Category Archives: My Garden

A Gypsy Moth Summer on Lake Muskoka

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Back in late June, I noticed the odd dark, spotted caterpillar here and there on our property on Lake Muskoka, 2-1/2 hours north of Toronto. On July 2nd, my son informed me I had a caterpillar on my leg.  Looking down, I saw a European gypsy moth caterpillar (Lymantria dispar) resting on my pink capris.  Knowing how I love photographing insects, my son actually said, “Or… did you put it there?” Uh, no!  Recalling that the bristly caterpillar can produce an allergic dermatitis, I used a paper towel to remove it and toss it outdoors. Perhaps it was a sign, a portent of the next month as I discovered the extent to which the caterpillars had laid future claim to the trees – mostly oaks and white pines – on our 2 acre property.  Though I had heard from friends about massive defoliation of poplars and other hardwood trees in the farming areas northwest of Toronto, I could detect little or no damage where we were.  Yet. But given the large numbers of female moths and egg masses I found in July, it seems that the caterpillars on Lake Muskoka were just preparing for their assault for 2021, a cyclical peak that normally occurs every 8-10 years..

This last stage of the caterpillar’s spring/early summer existence is quite beautiful, if destructive insects can be said to be beautiful. The studio shot below is by Dr. Didier Descouens of France, via Creative Commons.

Lymantria dispar

“France” and “gypsy moth” have another connection: the scenario that saw an invasive forest pest introduced accidentally by a French artist/entomologist/astronomer named Etienne Leopold Trouvelot.

He was not yet 30 when he emigrated from France in 1857 and settled in the house below on Myrtle Street in Medford, Massachusetts. For a decade, he attempted to raise caterpillars for silkworms, especially those of the North American native Polyphemus moth, a giant silk moth with a 6-inch wingspan.  Silkworm experimentation was something of a fad at that time and it was noted that at one time he had a million larvae in a netted woodland behind his house. Sometime in the late 1860s, he travelled to Europe and returned with gypsy moth eggs, evidently hoping to hybridize them with natives to be disease-resistant.  Around 1868-69, some of the eggs or larvae reportedly blew out his window, a fact to which he confessed in professional circles. However, there was no USDA in those days, no means of inspecting animal or plant species imported from other countries.   It took a few decades for their population to build but by 1889 Medford’s trees were being defoliated by a caterpillar that required massive eradication strategies. And, as we know, that hasn’t worked very well as gypsy moths have made their way north and west in North America, decimating forests as they go. As for Trouvelot, he gave up on moth-rearing and in 1872 was invited to join Harvard College’s astronomy department, where he became renowned for his celestial illustrations and published some fifty papers. By the time he returned to France in 1882, his gypsy moths were well into their reign of terror in Medford.   

At Lake Muskoka, we have a lot of oaks.  They grow all around our cottage, a mix of the predominant red oak (Quercus rubra) and scrubby white oak (Quercus alba).  It’s on the oaks that we see blue jays cracking acorns and woodpeckers, flickers, thrashers and nuthatches scaling the trunks looking for insects. Red-eye vireos nest in oaks. In fact, as entomology professor and best-selling author Doug Tallamy says in his book Bringing Nature Home, oaks are the best trees you can grow to sustain wildlife in your garden.

We have oaks up near our septic field….

…. and at the back of our cottage facing the little bay to the north of us.

I started to pay attention to the gypsy moths flying around. I checked the trunks of the oaks and found a few of the late-stage larval caterpillars….

…. and lots of the next stage — the reddish-brown pupae, below, the bigger ones being the female moth, smaller ones the males.

Some caterpillars had even pupated on the leaves of oaks.

I looked at the sign I had made for our cottage displaying the big white oak trunk in the centre of our main room….

…. and lifted it up to find pupae on the wall behind.

I even found a pupa on a window frame.

I began to inspect the trees and found a female gypsy moth newly eclosed from the pupa. Isn’t she lovely? (Or she would be, if she wasn’t the mother of 200-500 destructive leaf-eaters.)

Down near the lake, on the bark of trees we had previously wrapped with wire mesh to protect from the teeth of beavers, I found a female moth hanging onto the wire.

Not long after the female moth emerges from the pupa, she produces a pheromone which attracts male moths, sometimes more than one at a time.

Male moths spend their lives flying around looking for females, while non-flying female moths often walk upon the bark of the tree, first to find a suitable place to attract males; later, after copulation, she might walk about to find a place to lay her fertilized eggs and cover them with hairs.

Once she has fulfilled her role and produced the distinctive, rusty-brown egg mass, the female falls off the tree and dies.  Though many authorities recommend removing or spraying the egg mass in autumn or winter, I realized that it was much easier to try to control the egg masses while the female was still clearly visible. Our hillside is often under many inches of snow by November, and I didn’t relish slipping and sliding over rocks trying to scrape off egg masses.

Where I saw unhatched pupae, I used a stick to squish the bigger female ones.

Broadleaved trees defoliated by gypsy moth caterpillars in spring will refoliate in mid-summer. Provided there is enough rain, the trees should survive. But conifers do not have this ability, so it was particularly depressing to find a few white pine trees hosting egg masses.  However, I have read research that indicates that white pines are very poor hosts for larval development, compared to oaks.  

For the female moths and egg masses, I made up my own horticultural oil, aka “dormant oil”.  There are many recipes on the internet with various ingredients, but I mixed ½ cup of vegetable oil with 2 tablespoons of liquid dish soap. I then used a tablespoon or two of this concentrated mix in 2 cups of water to make my spray.  My oil will not damage plants but is intended to suffocate the eggs. (You can also buy horticultural/dormant oil formulations at garden centres and big box stores; these generally use refined paraffinic oils.)

