Tag Archives: Ontario

Fairy Crown #10-June Blues

Posted on by
Reply

My tenth fairy crown for June 10th created at the cottage on Lake Muskoka features an array of flowers picked from my meadows and wildish garden beds. If it’s a little quiet-looking, that’s because it’s still very green in the meadows, and the plants that predominate, such as lupines and blue false indigo (Baptisia australis) are, well, solemnly blue.  Along with those two, my crown has golden Alexanders (Zizia aurea), white nannyberry flowers (Viburnum lentago), white oxeye daisy (Leucanthemum superbum) and the tiny pink flowers of black huckleberry (Gaylussacia baccata). And, in an effort to reflect the bad with the good, there are some caterpillar-chewed oak leaves, courtesy of the spongy moth (LDD or gypsy moth) caterpillars.

In fact, it’s a time of year I think of as ‘June blues’; in reality, it’s more lavender-purple, but it’s remarkable that so many plants with similar flower color bloom simultaneously. I fashioned a bouquet one June, setting the finished product in the meadows where the lupines grow. In it were the lupines as well as false blue indigo (Baptisia australis), blue flag iris (Iris versicolor), pale lilac showy penstemon (Penstemon grandiflorus) and a few of my “weeds”, oxeye daisy (Leucanthemum vulgare) and buttercups (Ranunculus repens).

I grew the lupines from seed – a fairly complex operation that involved soaking the seed in warm water for 24 hours, then planting them in my sandy, acidic soil in a spot at the bottom of a slope that stays damp all the time. Fortunately, it worked and plants that were carefully transplanted and kept watered the first year have self-sown successive generations of new lupines that are very drought-tolerant. This is how they looked in the first few years, though now the big prairie species in the meadow have elbowed them to the margins. Though marketed as the eastern native wild lupine, L. perennis, my plants were in fact likely hybrids with L. polyphyllus from the west coast.  

Nevertheless, they attract numerous queen bumble bees seeking to provision their nests in spring. 

There is something so enticing about lupine flowers, so I like to focus on them with my camera to see what might be hanging out there, whether spiders….

…. or baby grasshoppers. 

Blue false indigo (Baptisia australis) is a North American native plant whose pea-like flowers resemble those of lupine. 

Bushy, it grows to about 4 feet (1.2 m) and is happy in my gravelly, sandy soil on a slope that gathers a little moisture. In autumn, the foliage turns an amazing gunmetal-gray and the seedpods shake with a noise like a rattlesnake’s tail. Its common name derives from its use by Native Americans and settlers as a substitute dye plant for true indigo (Indigofera tinctoria).  So far, it has spread very slowly nearby.

Bumble bees and many other native bees are very fond of Baptisia australis.

If I admitted to liking a plant that is on every state and province’s invasive plant list, I would get into trouble. So I’ll just say that since oxeye daisy (Leucanthemum vulgare) is on every Muskoka highway margin and dots the old fields in the area, I don’t mind at all if it pops up here too.

It cannot compete with my prairie grasses and perennials in the meadows, but it likes to hang out in spots of unplanted earth and at the edge of the path in front of the cottage, along with weedy buttercups (Ranunculus repens).  There’s a childhood memory of oxeye daisies. I remember sitting in the hayfield across the street from my house in Victoria, British Columbia, pulling the white petals from the flowers as I recited “he loves me, he loves me not” – and, of course, being delighted when I sat with a sad, petal-free flower convinced the boy across the street was my Prince Charming. Buttercups were part of my childhood too; we’d hold them under each other’s chin to see if we liked butter. Yes, butter.  There were no grownups around to tell us it wasn’t the predictive ability of a flower, but the reflective quality of its shiny yellow petals to create this magic.

Sometimes the oxeye daisies pop up near the lupines.

Native hoverflies, short-tongued bees and butterflies often visit the daisies as well.   

But path-cutting through the meadows – a necessity in early summer – quickly makes compost of the weedy buttercups and oxeye daisies… until next year.

I grew my golden alexanders (Zizia aurea) from seed and though quite particular about adequate soil moisture and a location out of hot sun, they are self-sowing here and there.  A short-lived native perennial from the carrot family, they prefer moist prairies and open woodland and are a host plant for black swallowtail caterpillars.

