- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Long dangly legs, elongated body, and long, four-segmented antennae topped with a small club.
But there they were, stilt bugs, foraging on evening primrose at dawn in our "living laboratory"--a pollinator garden in Vacaville, Calif.
The "stilt walkers" belong to the family Berytidae, order Hemiptera (true bugs).
UC Davis distinguished professor Lynn Kimsey, director of the Bohart Museum of Entomology at UC Davis, confirmed that they are indeed stilt bugs.
Most stilt bugs are phytophagous, meaning they feed only on plants, but some are predaceous and feed on small insects, such as mites and aphids.
Stilt bugs are so-named because of their extremely long legs. Long legs? Check out this dorsal drawing of a stilt bug by Kathleen Schmidt of USDA's Agricultural Research Service.
Spined stilt bugs "are an occasional pest of greenhouse tomatoes that can cause flower and fruit abortion and unsightly feeding damage in mature fruits," according to Penn State Extension.
Real stilt walkers are known for their exceptional balance, agility and grace.
Their bug mimics, however, look as if they could "exceptionally" trip and fall flat on their clubbed antennae.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
As National Pollinator Month winds down, let's visit a "morning" carpenter bee and an evening primrose.
The evening primrose, Oenothera biennis, native to the Americas, is unique in that it blooms as night (as its name implies) and dies back at noon.
Early in the morning on June 25, we spotted a female Valley carpenter bee, Xylocopa sonorina, heading over to an evening primrose. This four-petaled yellow flower, is lemon-scented. Simply spectacular!
Our carpenter bee, already dusted with yellow, made a bee-line for some more nectar and pollen. The yellow pollen resembled gold dust on a miner.
"Over the centuries, indigenous people in North America have used the plant as food and traditional medicine," according to Wikipedia. "The seeds of the plant are important food for birds, including American goldfinch, Northern bobwhite, and mourning dove, and it is a larval host for both the primrose moth and the white-lined sphinx moth. Bumblebees and honeybees also visit the flowers."
So do carpenter bees! (And syrphid flies and more!)