It was satisfying to spray the female moth and egg mass.  I also used a stick to squish the moth.

I discovered that moths often favoured a particular tree, where I would find ten or more clustered together.’

This moth had made her nesting spot in the centre of a patch of moss high up an oak trunk. It became my challenge to figure out a way to reach these high locations without killing myself on a ladder.

I adapted an 11-foot telescoping pole used to change the pot lights on our high cottage ceiling, tying a sponge to the mechanism and soaking that in the diluted horticural oil.

That allowed me to reach moths and egg masses some 16 feet up a trunk….

…. soaking the moth and her egg mass with the saturated sponge, below.  For the moths further up on trees, I can only keep my fingers crossed that next winter will be severe enough to damage the eggs. In observations in Michigan, it was found that eggs on southern and western aspects were much less likely to survive severe winter temperature swings than those on northern and eastern aspects.

Some of the literature on gypsy moth control recommends removing litter under trees. That might work in suburban or urban yards, but it isn’t realistic or desirable in a forest like ours, below, where a diverse understory supports all kinds of insects, birds and other life.  

In fact, while moving around under my trees looking for moths, I was rewarded with the sight of two interesting parasitic (non-chlorophyll-producing) plants that are sustained by the mycorrhizae on the roots of oaks: Indian pipe or ghost plant (Monotropa uniflora), below….

… and bear corn or American cancer-root (Conopholis americana).

I did a lot of videography while I was preparing this blog, and made an 11-minute video that provides a little more information.

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Though some panicked property owners and civic officials call for aerial spraying of the biological control agent Bacillus thuringiensis kurstaki or Btk in late spring when the caterpillars begin their climb into tree canopies, it is non-specific and will kill the larval stage of all lepidopterans (caterpillars of moths and butterflies) active at that time, including many native insects that co-evolved with our native plants and feed our birds.  Some will say it’s not going to harm the summer caterpillars of monarch or swallowtail butterflies, but that is to ignore a vast web of life that exists in our environment without us noticing.

If you’ve made it this far, you’ll be happy to know I have had rewarding experiences with native caterpillars in the past, especially the monarch love affair I wrote about in last summer’s blog “Bella and Bianca: Our Monarch Chrysalis Summer”.  I only hope that the steps I’ve taken this summer will curtail some of the damage we can expect to see next spring. I’ll be thinking about that as I gaze up at our beautiful oaks when their leaves change to russet and scarlet this autumn. And I’ll report back next year.

Narcissus ‘Golden Echo’

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Every now and then, I find a plant I adore and decide it needs a little homegrown public relations campaign. This long, cool spring with its attendant air of strange melancholy courtesy of Covid-19 was the backdrop for the month-long flowering of a little daffodil I originally saw at the Toronto Botanical Garden in 2012. This is Narcissus ‘Golden Echo’, paired with the lovely yellow-throated pink Triumph tulip ‘Tom Pouce’.

I made a note of how much I liked the daffodil and finally ordered 2 packages of 25 last summer from my friend Caroline deVries’s company FlowerBulbsRUs (she also has a wholesale business for designers and retail outlets). Come November, I wore my fancy, paint-splattered, rubber clogs and proceeded to dig my bulbs into my front yard meadow/pollinator garden.

This is what happens when your box of bulbs takes a photo of you in your 1980s car coat with the broken zipper that has stained more fences with you – and planted more tulips and daffodils – than you care to recall.

Fast forward to April 29th this spring and the bulbs in my little pollinator island.  This was a full month after the first species crocuses emerged on March 20th, followed by a blue sea of Siberian squill (Scilla siberica) and glory-of-the-snow (Scilla forbesii) in April. I wrote in praise of all the “little bulbs” in an earlier blog this spring. The following day, I made my first portrait of Narcissus ‘Golden Echo’.

The daffodil world has its own rules, traditions and famous breeder names, many of them in England and Ireland. But there are notable North American personalities who have produced the so-called American Hybrids. One of those was Oregon’s Grant Mitsch (1907-1989), who bred ‘Pipit’, ‘Accent’ and ‘Dicksissel’. But it was Brent C. Heath, below at his farm and business Brent & Becky’s Bulbs in Gloucester, VA, who crossed the European jonquil or rush daffodil (Narcissus jonquilla)  with an old Irish long-cupped daffodil ‘Ballygarvey’ (pre-1947) to come up with the sweet ‘Golden Echo’ daffodil I’ve fallen in love with this spring. It’s the one filling the rows in the thousands below. Though he had grown it for more than a decade, it was registered in 2014 and won the Wister Award the following year.  Brent is the third generation of mail-order bulb farmers at the farm his grandfather started in 1900; now his son has become the fourth generation. Becky is president of Heath Enterprises, Ltd. I’ve known them both since I joined Gardencomm (Formerly the Garden Writers Association) more than two decades ago.

On May 2nd  of this cool, long spring, the little Greek windflowers (Anemone blanda ‘Blue Shades’) were fully-open pools of lavender and the Tulipa praestans ‘Shogun’ had come into flower. Both complimented ‘Golden Echo’ beautifully.

When I decided to remove the old dwarf conifers that had grown too big for this island and replace them with a suite of perennials that would attract pollinators (here’s my video of a full year in the garden, made before planting ‘Shogun’ and ‘Golden Echo’)…..

…..adding lots of spring bulbs was just a seasonal bonus. (However, I did see honey bees gathering pollen from the crocuses early on and I’ve written about native cellophane bees on my Scilla siberica.)  But mostly it’s just to add preliminary colour to a garden I consider my gift to the neighbourhood.