Though nannyberry (Viburnum lentago) is native to woodland in much of the northeast, I planted it behind the cottage in a spot with moist soil where it is shaded during the hottest part of the day.

Each spring, it bears clusters of white flowers that the bees adore, producing dark-blue summer fruit that the birds eagerly consume. Multi-stemmed, it grows to about 15 feet tall (4.6 m) and 10 feet (3 m) wide with glossy leaves (you can see them on my crown) that turn bright red in autumn.

There is a tiny sprig of pink, lantern-shaped flowers sticking up from the top of my fairy crown; they belong to black huckleberry (Gaylussacia baccata), a native shrub that grows near the lakeshore where its roots are periodically saturated with water from spring floods. Bumble bees nectar in the flowers, and in August….

…… the shrubs yield dark-blue berries that are sweet, though a little seedy. 

Finally, my crown bears a few oak leaves with and chewed edges.  I made it at the beginning of June 2021, when gypsy moths, aka spongy moths or LDD moths (Lymantria dispar dispar) were beginning to consume the red and white oaks, white pines and many other plants on our hillside…..

….. including my beautiful nannyberry.

It was a devastating and historic predation; by mid-July, the woodlands in our region looked like February, so bare were the deciduous tree branches, below.  (You can read last year’s saga with the gypsy moths on my blog here.)

But abundant summer rainfall nurtured the tree roots and they leafed out again with full canopies in August, though the moths laid abundant eggs on our poor trees once again. This year, we’re in a wait-and-see mode, given our cold days this past winter and the chance that a virus might decimate their population. But I sprayed all the egg masses I could reach on the oaks and pines on our acre a week ago, using my homemade cooking-oil-and-soap spray. Fingers crossed.

But let’s not leave on a sad note.  Here is my deconstructed #10 crown, with its familiar components:  lupine, blue false indigo, oxeye daisy and black huckleberry flowers. And here’s to June!

**********

Here are all my fairy crowns to date:
#1 – Spring Awakening
#2 – Little Blossoms for Easter
#3 – The Perfume of Hyacinths
#4 – Spring Bulb Extravaganza
#5 – A Crabapple Requiem
#6 – Shady Lady
#7 – Columbines & Wild Strawberries on Lake Muskoka
#8 – Lilac, Dogwood & Alliums
#9 – Borrowed Scenery & an Azalea for Mom

Fairy Crown #9 – Borrowed Scenery & an Azalea for Mom

Posted on by
2

My crown for June 5th was simple and a little bride-like – or so my friends told me. It consists of two flowers only:  palest-pink beautybush (Kolkwitzia amabilis) and azalea ‘White Cascade’ (Rhododendron hybrid).

The Japanese have a special word for the view in the distance, the landscape framed by your property, the elements that exist outside your own space: they call it shakkei.  For most of us, our borrowed scenery is not a distant mountain range or a bucolic meadow rolling to the ocean, but the plants and trees growing in properties adjacent to our own gardens.

My shakkei is a pair of large beautybushes (Kolkwizia amabilis) belonging to my neighbour Claudette that cascade over my own fence and dominate the view along my side garden path, sometimes in late May but usually in early-mid June.

I thought Claudette — my neighbour for 39 years and a former French teacher — should be photographed for this blog with one of the progeny of her original shrub, and she kindly obliged.  Merci beaucoups, madame.

Beautybush is often called ‘old-fashioned’ but I rarely see it in residential gardens, or botanical gardens, for that matter, which is a shame because it is a majestic shrub in bloom. A member of the honeysuckle family and a cousin to weigela, it typically grows to 10 feet tall (3 m) with a vase-shaped, arching habit that you can see in my photos. Here it is in my friend Rob Proctor’s fabulous garden in Denver, which I blogged about a few years ago.

I love the story of the 1901 discovery of Kolkwitzia amabilis by legendary plant explorer Ernest ‘Chinese’ Wilson (1876-1930) while collecting in the mountains of Hubei, China for Veitch’s Nursery of England. The shrub was about 5 feet tall and out of bloom, though he recorded in his notes that it had spinose fruits. He collected seeds which Veitch’s grew on until, six years later, small plants labeled as “Abelia” were sent to Boston’s Arnold Arboretum where Wilson had been employed. Finally, in June 1915 the shrubs flowered for the first time. According to a story in Arnoldia, the Arboretum’s newsletter, “Their early-summer displays of pink blossoms, profusely borne on arching branches, so impressed Wilson and others that it was christened beautybush.”

