Summer Nectar 3 - Tragedy

Knowing how attractive Japanese knotweed flowers are to insects, I kept my eye on the developing inflorescence  during late July and early August. Apparently a fragrance message finally went out into the air. Insects arrived in earnest on August 11.

Japanese knotweed by the meadow

Although it looks like a shrub in summertime Japanese knotweed is really a perennial that dies back to its subterranean crown with winter frost. The only clump of it blooming in Halibut Point State Park grows close to where the White Fir was wantonly cut down in the first phase of the landscape renovation.

Honeybees nectaring on Japanese knotweed flowers

A has friend written in, "I just learned from a beekeeper in Peabody that goldenrod, purple loosestrife and Japanese knotweed are the three major botanical plants to supply honey bees with nectar in the fall."

Pure Green-Sweat Bee, Augochlora pura

For two days in mid-August after the flowers opened the knotweed grove was a wonderland of insect life.

Swift Feather-legged Fly, Trichopoda pennipes

Many of the flies that came to feed in the banquet arrived in the protective guise of bees or wasps.

A bee-like Margined Calligrapher Flower Fly, Toxomerus marginatus

A wasp-like Thick-headed Fly, Physocephala tibialis

An occasional butterfly joined in the winged melee. For an observer the knotweed provided close-up views of a stream of life that is usually much more dispersed and elusive.

Silver-spotted Skipper, Epargyreus clarus

On the third morning as I arrived at this showcase, a man in an orange HazMat suit was leaving carrying a sprayer. The foliage and flowers of the Japanese knotweed glistened with herbicide.

August 13

Something about the State-sanctioned landscape improvements had condemned the knotweed. An inconvenience? An invasive species? Honeybees themselves are a non-native species, and homo sapiens must be the ultimate invasive species.

Once the original ecology of Halibut Point was disrupted by agriculture, by industrial quarrying, and by horticultural introductions, the land was opened to all manner of adventitious plants. Some of these have commingled enthusiastically and irreversibly with native species in the reforestation of the area. Some of them offer crucial sustenance to insects and birds.

Gut-wrenching memories from Vietnam flooded back to my mind, of lethal science justified against an enemy, of a poisoned countryside, of disintegrating health in exposed veterans, of multi-generational deformities among victims of Agent Orange. It was a tough day in the sanctuary.

Two weeks later

Time has passed, and I have gradually absorbed the realization that this tragedy was a small event in the constant tumult of beauty and destruction that accompanies human footsteps.

 Those two days at the knotweed were a special portal into the wonder of it all.