In fact, that day I introduced myself to two women taking their daily walks at an appropriate, self-isolating distance from each other. As one snapped a few photos, they told me they loved seeing my garden change over the weeks since late March.

Here we see that fabulous apricot-gold ‘Shogun’ tulip with ‘Golden Echo’ and the purple-blue highlights of windflower and grape hyacinth.

Meanwhile in the main garden on the other side of the path, the big Fosteriana Tulipa ‘Orange Emperor’ was adding to the orange theme, just as the pink hyacinths were fading.

I made a lot of little nosegay bouquets this spring, including these ones on May 6th. ‘Golden Echo’ is in the one on the right, along with the pure white Narcissus ‘Stainless’ and the peach-trumpeted ‘Pink Accent’.  In the arrangement on the left are snakeshead fritillaries (Fritillaria meleagaris), Rhododendron ‘P.J.M.”, Siberian bugloss (Brunnera macrophylla) and the wonderful white Triandrus daffodil Narcissus ‘Thalia’.


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Meanwhile, in the main garden on May 6th, ‘Thalia’ was the star, along with the first flowers of the big Darwin Hybrid tulip ‘Pink Impression’.  And, of course, ‘Golden Echo’.

On May 7th, I zeroed in on this pretty pairing: ‘Golden Echo’ with the fascinating flowers of the broad-leaved grape hyacinth (Muscari latifolium) from the mountains of Turkey. The dark-blue flowers on the bottom are fertile; whereas the azure-blue flowers on the top are sterile.

May 13th saw me including ‘Golden Echo’ in a tiny bouquet along with the clove-scented Tazetta Narcissus ‘Geranium’, the lovely, orange-flowered lily tulip ‘Ballerina’ and the first blue forget-me-nots (Myosotis sylvatica). In the background are a few sprigs of forsythia. ‘Geranium’ is a personal favourite daffodil, one I included in a blog titled White Delight: Four Perfumed Daffodils to Tempt You.

By May 17th, you can see the green leaves of lily-of-the-valley (Convallaria majalis) – or, as I call it ‘guerilla-of-the-valley’ – at the bottom right of this photo. Indeed, it is hugely invasive in my garden, but I tolerate it creeping around everything since it doesn’t seem to affect the emergence of the summer perennials. And, of course, I did make good use of it the years I used it to decorate the hats I wore to our botanical garden’s spring party.

It’s funny;  I thought I wanted white daffodils exclusively in my garden, like ‘Accent’ in the foreground, but the soft yellow of ‘Golden Echo’ isn’t as obtrusive as the ballpark-yellow of some of the early daffodils like ‘King Alfred’ and ‘Carlton’. It fits into my multicoloured scheme very nicely, with forget-me-nots creating little clouds of pale-blue.

By May 22nd , my Fothergilla gardenii shrubs began to open their white, bottlebrush flowers.

Though the ‘Shogun’ tulips in the pollinator island were long gone by then and the flowerheads removed (I always leave the foliage to ripen and turn yellow in order to feed next year’s bulb), little ‘Golden Echo’ was still flowering bravely amidst the emerging leaves of echinacea, rudbeckia, salvia and sedum.

On May 23rd, I photographed it with the first flowers of Camassia leichtleinii ‘Caerulea’, a bulb that is as short-lived in flower as ‘Golden Echo’ is long-lived.

In fact, if the cool Covid spring of 2020 had not given way to sweltering temperatures this week, I believe sweet ‘Golden Echo’ might have flowered for another week or so, since the bulbs put up new flower stems that bloom sequentially, rather than all at once. Nevertheless, I was delighted on May 23rd to make my final bouquet featuring Brent Heath’s lovely little hybrid daffodil, along with lily-of-the-valley, common grape hyacinths (Muscari armeniacum), camassia and sweet-scented Burkwood’s viburnum (V. x burkwoodii).  By my count, that was almost four full weeks in bloom.

That night, it graced our outdoor table and the sixth take-out Covid meal we ordered from local restaurants to support them – and to give me a break from cooking. Hopefully, the restaurants will be back in business completely soon. I know that ‘Golden Echo’ will be back next spring, and the springs after that.

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To order Narcissus ‘Golden Echo’ in Canada, visit FlowerBulbsRUs. If you order before August 31, there’s a discount built into the price and free shipping for orders above $75.

To order it in the United States, visit Brent & Becky’s Bulbs.

In Praise of the Little Bulbs

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After five long months of wintry weather in Toronto, there is nothing more uplifting than the first flowers of the small spring bulbs. Over many years, small bulbs and corms in my front garden have multiplied, their clumps becoming gradually bigger, or seeds have scattered about until there are pools of colour. My camera finger is always itchy after being out of service since the last of the fall colour dies down, so I head outdoors as often as I can. In this spring of self-isolation, that might be several times a day and I’m often greeted by neighbours stopping to see what’s in bloom. The cold March and April temperatures have made the flowering parade move as slowly as sap up a maple trunk, but every year starts the same – with the snowdrops (Galanthus nivalis). Because they can easily be moved in flower, I have been dividing this old snowdrop clump and digging sections into my front garden.

I’ve also made a habit through the years of cutting these tiny flowers and giving them the high-fashion studio treatment, like the snowdrops below in an antique shot glass.

Next to emerge is usually a tie between species crocuses and little Iris ‘Katharine Hodgkin’. I adore her. She was bred in 1955 in England by E. Bertram Anderson  Her mother is pale yellow Iris winogradowii hailing from the Caucasus mountains. That gives her extreme cold hardiness and her tendency to shrug off snow.