Photo courtesy of Arnold Arboretum – Copyright President & Fellows of Harvard College-Arnold Arboretum Archives.

Seeing it in Claudette’s garden in full flower with swallowtail butterflies…

…..and bumble bees competing to forage in the pale-pink blossoms flecked with amber nectar guides, I cannot help agreeing with its discoverer.

Here’s a little video I made of insects enjoying the flowers:

And though I wouldn’t consider it a prime candidate for floral design, here’s a very tiny bouquet that shows the inner markings of the corolla.

Much of my love of gardening came from watching my mother tend her garden in the suburbs of Vancouver, British Columbia in Canada’s mild ‘banana belt’. She grew camellias, magnolias, flowering cherries and a collection of brilliantly-colored Japanese azaleas – and I was her willing student.  Though I garden in a much colder climate, in her honor I planted the ultra-hardy ‘Cascade’ azaleas (Rhododendron ‘Cascade’) beneath my sundeck.  It is the sole survivor of many rhododendrons I planted over the decades, most of which eventually succumbed to imperfect conditions or summer drought. But ‘Cascade’ kept ticking along, and is an important color component of this little white-and-green-hued area, along with old-fashioned, white-edged Hosta undulata var. albo-marginata.    

Here it is with my romping Siberian bugloss (Brunnera macrophylla) peeking through the flowers.

The fairy crowns are coming fast and furious now – it’s a job trying to keep up! Want to see more from earlier this season?
#1 – Spring Awakening
#2 – Little Blossoms for Easter
#3 – The Perfume of Hyacinths 
#4 – Spring Bulb Extravaganza
#5 – A Crabapple Requiem
#6 – Shady Lady
#7 – Columbines & Wild Strawberries on Lake Muskoka
#8 – Lilac, Dogwood & Alliums

Fairy Crown 7 – Columbines & Wild Strawberries on Lake Muskoka

Posted on by
2

My 7th fairy crown for late May was created at our cottage on Lake Muskoka, a few hours north of Toronto. It features native wildflowers and fruit: red-flowered eastern columbine (Aquilegia canadensis), common blue violets (Viola sororia), wild strawberry (Fragaria virginiana), lowbush blueberry (Vaccinium angustifolium), the poet’s narcissus (Narcissus poeticus var. recurvus) and a little weed for good measure, yellow rocketcress (Barbarea vulgaris).

If my city garden takes a somewhat naturalistic approach to gardening, it is nonetheless situated in a traditional urban neighborhood. It might be the most flowery front garden on the street, but I’ve worked to make it fit in with the lawns up and down the block by having a hedge as a side boundary; by retaining old clipped boxwood shrubs on either side of the front stairs; and by paying attention to pleasing floral succession, from the earliest snowdrops to the last asters. And my neighbors do love it. In contrast, the meadows and garden beds I created atop Precambrian bedrock at our cottage on Lake Muskoka a few hours north of Toronto are truly wild-looking – and there’s no need to fit in with any neighbors. (I wrote about gardening at the lake in my extensive 2017 blog titled ‘Muskoka Wild’.)

I don’t grow tulips there — they’re just not right for the lake — but my fairy crown for May 20th features the last daffodil of the season, the poet’s daffodil (Narcissus poeticus var. recurvus).

Daffodils grow amazingly well in the acidic, sandy soil here since they love to dry out in summer, popping up each spring amidst the big prairie grasses and forbs.

Besides the poet’s daffodil, one of my favourites is the highly scented Tazetta variety ‘Geranium’, below. 

My grandchildren have all experienced nature on Lake Muskoka. This is Oliver exploring another perfumed daffodil, ‘Fragrant Rose’.

And there is nothing more satisfying than a bouquet of perfumed daffodils on the table in April or May.

On many occasions, I’ve tucked a bunch of daffodils in my bag as I head back to the city.

Daffodils flower concurrently with our little native common blue violet, Viola sororia.

Viola sororia is native to Muskoka, as it is to much of northeast North America. It doesn’t take up a lot of room and grows wherever it pleases, but always with a little shade and moisture at the roots.  

