my first cricket chirp of the season last night.  I love this sound, but I always feel a pang of sadness as well, because it signals the beginning of the end of summer.  Here in Minnesota, the chirping usually starts in mid-August, but is a bit early this year, perhaps because of the unusually warm weather.   Hearing crickets early does not necessarily signal an early winter, because warm weather can speed up the life cycle of these insects.

Adult male field cricket
(courtesy of OrganicGardeningInfo.com)

Of course, crickets don't really know in a conscious way that fall is coming.  The reason they don't chirp earlier is that they don't yet have the proper equipment to make the sound.   Crickets go through a life cycle called direct development:  egg, immature stage, adult.

When they hatch from their eggs in spring, the tiny hatchlings already look like crickets, but do not yet have their wings.  As they grow, they shed their skins several times until they get wings in the last, adult stage.

And it is the wings that the male cricket rubs together to make his chirps.  (Common folklore has him rubbing his legs together, but that is not correct.)  You can get an approximation of the temperature in Fahrenheit by counting the number of chirps in 15 seconds, then add 40. The reason this works is because crickets, being cold-blooded creatures, are more active on warm nights than chilly ones.

The adult female cricket also has wings, but they are smooth and do not have the ridges that the male rubs to make the chirp, so she does not sing.  This is one way you can tell an adult male from a female.  You can also tell a female by the long stiff ovipositor extending from the tip of her abdomen, which she uses to lay her eggs in the ground in late summer or fall.  The adult crickets die off with the coming of winter, and the eggs hatch in the spring to produce a new generation.

In China and other Asian countries, crickets are considered good luck, and are often kept for pets in specially-designed cages.   Some European traditions hold that a cricket chirping in the house is a sign of future prosperity.  (I sure wish this one were true!)  When I was a child, I kept crickets in a terrarium in my room and enjoyed hearing them sing at night.   They ate vegetable trimmings (especially cukes and tomatoes) and often lived through the winter (which would not happen in the wild here.  Crickets die with the frost and their offspring winter over as eggs.)  Some of the modern "bug cages" now available would probably work just as well.  Just be sure to take good care of your crickets, the same as you would with any other companion animal.