Her father is pale purplish blue I. histrioides from Turkey, lending her the pretty pale blue hue. Her existence is the result of only 2 seeds produced in open pollination breeding work by Anderson, a founding member of the RHS Joint Rock Garden Plant Committee and president of the Alpine Garden Society from 1948-53. She flowered in 1960 and was named for the wife of Anderson’s friend Eliot Hodgkin

This year, my crocuses were wonderful, both the species “tommies” (Crocus tommasinanus) and the bigger, slightly later-flowering Dutch hybrids.

On the one warm day we experienced so far this April, I found honey bees foraging for pollen on the crocuses. I’ve always wondered who in my neighbourhood has beehives, since the property size requirements for beekeeping are fairly stringent in Toronto. Having done a little research, I think they likely originated in the hives on the roof of Sporting Life department store about a half-mile from my garden.

I often combine these early bloomers in a tiny bouquet. Even though they last only a few days, the joy they bring is in inverse proportion to their size.

Crocuses, of course, have their own chalice-like charm – even if they decline to stay open long once removed from sunshine.

My front garden in early spring is anything but neat, given that I mulch it with leaves in autumn and leave many cut perennial stems to biodegrade where they fall. I do lighten the leaf mulch in late winter a little, raking some off so the small bulbs don’t get lost in the duff. This is a side-by-side view of my front garden this spring on March 23rd and April 13th. Once the crocuses fade, the Siberian squill (Scilla siberica) starts to turn my entire garden azure-blue. Most springs, the native cellophane bee and bumble bees make great use of the scilla carpet, but this year’s temperatures have kept most bees in their nests.

My garden’s “blue period” also includes the amazing, rich-pink Corydalis solida ‘George Baker’.

I always love the combination below, ‘George Baker’ with glory-of-the-snow (Scilla forbesii, formerly Chionodoxa).  A few weeks ago, I divided some of my corydalis clumps while in flower and spotted them throughout the garden. That deep cherry-pink is too good not to spread around!

And, of course, I’ve given George his own studio cameos in the past as well……

The glory-of-the-snow has been ready for its closeup….

…. as has the cultivar ‘Violet Beauty’.

Striped squill (Puschkinia scilloides) are ultra-hardy little bulbs featuring pale-blue flowers with a darker blue stripe.

Here’s a closer look of that sweet striped face.

Between the Siberian squill, the glory-of-the-snow and the striped squill, the colour theme of these chilly weeks of early spring is most definitely blue. And with most everyone in Toronto now into their second month of self-isolation, the neighbours have been telling me how much they’re enjoying watching my front garden change every week.

This was a little bouquet I made on April 6th, happy that there were still a few orange crocuses to give it some zing.
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White Siberian squill (Scilla siberica ‘Alba’) come out a little later than the blue ones.

Photographing them in a tiny bouquet lets me appreciate details of their flowers that often go unnoticed when they flower en masse.

Among my favourite of the small spring flowers are Greek windflowers or wood anemones (Anemone blanda). These are tubers, rather than bulbs, and they need to be soaked for 24 hours prior to being planted in autumn.  Their daisy-like flowers always cheer me up – though they only open wide when the sun is shining.  This cultivar is ‘Blue Shades’.

Putting just one windflower in the tiniest vase reveals the beautiful contrast of the bright yellow stamens with the silky petals and fern-like leaves.

‘Pink Charmer’ is lovely, but tends to be mauve….

….. and finally there’s ‘White Splendor’.

My broad-leaved grape hyacinths (Muscari latifolium) have just emerged and are still tight. The light flowers at the top are sterile, while the deep-purple ones at the base are fertile.

Here they are, below, in a little salt shaker vase.  Common grape hyacinths (Muscari armeniacum) emerge just a little bit later.

Along my sideyard path under a big black walnut tree is a colony of Corydalis solida that comes into bloom a little later than the pink ‘George Baker’ in my front garden. This species is very vigorous and will make its way around the garden and even pop up in the lawn. In fact some gardeners consider it a weed – but I adore it. And after it finishes flowering, its leaves turn yellow quickly in the thicket of Solomon’s seal just emerging, then it disappears until next year. You might also see it hybridizing with some of the colourful cultivars, if you can find them to order.

Like all these little spring treasures, it is such fun to snip a handful to bring indoors so they can be appreciated for their beauty up close.

Soon the forget-me-nots (Myosotis sylvatica) will be in flower. I have loads of these biennials throughout the garden and their season is very long. By the time my crabapple tree is in bloom along with later tulips and daffodils, they will be pale blue clouds underneath.

But for now, I enjoy adding the very first forget-me-not blossoms to the little bulb bouquets that now include common grape hyacinths (Muscari armeniacum)……

….. and the native Confederate violets (Viola sororia var. priceana).

All this early beauty of the little bulbs, this re-affirmation that spring brings colourful renewal – especially this year, when we need it so desperately – is one of the most beloved aspects of my own garden. I simply would not be without my snowdrops, crocuses, corydalis, puschkinia, scilla or grape hyacinths. And then, as if by magic, all these wondrous little chorines of the first act will quietly wither and disappear under the later weeks of tulips, daffodils, camassias and the emerging foliage of summer perennials, lying dormant below the soil surface so they can perform the same miracle early next spring.  Needless to say, the foliage of all spring bulbs must be allowed to turn yellow and ripen in order for continued photosynthesis to nurture the bulbs as long as possible.

Meanwhile, my garden moves on through myriad subsequent scenes, not in the least hindered by all these tiny bulbs that helped me bid farewell to winter. Here is my front garden over the space of twelve months. This year I’m filled with anticipation – and nothing but time to enjoy it.