Apart from violets, the landscape here features a large roster of native plants, including the lovely eastern columbine (Aquilegia canadensis) that pops up in the lean, gravelly soil where many plants might struggle. I try to sow seed of this species, being careful to leave the seeds uncovered since light is necessary for germination.

But wild columbine is very particular about where it wants to put down roots, and always surprises me when I see the first, ferny leaves pop up in a new location in spring. 

Hummingbirds are said to enjoy the dainty flowers of eastern columbine, but I confess I’ve never seen them doing so.  I would have to lie in wait on rocky ground by the shore, not as much fun as sitting comfortably on my deck watching them fight over the ‘Black & Bloom’ anise sage (Salvia guaranitica).

Muskoka and wild blueberries just go together naturally, and somebody’s grandmother always made the very best wild blueberry pie in August. In our family, it was my husband’s mother, and she taught her grandkids her secret recipe, including my daughter. So I’m always happy to see the queen bumble bee pollinating those first wild blueberry (Vaccinium angustifolium) flowers in May.

But just in case the chipmunks find our berries before we do, we always make a stop at the wild blueberry stand on the way to the cottage from town.

Wild strawberries (Fragaria virginiana) bloom in Muskoka now, too, and on parts of my path above the lake they form a perennial groundcover so dense that I am sometimes afraid to step into their midst, lest I damage them.

But there are always enough strawberries ripening months later to make my grandkids pause on their way to the lake to sample the fruit…

…tiny, admittedly, but oh-so-sweet and juicy.

Similarly, May is when the dark-pink flowers of black huckleberry (Gaylussacia baccata) adorn the shrubs in the shade of the white pines along the lakeshore.  The deep-purple fruit will ripen in August and though somewhat seedy, it is sweet and good for eating raw or baking.

There’s a native serviceberry here at the lake too, but don’t expect to see billowing clouds of white flowers like those big species further south. Its Latin name Amelanchier humilis gives a clue as to its shape, “low, spreading serviceberry”.  Still, native andrena bees love nectaring on it in May, as do the bumble bee queens, which nonetheless must remain wary of  crab spiders looking for their own meals.

My crown’s golden jewels are flowers of the common European weed in the mustard family, yellow rocketcress (Barbarea vulgaris). In Europe, it’s called ‘rocket’ or ‘bittercress’, suggesting a strong-tasting, edible green. Indeed, my foraging friends would recommend picking the basal leaves as they emerge in spring or the rapini-like flower buds (raab) to cook in recipes.  Failing that, just wait for the mustard-yellow flowers to appear and wear them in your fairy crown!

I use my smallest vases to display these delicate blossoms of spring on the table – a welcome celebration of nature’s return to the shore of a lake that was thick with ice just weeks earlier

********

Want to see more of my Fairy Crowns? 

#1 – Spring Awakening
#2 – Little Blossoms for Easter
#3 – The Perfume of Hyacinths
#4 – Spring Bulb Extravaganza
#5 – A Crabapple Requiem
#6 – Shady Lady


Gardening for the Birds

Posted on by
16

At this point in a Toronto winter, with loads of snow remaining on the ground and most days still well below freezing, it is such a joy to watch the bird life in my garden. There isn’t the chirpy avian soundtrack of spring, not yet, but the flash of cardinals zooming at full speed right into their nest in the big cedar hedge, the busy foraging of juncos, the darting to and fro of chickadees – it’s all a pleasure. Over the years, I’ve observed the birds here in my garden through my large kitchen windows; at the cottage on Lake Muskoka; in various public gardens; and in the nearby cemetery where I photograph trees and shrubs. In doing so, I’ve compiled a visual record of how gardens can attract birds without using bird feeders. Here are some ideas.

Conifers for Shelter and Food

Birds need places to nest and take shelter in winter, if they’re not migrating. My garden has two eastern hemlocks (Tsuga canadensis) at the back of the garden that I planted in the 1990s. They’re not beautiful, they developed multiple trunks and lost limbs and look a little ragged, but the birds do love them, like the male cardinal below.

