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| Meadowsweet, Spiraea alba |
One of the charming wildflowers gracing Halibut Point in early summer is meadowsweet. Its panicles of quarter-inch flowers bloom atop shrubs that grow anywhere from three to five feet tall, depending on available soil and moisture. Those little flowers form an appealing nutrition destination to many kinds of insects. As we've seen previously, the plant trades its energy resources for pollination favors.
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Carpet Beetle, Cryptorhopalum triste |
A Carpet Beetle, one of the tiniest visible to my eye, nestles right into a cluster of pollen-tipped flower stamens.
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Oriental Beetle, Anomala orientalis |
Its considerably larger relative the Oriental Beetle belongs
to the scarab family. Scarabs are distinguished from other beetles by their
unusual antennae, which terminate in three flattened plates that fit together
to form a club. The family has a number of notorious members such as the
Japanese Beetle with destructive appetites for leaves and other plant tissues.
Many scarabs are brightly colored with a metallic sheen.
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Soft-winged Flower Beetle, Attalus terminalis |
A close
look into meadowsweet inflorescences might reveal a carnival variety of
creatures in the hexapod world, the six-legged fauna that vastly outnumber all
other animals in population, species, and experimentation of design.
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A Banded Longhorn Beetle, Typocerus velutinus, surrounded by
Tumbling Flower Beetles |
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Another species of Flower
Longhorn Beetle, Etorofus plebejus |
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A third species of Flower
Longhorn, Strangalia luteicornis |
And not to forget…the red beetles that decimate my lilies and kill the plants within a couple of years!
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