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I buy almost all of my spring bulbs from my friend Caroline deVries’ online retail store flowerbulbsrus. They are available at reduced prices until August 31st and are excellent quality.  A good selection of the small bulbs is also available at www.botanus.com in British Columbia; they ship throughout Canada. (I purchased my own cultivars of Corydalis solida in Canada from gardenimport, which sadly is no longer in business).  In the U.S., small spring bulbs can be purchased from my friends Brent and Becky Heath at https://www.brentandbeckysbulbs.com/. They have discounts for ordering before July 1st.

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If you love spring bulbs, you might want to read my blog on my favourite daffodils and one of tulip design in the spring garden courtesy of the Toronto Botanical Garden, or my visit to the spectacular Abbotsford Tulip Festival.

Reginald Farrer’s Lovely Viburnum

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On this Easter weekend of this exceedingly strange and sad spring, I give thanks for a joyous bouquet of pale pink outside my kitchen window and the comfort its dependable, early spring appearance offers. I first wrote about this shrub almost 30 years ago, in a column I had in a little community newspaper called Toronto Gardens.  I later reprised it for my old website, but I decided it needed another nod of thanks here.  Here is what I wrote in the early 1990s, after a mild winter, about Farrer’s viburnum (Viburnum farreri). 

Record-breaking December and January temperatures in the northeast have resulted in one of my favourite shrubs putting on a winter flowering show.  Not that Farrer’s viburnum (Viburnum farreri) ever waits beyond late March or early April to open its tight pink buds.  But this winter, it broke dormancy well before Christmas and has been in bloom ever since, even with the mercury dipping to –16C (3F) one night.  Prolonged frigid spells keep the pink buds just closed, but even one day of warm sunshine will nudge many into full flower.  In fact, last week, I cut a few small branches and placed them in a bud vase so I could enjoy the sweet-scented flower clusters at my desk.  But the warm indoor temperatures meant the blossoms lasted only a day or so before dropping, for this is one plant that truly thrives in the cold.

Given that I no longer “thrive in the cold” myself, it is such a treat to enjoy a shrub that does. This week, night temperatures are forecast to dip below freezing, but that won’t bother this shrub. Even on December 22nd, 2013, when I photographed the buds encased in ice that had fallen from the sky the night before, throwing Toronto into a multi-day power failure and bringing tree limbs crashing down all around the city, it still flowered months later.

Some years, it suffers snow just as its dark pink buds are plumping up, as happened below on March 9th, 2012.

Truth be told, it’s not the most shapely of shrubs. This is how I found it at Mount Pleasant Cemetery on March 30, 2010, another early spring, just as the first inflorescences were opening on naked twigs.

But I can forgive its shape when it is literally covered with palest pink blossoms as the first leaves emerge, as it was here in my garden with forsythia in my neighbour’s garden behind it on May 7, 2019.

The history of Farrer’s viburnum is colourful.  In 1914-15, British plant explorers Reginald Farrer, below, and William Purdom were prowling the foothills of the northern mountains separating China from the Mongolia border, collecting seeds of new species.  Although the shrub was a favourite Chinese garden plant at the time, growing at very high altitudes, its “discovery” in the wild is credited to Farrer.  Writes Alice Coats in her book Garden Shrubs and Their Histories.  “He sent home abundant seed and would have sent more, but for an unfortunate falling-out with his Highness Yang Tusa, Prince of Jo-ni, who…in a fit of pique, set to and sedulously ate up all the Viburnum fruits in his palace garden, and threw away the seed.”  

Originally called Viburnum fragrans to mark its sweet perfume, it was renamed in Farrer’s honour.  Today, fragrant viburnum is considered a winter-flowering shrub in the Pacific Northwest and in Britain, where its flowers might open on a mild day in late autumn with flowering occurring sporadically until April.  It likes full sun and reasonably good soil, but can’t be called a fussy shrub.  Despite its tendency to early bloom, it is root-hardy only to USDA Zone 5a – Canadian Zone 6B, and benefits from some protection from harsh winds and winter sun.  It reaches 2.5 – 3 metres (8 – 10 feet) at maturity with almost as large a spread. The flower clusters start out pale pink and fade to white and are quite modest in size — more like the Burkwood viburnum than the big snowball blossoms of the fragrant snowball Viburnum x carlcephalum.   For small gardens or for low hedging, there’s a very good dwarf form called ‘Nanum’, which reaches about 1 metre (3 feet).  There is also a white form, V. farreri ‘Album’, below.

Farrer’s viburnum was crossed with Viburnum grandiflorum at Bodnant Garden in Wales to give us Viburnum x bodnantense. This hybrid is usually seen as the cultivar ‘Dawn’, a lovely shrub whose flowers are rosier pink than Farrer’s.
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Both Farrer’s and Bodnant viburnums are favourites of pollinating insects, given how early they flower. One year I found a bumble bee queen taking nectar on ‘Dawn’, below.

But more often than not, it’s better insect-watching in my own garden with Viburnum farreri. Below is the mourning cloak butterfly, which overwinters in Toronto and needs nectar as early as possible.  This was April 16, 2017.

That same week, I found a red admiral butterfly on the flowers. Obviously, it needs to be above a certain temperature for insects to thermo-regulate, and that has been difficult this cold spring.

In 2012, one of the earliest springs I can recall in Toronto, we had a celebratory dinner on our sundeck on March 19, 2012 with little sprigs of Farrer’s in a cylindrical vase.