Between my next-door neighbour’s property and mine is a large white cedar or arborvitae (Thuja occidentalis) hedge. This might be the very best garden habitat for birds. We keep it sheared so its growth is dense, helping to protect its inhabitants from the weather and predatory raptors. I’m always amazed that the birds know exactly where their home is inside this long leafy condominium, and fly at very fast speed right at it, disappearing into the lacy branches.  (That purple birdhouse is more for looks – the birds haven’t taken up residence

In autumn, I see birds eating the arborvitae seeds, too, like the house sparrow below.

At our cottage in Muskoka just a few hours north of Toronto, chickadees, below, pine siskins and loads of other birds forage in the white pine trees (Pinus strobus).

Song sparrows with their wacky, beautiful melodies use the pine trees too….

…. as does the occasional ruffed grouse.

Fruit 

There is nothing that attracts more birds to a garden than the fleshy fruit of trees and shrubs.  Of course, that can be a negative if you’re trying to harvest your own grapes or cherries and need to net the fruit to deter birds as it ripens. But in my garden I have a few excellent woody plants whose fruit is dedicated to the birds. The first is crabapple – in my case, a weeping Malus ‘Red Jade’ over my pond (that sadly has likely lived its last summer, with increasingly intractable viral blight).  Its small fruit and proximity to the water has always made it an extra-special treat, for robins….

…. and northern cardinals.

I have a pair of large, native serviceberry shrubs (Amelancher canadensis) that are a cloud of white blossoms in early spring followed by summer fruit that ripens from red to blue. It’s quite delicious, but I rarely get to pick a handful before the fruit has been eaten by robins….

…… or sparrows….

….. or cardinals, like this one tucking into a fruit on my deck railing.

My Washington hawthorn (Crataegus phaenopyrum) is a favourite tree. Though its late spring flowering is not exactly an olfactory treat, its mottled autumn colour and abundant clusters of red fruit (haws) make up for it.  The fruit seems to need some cold weather to reduce the astringency, but I love watching the robins on it….

….. and the cedar waxwings, below. However, it’s usually my garden’s intrepid squirrels that finally strip the tree clean.

Staghorn sumac (Rhus typhina) is one of the most abundant native shrubs in the northeast, but it can be problematic in a garden. In short, it suckers far and wide. Though I grow a select cultivar called Tiger Eyes (‘Bailtiger’) featuring chartreuse foliage followed by lovely, apricot fall colour, it has the same tendency to pop up in surprising places quite removed from the main plant. That’s it below with another bird-dining favourite, white flowered, alternate-leaved dogwood (Cornus alternatifolia) behind it.  It is my favourite shrub of all; I cannot recommend it highly enough where it is native, i.e. throughout much of eastern North America. Interestingly, my neighbour’s pale-pink beauty bush (Kolkwitzia amabilis) on the far right, an Asian native, has seeds that feed many birds in winter

Cornus alternifolia produces clusters of dark-blue fruit that are consumed quickly in early summer. 

As for the Tiger Eyes sumac, lots of birds enjoy rooting for the seeds in the fuzzy red fruits, including blue jays….

…. and the cardinal family that lives in the hedge adjacent to it.

I made a little video of the male cardinal foraging on my sumac.  (It’s not easy to hold my little, old Canon SX50 zoom camera steady from my kitchen window, which is 40-50 feet away from the sumac, so I’m always happy when I can capture a scene like this).

Studies made by different researchers brand viagra overnight proved that chiropractic treatments, including spinal manipulation, are safe due to the skillful and expert hands of the chiropractors. It is a commander viagra djpaulkom.tv global leader in the health Erectile dysfunction affects millions of men all over the world have been successful in treating their ED with the help of some quality drugs. One thing is assured that with the intake of the Kamagra add more fun to the levitra uk about levitra uk experience and expertise to deal with the issue more a very different perspective. All the works, efficiency, power, overnight viagra delivery dose and healing capacity of a disease.

At the cottage on Lake Muskoka, the sumacs are all wild and their suckering doesn’t bother me, except when they try to creep into my meadows. They are not only a favourite browse for white-tailed deer but a valuable autumn-winter food for birds, including black-capped chickadees, below.

This autumn, I was surprised to see a pair of northern flickers on my old fence where the native Virginia creeper (Parthenocissus quinquefolia) grows in a tangle. Likely on their migration route, they took turns keeping watch while their mate nibbled on the fruit.  Though it won’t win any awards, I was delighted with this photo showing the male’s yellow tail feathers. 

