Apt Identification

I'm really not an "app" person. I have a smartphone that is not activated, so basically it's just for using internet on wi-fi and taking pictures, and so a lot of apps are pretty useless to me. If I'm not in range of wi-fi, I can't do anything with them. I do have wi-fi in my house, though, and it extends a decent distance into the backyard, so today when I finally decided that I really needed to know the name of a plant I have been wondering about for years that I have not wanted to go to the trouble of searching on the internet (because I am terrible at internet searching), I decided to install an app for identifying things in nature. And... the plant in question is a maple leaf viburnum (I did confirm this by searching on the internet–I find it much easier to search for something when you already know what it is), which, I am happy to learn is a native plant in this area. It is a relief that something growing in my backyard is a native plant, when there are so many invasives there, not just in my original yard but also the acres we bought last summer. Clearing the invasive plants has been a constant labor for us for almost a year at this point, and not only have we barely made a dent, but a lot of what we cut is growing back. It's a Sisyphean labor. It can be terribly discouraging, and there is a bitter irony to it all, that plants we are trying to remove will grow back if even the tiniest bit of root is left deep in the ground, but things that we have actually planted have rarely survived and thrived. We spent several years and hundreds of dollars trying to establish mountain laurel–our state flower, so obviously native–on our property, and not a single shrub survived. But plants that we have cut down, sprayed with herbicide, and dug up by the roots come back practically as soon as you turn around. I says something that in our nearly 36 acres in Connecticut there is not one mountain laurel bush, but there are huge swaths of multiflora rose, bittersweet, barberry, and autumn olive. And what it says is not good. People plant invasive plants because they are pretty, but they take over acres of land with ease, and crowd out the native flora. There are a number of reasons that this is a problem, but mostly it has to do with the native fauna–and insects are the hardest hit by this environmental disruption. A lot of insects, particularly Lepidoptera larvae (aka caterpillars) are monophagous, which means they eat only one kind of food. If a non-native plant crowds out a native plant that is a host plant for a butterfly's larvae, then the butterfly doesn't just adapt to eat the non-native plant. It's the end of that butterfly in that area. But that hurts more than just the butterfly. Caterpillars make up a huge portion of the diet of birds that are insectivorious (insect eaters). What happens when there are a lot of species of caterpillars that aren't around anymore? That's a lot less food for the birds. If there's not enough for the birds to eat, well, you don't have birds in that area anymore. Nature has a natural balance. It's all connected. It's a system. You know how in the movies, when someone is trying to be subtle about preventing someone from going somewhere they remove a small part of the engine of their car (like spark plugs), and then the car can't start? None of the engine works without that tiny part? Nature may not be quite that finicky, but the same principle is basically involved. You can't take away a part of the system and expect the system to keep working. Anyway, my original point is... Huzzah! That plant I keep wondering about is not another invasive plant! I should have suspected that it was native, though, because it is VERY popular with insects, including caterpillars.

Right about now you're probably expecting me to post a picture of a maple leafed viburnum, but I am not going to, because all of the pictures I took of them today came out terrible. It was overcast and windy, weather that is the enemy of photography (though today I was at least grateful that it didn't start raining until after both my bug walk and my forest walk).

Backyard Bug of the Day:

 Honey bee. It was just resting on a dame's rocket flower.

Other Bugs:

 Most days I can find two of these katydid nymphs on a particular multiflora rose plant, and I have been wondering if I am seeing the same two every day, or if there are more of them and I always just see two random ones. Today I saw three. That doesn't necessarily answer the question. I am waiting for them to get bigger and molt, moving into their next instar.

 Looper caterpillar. In the background, near the bottom of the picture, you can see a stinkbug.

 Leaf hopper nymphs

 Caterpillar, possibly ruby quaker moth

Arachnid Appreciation:
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 This could possibly be another ruby quaker moth caterpillar. I assume it was killed by that spider, though that seems rather extraordinary. Spiders don't seem to care about the size of their prey. Photobombed by an aphid.