But it’s the perfume of those humble flowers that I adore, and that doesn’t necessarily transfer to the Bodnant hybrid.  I read the following paean to its fragrance on a website, attributed to British garden writer Mark Griffiths: “We mustn’t let the bodnantense hybrids supplant their parent; V. farreri is twiggier and more crabbed and its flowers are smaller tighter and paler, but there’s far greater poetry in its looks and purity in its fragrance. Its perfume, to my nose, is more hyacinths and almond essence than heliotrope. On a drab winter’s day, its effect is magical in the garden and even stronger in a room, whether from a few cut twigs or a pot-grown plant brought indoors for winter. This scent seems less like reckless extravagance thrown away on the chill, bee-free breeze once one realises that V. farreri doesn’t behave with us as it does in its native China. There, it holds back all through the months of harsh cold and drought, not blooming until spring, whereupon it faces stiff competition for pollinators from other blossoms. Its alluring fragrance is prudent, not prodigal. Our winters are mild and wet by comparison and this encourages it to flower in fits and flushes from late autumn onwards.”

Toronto winters are more like China than England, I expect, so I appreciated what Helen Van Pelt Wilson and Léonie Bell wrote about Farrer’s, which they called the fragrant guelder, Viburnum fragrans, in their 1967 classic  The Fragrant Year:  “The fragrant guelder…has long been a favorite shrub, its perfume mysteriously combining the scents of wisteria and clove in the manner of certain lilacs.  Unlike the familiar  V. carlesii , which gives at best only ten days of bloom, V. fragrans  flowers modestly for weeks on end.  Even after our harshest winters, all the rose-red buds open to rich pink flowers that grow paler with age.”

I shall leave you with a little Easter nosegay. It’s on my kitchen table now. A few wisteria-clove-hyacinth-almond-scented sprigs of Reginald Farrer’s lovely Chinese shrub, along with the little striped, ice-blue Puschkinia scilloides and Corydalis solida ‘George Baker’.  Aren’t we lucky that his Highness Yang Tusa, Prince of Jo-ni didn’t eat ALL of the seeds?

Bella and Bianca – Our Monarch Chrysalis Summer

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It was a bittersweet summer in the milkweed patch in my cottage meadow on Lake Muskoka.   There were monarch butterflies and hungry caterpillars. There were two chrysalis vigils. There was joy and sadness, and I learned a lot about this extraordinary and complex biological process called metamorphosis. This is my summer journal.

July 19 – I notice my first tiny monarch caterpillar on butterfly milkweed (Asclepias tuberosa) leaves in my dusty rock garden behind the cottage. I recalled a monarch flitting about purposefully about three weeks before, on Canada Day weekend.

Another is munching on the flower buds of a different plant of the same species.

The buds of this type of milkweed do seem to be a popular place for monarchs to “oviposit”, or lay eggs (with their ovipositor).  The photo below is from 2012.  A typical monarch will lay 200- 400 eggs in her laying period, which lasts between three to five weeks. And it’s estimated that 99% of those will not survive to maturity.

The upper leaves are also used, which makes sense since they’re tender and likely not as concentrated in latex, the plant’s defence mechanism, which can be toxic to caterpillars in strong enough concentrations (and also toxic to birds that try to eat the caterpillars or the butterflies).  But just as milkweed plants have evolved to resist predation, monarch caterpillars have evolved to outwit the plants, by chewing carefully on parts of the leaf’s vascular system to keep the latex from flowing.  Some milkweeds, like butterfly milkweed here, are also hairy and young caterpillars often “shave” the leaves for a long time before eating them.  Check out this interesting video by a Cornell ecologist who has specialized in milkweed-monarch co-evolution.

JULY 21 – Common milkweed (Asclepias syriaca) showed up by itself in my meadows a few years ago. I love the fragrance and it’s a good nectar plant for many bees and butterflies, as well as food for monarchs. But I only have two plants and one is filled with caterpillars, while the other is empty.

JULY 22 – Monarch caterpillars are eating and excreting machines.  After the egg develops into the first tiny larva, i.e. caterpillar – called the first instar – approximately 3-5 days later, there are four subsequent developments that span roughly 9-14 days, depending on climate. Each time, the caterpillar molts or sheds its skin. In the photo below, you can see the top caterpillar in the act of excreting its waste, called frass. Its head faces the stem, and the antennae-like organs are called the front filaments or tentacles. There are 3 pairs of jointed true legs near the front; the knobby things behind are prolegs and there are 5 pairs of them fitted with hooks to hang onto leaves.  Behind its head, the caterpillar has segments divided into thoracic and abdominal segments. The 8 abdominal segments feature tiny breathing holes called spiracles.

A milkweed plant is a messy place with this many caterpillars feeding.

Because my other common milkweed has no larvae, after checking online I decide to very gently relocate some of them from the rapidly diminishing plant nearby. At first they curl up in a defensive position.

But gradually they uncurl….

…. and soon they are climbing up the stem past the perfumed blossoms towards the tender leaves at the top.

JULY 23 – It is astonishing to see the efficiency of this munching army…..

…… as they strip the foliage and flowers from the new plant, too.

I make a little video of the caterpillars eating from the two species of milkweed.

I spot a tiny caterpillar and decide to try it on a plant of butterfly milkweed. It’s only later, after I watch it reject the other species, that I learn that while it’s fine to move caterpillars from one plant to another, they should be the same Asclepias species. It inspires me to create a whimsical little video for my Facebook page about this time in July to illustrate the quandary of “too many caterpillars, not enough milkweed”.