There are other good native shrubs and trees to attract birds, including Northern spicebush (Lindera benzoin), below, nannyberry (Viburnum lentago), American mountain ash (Sorbus americana),  elderberry (Sambucus pubens, S. canadensis), hackberry (Celtis occidentalis), black cherry (Prunus serotina), winterberry (Ilex verticillata) and various other dogwoods (Cornus racemosa, C. sericea).

And though it cannot be recommended, don’t be surprised to see birds eating mulberries (Morus alba) in older neighbourhoods where these European trees were planted long ago. It’s estimated that more than 60 bird species eat the fruit of mulberry trees– much to the chagrin of those who have to clean the purple stains off their outdoor furniture!  

Flower Seeds and Weeds

Without a doubt, in my experience the best garden plant for providing nutritious seeds for birds is purple coneflower (Echinacea purpurea). I caught these goldfinches foraging in the Piet Oudolf-designed entry border at the Toronto Botanical Garden one autumn.

When I posted the video below on Facebook back in 2015, it was eventually shared almost 2 thousand times. My message?  Don’t deadhead your echinaceas!

Here is a flock of goldfinches on my own pollinator garden echinaceas in October 2021.

Goldfinches also love coreopsis seeds, like those of C. lanceolata.

Rudbeckias also offer seed for birds. These goldfinches are on cutleaf coneflower (Rudbeckia laciniata).

In fact, my photo of a goldfinch on that native perennial was featured on a recent cover of The American Gardener magazine.

Canada or creeping thistle (Cirsium arvense), below, may be a pesky, invasive European weed, but there’s no doubt that goldfinches enjoy it – and help to spread it far and wide!

My meadows on Lake Muskoka attract many different birds to feed on flower and grass seeds in late summer and autumn. Wild beebalm (Monarda fistulosa), my most abundant perennial, attracts goldfinches, below, and chipping sparrows frequent the paths to eat fallen seeds, including those of my big prairie grasses: big bluestem, switch grass and Indian grass.

Ornamental grasses offer seeds for birds, provided they have a place to perch. The sparrow below stood on leadplant (Amorpha canescens) while eating seeds of switch grass (Panicum virgatum).

At the Montreal Botanical Garden, I enjoyed watching house sparrows foraging on the dark seeds of the ornamental millet Pennisetum glaucum ‘Purple Baron’.

Other good choices for seed include oaks for acorns and beech and hickory trees for nuts.

Needless to say, many trees also offer a variety of insects for birds, especially important for springtime feeding of nestlings. Oaks are recommended as a top genus by entomologist/ecologist Douglas Tallamy because of the huge number of insects that feed on them, up to three hundred.

Nectar for Hummingbirds

I’ve already written a blog on good plants for hummingbirds but I made this little video to add some nectar sweetness to this post. It features the ruby-throated hummingbird, which is the only native Canadian hummingbird east of the Rocky Mountains.

Water

Everything needs to drink, and birds are no exception.  So while I don’t have a bird feeder, I do offer water in the form of my old pond. When I dug it in 1987 I had dreams of aquatic plants with gorgeous flowers, and I did grow waterlilies and floating plants for a while. But marauding raccoons were a constant irritant and eventually it was too difficult to lift out heavy pots to store for winter, since the pond is just a few feet deep. So today it’s a giant birdbath and water fountain (must fix the pump!) surrounded by too many weeds and prone to algae in summer, but it is so popular with the birds I cannot imagine my garden without it.  Here it is with a pair of juvenile robins drinking and bathing.

Cardinals love the pond, too.  This is a male and female pair in spring.

And here are cardinals bathing – such fun to watch (from a distance).

I have seen some sweet birdbaths in gardens, like the one below, but a pond fulfils that objective very nicely.

Dead trees and Snags

If you enjoy watching woodpeckers, you’ll know that they often frequent trees that are diseased or damaged, like the red maple below being visited by the hairy woodpecker.

Some are even dead – like my poor ash tree (Fraxinus pensylvanica), a victim of emerald ash borer a few years ago.  But I left the base of the trunk in place, mainly because it would have cost a fortune (more) to cut it to ground level, grind the roots and repair the fence.  It has become a stop on the foraging route of the woodpecker in the video, below.