JULY 25 – On the dusty hillside behind my cottage, monarchs are on almost every butterfly milkweed plant.  July has been so dry, I feel compelled to water these forgotten plants so they provide nourishment for the caterpillars. It’s only now as I’m writing this blog that I note the bent stem and realize that this caterpillar may well have chewed it carefully until it almost breaks, thus preventing the toxic latex from reaching the top leaves.

In the monarda meadow near the cottage where the common milkweed grows, the caterpillars are now on the move, looking for a place to make their chrysalis. I spot one climbing along a blade of grass..

JULY 26 – I spy another on a fleabane stem, below. Note the chunky “prolegs” gripping the stem.  Like all insects, monarchs (caterpillars and butterflies) have six legs – but those are the “true legs”, and they’re found just behind the caterpillar’s head on its thorax.  They are used for locomotion. The cylinder-shaped prolegs, on the other hand, are used to grip stems tightly as the caterpillar moves its body around.  They are loosened one at a time as the caterpillar moves forward, beginning with the anal prolegs at the top in this photo . Prolegs also have a pad at the end called a crochet with tiny barbs that allow them to hook onto leaves, stems and other surfaces.

JULY 28 – Today brings a thrilling development: I spot one of the caterpillars on a wild beebalm leaf (Monarda fistulosa) conveniently adjacent to the path and it’s making the distinctive “J-shape”…..

….. that signals a chrysalis is about to emerge from that old skin, soon to be shed.

As happens with life processes (and life), it’s best to stay focused. I go inside for a few hours, thinking this will develop slowly.  Not at all. When I return later, there is a beautiful green chrysalis already formed and suspended by its black “cremaster” from the monarda leaf.

This process is utterfly fascinating and fortunately someone has captured most of it with his camera. If you have a spare 10 minutes, this is a pretty cool realtime video by Jude Adamson.

JULY 29 – So now the waiting game begins. The chrysalis is so well camouflaged I eventually need a stick on the path to mark it in my monarda meadow (so called because that’s the main plant of summer, for my bumble bees.)  Can you see where that yellow arrow is pointing?

AUGUST 2 – My three young grandchildren (6, 4 and 2) arrive for a holiday.  I’m so excited because they’re here for 10 days and that means they should see the butterfly emerge. The 4-year old finds the chrysalis immediately.

Five days old now, it is a beautiful work of nature. Cousins, aunts, uncles and great aunts walk down my path to look at it.

AUGUST 4 – Just by chance, the 6-year old and her daddy have brought up coffee filters and instructions for making beautiful butterflies. They catch the light in the cottage window.

And then, wouldn’t you know it, we climb up the hill and at the very top in the septic bed, we find my original butterfly milkweed (the one where I photographed the monarch egg 7 years ago) with more caterpillars feeding. The leaves are already wilting from drought in our hot July, so I connect two hoses and run them up the hill to its base.

Must revive those wilting leaves for these caterpillars!

AUGUST 6 – Meanwhile, a big male monarch butterfly is seen nectaring on swamp milkweed (Asclepias incarnata) down by the lake shore.

AUGUST 7 – The next day, he’s gracing the flowers of butterfly milkweed too. How do I know it’s a male? Because of the two paired black scent glands near the bottom of his hind wings; these are used to attract females. I’m assuming this is one of my caterpillars, since my meadows and milkweed are fairly isolated on this lake surrounded mostly by white pines, red oaks and hemlocks.  There are perennial borders for nectar at a few of the neighbouring cottages, but most of the milkweed is found on the highway edges (where it hasn’t been mown down) and in old fields.

Here’s a little video I make of him the next day foraging for nectar on this milkweed, which has been growing in this spot for more than 12 years now.


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Will my male still be around when his ‘siblings’ emerge?  Given our latitude 45oN – the same latitude as Minneapolis – he and the pupa still in the chrysalis are part of the long-lived “migration generation” of 2019’s eastern monarch population (the western population is west of the Rockies).  Unlike the other generations they exhibit delayed sexuality, so do not mate now. Provided they survive, they will leave Muskoka and fly south on an arduous, unique migration journey that I wrote about in a blog in 2014 in conjunction with the screening of a 3D film called Flight of the Butterflies. Here’s the trailer for the film, showing the oyamel firs in Mexico where this generation will roost for the winter, until they finally begin their remarkable migration north next spring and breed in Texas or near the Gulf of Mexico, before dying.

AUGUST 8 – It is raining today, but I’m keeping a close watch on “Bella”, as my 6-year old granddaughter has decided to name her. We know it’s a girl because when I lift up the monarda leaf to look at the back of the chrysalis, we see the little vertical seam near the top, as shown by the yellow arrow below.  And look at the embossed butterfly shape within.

AUGUST 9 – It pours again today, making up in August for all the dry, hot days of July and making the meadow flowers very happy. The chrysalis also needs moisture, but the developing butterfly inside – called a “pupa” – is well protected from the weather. I make a video showing my meadow and its special guest in the rain.

I spend a lot of time watching the chrysalis, since the transformation to a butterfly – the “eclosure” – can happen quickly.  I can just see the wings forming on the pupa inside.

AUGUST 10 – It’s my birthday! And I can’t imagine a finer gift than to watch a butterfly emerge while my grandkids watch. The cool overnight rain has caused some of the hundreds of bumble bees in my meadows to sleep in the shelter of the wild beebalm (Monarda fistulosa) flowers until temperatures warm up. I’m watching them stir to life…..

…. when suddenly I glimpse something extraordinary. All this time I’ve been watching Bella’s chrysalis, just down the path another monarch pupa has been developing in a clump of aphid-infested false oxeye daisies (Heliopsis helianthoides). It’s only because it is black in colour and transparent, meaning it’s about to eclose, that I notice it now. How exciting is this?!  Can you see it?