******

Without foliage on the trees, winter is a good time to observe birds in the garden.  On days when the local Cooper’s hawk, below, is searching for a tasty feathered meal, I am usually alerted by the persistent warning squawks of blue jays. It was a thrill to see this raptor perched in my crabapple tree.

This week, I watched chickadees, cardinals and dark-eyed juncos, below, eating the seeds of my next-door neighbour’s beauty bush (Kolkwitzia amabilis).  A big, beautiful, old-fashioned Asian shrub, it also attracts lots of pollinators in June.

But spring will be here before we know it, and the robins will be searching for worms among my flowering bulbs….

… and in the lawn.

And Madame Cardinalis cardinalis will find a flowery forsythia in which to dry off and groom her feathers after a spring dip in my pond, while being serenaded by Monsieur Cardinalis cardinalis  high up in my black walnut tree.  I cannot wait!

A Devastating Gypsy Moth Summer on Lake Muskoka

Posted on by
14

Well, I tried. That’s all I could say about my summer 2020 preventive efforts as I watched hordes of gypsy moth caterpillars climbing up our oak trees in summer 2021.  Though I probably dispatched tens of thousands of caterpillars with the egg-mass-spraying program I blogged about last year (and those masses completely dried up), there were obviously egg masses too far up in the trees that escaped my control efforts. And before we go any further, I am going to continue to refer to this insect as a ‘gypsy’ moth, since I’ve read rather refreshing and reassuring things from actual Roma people who are proud of their collective name. If I were publishing scientific journals, I would need to abide by nomenclatural consensus, but “LDD moth” (from its scientific name Lymantria dispar dispar) confuses the issue unnecessarily for the sake of this final blog.

May 20 – Let me take you through this year’s saga in photos, beginning with my pant leg as I sat on our dock on Lake Muskoka, a few hours north of Toronto, on Victoria Day weekend. Those tiny things are the newly-hatched first instars. They were falling freely from the oaks and pines above our heads. But we read reports in the papers at this time of people developing contact rashes from the tiny larvae landing on their necks!

May 22 – I took a spring wildflower walk through the forest nearby and found an early instar on the leaf of striped maple (Acer pensylvanicum).  These first and second instars are the stage at which aerial spraying forests with Btk (Bacillus thuringiensis subsp.kurastaki) works, with 2 applications at 7-10 days in age and a second approximately 2 weeks later, while caterpillars are less than 1/2 inch long. Gypsy moth males complete 5 instars; females require 6 instars for the additional energy to produce eggs. Caterpillars feed on foliage for 6-8 weeks before pupating.

Alas, Btk also kills the larvae of native butterflies and moths actively feeding at the time and is increasingly proscribed by governments, which is why I photographed this native moth on our back door. It would be an unintended victim of a spraying program – part of a life cycle of which we may not have intimate knowledge but is most certainly part of the native ecology.

June 2 – When we returned to Lake Muskoka eleven days later, the caterpillars were everywhere, including on our house siding where…

…. in the heat of the day, hundreds climbed up to seek shade on the north-facing back wall, many heading right to the roof eaves.

On the hot, exposed hillside behind our cottage, they were eating the leaves of the many red oaks (Quercus rubra) that grow naturally there. The sound was loud, like Rice Krispies…. “snap-crackle-pop”.

June 4 – As I took a break from gardening, once again I was able to assess the development of the caterpillars on my clothing…

…. and the veiled hat I wear to deter blackflies in the woods.

But some landed on our sundeck and were fair game for the resident ants.

Because of the phenomenon of the caterpillars seeking shade on our north-facing cottage wall, we were able to carry out a program of dispatching them into soapy water. We did this several times a day.

Over several weeks in June and early July, we filled many buckets with caterpillars, not that it did much good. It just made us feel we were doing something to help our trees.

The feeding continued throughout June. I could stand beside a tree and watch a never-ending procession of caterpillars up into the canopy…..

…. where, gradually, the foliage began to disappear on our trees.

When we returned to the cottage on June 23, most of the oak trees looked like February…

…. and our back porch was covered with dried-out oak leaves and male flowers. There would be no acorns produced this summer, one of the seldom-mentioned effects of gypsy moth predation. A 1990 West Virginia study on red oaks said “The high carbohydrate content of acorns provides the energy necessary for winter survival. Loss of mast crops due to direct and indirect effects of gypsy moth defoliation may result in large-scale reductions in wildlife habitat and food sources.” The study mentioned three factors related to defoliation: “direct consumption of flowers, abortion of immature acorns due to low carbohydrate supply, and lack of flower bud initiation

Meanwhile, the caterpillars had begun their assault on our big white pines….

…. leaving our sundeck littered with needles daily.

On July 1st, Doug stood on our dock picking caterpillars off the pines. A drop in the literal bucket, as they say.

Besides the oaks and pines, the caterpillars devoured staghorn sumac leaves….

….. and the foliage of my poor nannyberry (Viburnum lentago)…..

…. and even snacked on some meadow perennials like daisy fleabane (Erigeron philadelphicum).

That weekend I visited one of my favourite wetlands nearby, a place I call the Torrance Fen. Here the caterpillars had stripped the speckled alders (Alnus incana)….

…. and were working on the winterberries (Ilex verticillata). 

On June 26th, I took a walk down the dirt road near our cottage and looked at the forest there. Because it is more mixed than our hillside, the damage seemed less severe, but there was still the crackling sound of the caterpillars eating. They were on the young beeches (Fagus grandifolia)…

…. but completely ignored the white ash (Fraxinus americana). Sadly, emerald ash borer has other destructive plans for that species.

Paper birches (Betula papyrifera) and trembling aspens (Populus tremuloides) were stripped bare.

By June 30th, the oldest caterpillars had matured and begun seeking a sheltered spot in which to pupate. Pupae are a dark red-brown with hairs on the exterior; female pupae are larger than the males.  They will stay in the pupal stage for 1-2 weeks before hatching as moths.

Some of the aggregations were truly disgusting looking, with tens of caterpillars pupating together.

But on that day, I also noted a lot of withered caterpillars stuck to branches in a ‘backbend’ position, indicating they had died of NPV or nucleopolyhedrosis virus.

If there was any good news this summer, it was that July featured unusually rainy weather – which was not great for people wanting to plan events outdoors, but was the best possible news for our ravaged trees. Refoliation of defoliated deciduous trees requires sufficient groundwater to enable a new round of leaf formation and photosynthesis. Watching the rain fall outdoors actually gave me great joy…

…. and this Canada Day rainbow seemed to augur well for our trees. This year, at least.

I even spent some time on July 4th counting the number of monarch butterfly caterpillars eating the leaves of the butterfly milkweed I’d planted just for them.

And on July 12th, I photographed the new leaves appearing on our red oaks…..

…. even as newly-hatched male gypsy moths flew about in a flurry, seeking the stationary females. The females were everywhere, including in the grooved bark of white pines and…

…even under the plastic tarp covering our firewood pile (and on the firewood itself.)

But on July 14th, it was sadly apparent that the egg masses on trees were much more abundant than in summer 2020.  This was one of our worst affected trees. Without sustained cold temperatures in the coming winter, it seems evident that next summer will be even worse, if that’s possible.

So (as in 2020) I mixed up another batch of my horticultural oil solution, attached fresh sponges to my extender pole…..

… .and began the long process of spraying eggs. With the number of egg masses I’ve seen it will be a long process this autumn. But each mass contains a potential of 200-1000 caterpillars so it’s definitely worthwhile to reduce their numbers. And it was evident from last year’s dried-up egg masses that the homemade oil does the job.

I made a video that captured some of this year’s saga, below. Just as a last word, I have read in so many publications that gypsy moths tend to come in cycles of 10 or 12 years, but we have never seen predation like summer 2021 in more than 40 years of visiting and living on Lake Muskoka.  If this becomes an annual phenomenon, it will have dire consequences for our tree canopy. Fingers crossed for a cold, cold winter, since extended days of temperatures -25C or lower are reported to be fatal to the egg masses.

While as a canada cialis levitra davidfraymusic.com collection it’s fulfilling to watch, it does not likely work as a remake. Things to no rx levitra follow along with Kamagra treatment: Whatever you had during may affect your health including physical, metal and reproductive. Hotels Miami South Beach, Miami Attractions and Everglades Tours and An Enjoyable Florida Vacation, Coral Castle is a most attractive monument in Miami. levitra samples The study was observational, so there is purchasing viagra in canada not a permanent cure.