Now I have two sites to watch. Fortunately, I have no meals to prepare on my birthday and can spend as much time as I like outdoors!

I think about the ecology of this planted meadow, where the chrysalis of a native butterfly is sharing space on a native plant with that plant’s associated native red aphids (Uroleucon obscuricaudatus). Fortunately neither insect seems bothered by the other.  The photo below is at 10:50 am.

Even though I’m determined to photograph the new chrysalis as the pupa ecloses, I’ve been watching for almost 3 hours now and have a few chores to do indoors.  But not having researched enough, I fail to recognize an important sign that things are starting to happen.  See that little gap in the horizontal pleat, below? It means that the butterfly inside is starting to expand and push out on the chrysalis and eclosure will likely happen within the hour. This is 2:30 pm.

So I’m disappointed, but also happy when I come out at 3:38 pm to see family members on the path admiring our brand new female butterfly…..

……….hanging from her chrysalis, which has now turned white. My granddaughter names her Bianca – which seems like a lovely name for a butterfly that may well be living in Mexico in a few short months.

I settle back into my chair and, as my grandchildren come down the path to point her out to relatives and watch her find her wings, we all rejoice in this timeless last chapter of monarch metamorphosis.  Watch with me for a moment.

Though I conscientiously videotape almost all of her movements as she climbs the heliopsis plant over the next two-and-a-half hours, I gaze away for a moment while deep in conversation and Bianca shivers her beautiful wings…….

….. and takes flight, landing way up in the boughs of a white pine tree as if she’s practising for the oyamel firs of Mexico.

I check quickly on Bella, but her chrysalis is still green. And then it’s time for my birthday dinner.  It’s been a perfect day with the best gift I’ve ever had – witnessing one of nature’s miracles, followed by chocolate cupcakes presented to me by my famlly!

AUGUST 11 – It’s time for the grandchildren to return home and they’ve finished packing all their important possessions.  After lunch, they drive off with mommy and daddy.

Meanwhile, out in the breezy meadow, I sit and watch. A clearwing hummingbird moth (Hemaris thysbe) darts from beebalm to beebalm.

An uncommon bumble bee (Bombus perplexus) nectars in the blossoms.

Bella’s chrysalis is turning darker. That means she should eclose within 48 hours. Will today be the day?  I set up my camera on the tripod and make this video at 6:26 pm.

AUGUST 12 – By the time I go out to the path the next morning at 7:40 am, the distinctive expansion of the horizontal pleat on Bella’s chrysalis has begun. It is her 13th day in the pupal stage. I set my camera to video mode and wait. An hour later, it begins. The video below compresses an 8-minute period into less than a minute. I am fascinated by her strenuous efforts to use her forelegs as anchors to push out of the chrysalis. In a strange way, it reminds me of all the physical effort of the labour that precedes childbirth.  Alas, since I’m new at this eclosure watch, I only realize near the end that my lens is too closely focused on the chrysalis; when Bella emerges, she falls out of my frame. Fortunately, she hangs onto the very tip of the beebalm leaf and I quickly adjust my lens.

Having missed Bianca’s eclosure, I’m thrilled to have witnessed Bella emerging. I keep my camera focused on her and note the drop of meconium suspended through her anal opening. This is the waste product from her weeks in the chrysalis.

She hangs her wings to dry them, with lots of room in the meadow to manoeuvre.  Some newly-eclosed butterflies are said to injure themselves when they cannot fully stretch their wings. The next step is to pump her wings full of liquid to expand them prior to flying.

Then I wait and watch. I sit in the path reading my book, checking my emails from time to time, but mostly staring at this tiny little creature, willing it to fly.

For more than eight hours I wait and watch, keeping her in my viewfinder.  I check the internet to see how long it might be before a young monarch finds her wings. Two hours is the average, maybe a little more. I give her all the benefit of doubt; we have waited so long to see her.  Blue jays and song sparrows call from the pines, cicadas drone noisily and train whistles echo beyond the forest. I watch Bella try repeatedly to pump her little wings open, but she fails. The video below captures almost nine hours in less than 2 minutes.

Bella is shrivelling up now. She’s just a little insect, a tiny speck in the universe, but I am devastated.

Some of my friends have raised monarchs in captivity, carefully monitoring the various stages and releasing them safely after they eclose. My friend Kylee Baumle wrote a popular book called The Monarch: Saving Our Most-Loved Butterfly.

Carol Pasternak, the “Monarch Crusader”, wrote a book called How to Raise Monarchs: A Step by Step Guide for Kids.

Bella was to have been an experience in the wild, in our very own meadow, but unlike Bianca she paid the heavy cost levied by mother nature. It’s estimated that more than 90 percent of monarch butterflies fail to survive in the wild. I search online for the most compassionate way to end her short life. Then I remove her gently from the beebalm leaf and hold her on my hand. I feel her little feet tickling my palm. I thank her for letting us watch. And I cry buckets of tears that I realize are not all for Bella, but for the sad things that happen in everyone’s life at some point, the things we fail to properly mourn.

When I began this blog, it was going to be a celebration of the birth (or eclosure) of the first monarch butterfly I’d ever seen form a chrysalis. It didn’t turn out that way, but it was a fascinating journey nonetheless – and a lesson that nature can be harsh and survival isn’t assured with beautiful, much-loved insects, any more than it is with other animals on this planet.  Thank you Bianca, and thank you most especially little Bella.

 

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If you liked this litle rumination on monarchs, please leave me a comment. I’d love to hear about your own experiences.