Wild Flower Wednesday: Wild Strawberry

Fragrant and tasty - Wild Strawberry

What could be more natural than the desire to add one of Alberta's more common, delicately attractive, and tasty native ground covers to a home garden? Admittedly, Wild Strawberry rarely produces fruit, but the white flowers have plenty of charm, the trefoil leaves are attractive, and the runners are red. They also spread freely and vigorously across garden beds and mulch, crowding out less competitive plants.

Ascending toothed margins, short terminal tooth, and an upper leaf surface without hairs give you Fragaria virginiana.

Alberta actually has two species of wild strawberries: the common Wild Strawberry (Fragaria virginiana) and the more restricted Woodland Strawberry (Fragaria vesca). The latter has leaves where the teeth on the margins diverge, a longer terminal tooth, and a hairy upper surface. I'm not sure if Woodland Strawberry is less aggressive, but Wild Strawberry is not a good choice for the garden. I've been aggressively weeding my sprawling horde for over two years and am barely keeping ahead.

Hybrid Commercial Strawberry

The hybrid commercial strawberry - which is said to have resulted from crosses between Wild Strawberry and the West Coast Beach Strawberry (Fragaria chiloensis) - has leaves that look a bit like Woodland Strawberry. Moreover, commercial strawberries are just as attractive as their wild relatives and put most of their energy into producing fruit, and much less into producing runners.

Small Sweat Bee enjoying Pink Panda

If you like the look of strawberries in your garden, but don't so much like strawberries, then Pink Panda (Fragaria ‘Frel’ x Potentilla) is a good alternative. The pink flowers are highly attractive to pollinators, start blooming early and last all summer, but set very few fruit. We've had them slowly spreading through the Home Bug Garden almost as long as Wild Strawberry, but rarely need to weed them. They make a nice ground cover.

Fragaria Pretty-in-Rose

If you like your ground covers a bit more gaudy, then Fragaria Pretty-in-Rose may be a good choice. I'm not sure what they crossed a strawberry with to get this particular shade of reddish pink, but our 2010 plantings survived last winter and produce moderate numbers of large, tasty, but strange-looking fruit last summer. I'm hoping they pull through with this winter's sparse snow cover.

Fruit of Pretty-in-Rose

Myco Monday: Myxomycete Maybe

Fuzzy myxomycete aka slime mould

'Fungus' is from the Latin for a mushroom, but traditionally the word has been used for any kind of organism that shares some structural similarities with the true fungi (Eumycota). This includes several groups that are now known to be bizarre communal amoebae and not at all related to fungi: the Slime Mo(u)lds. Various slime moulds slither around as acellular amoebae, threads, or slug-like masses of slime engulfing bacteria, yeasts, and other small bits of organic matter. One species, Dictyostelium discoideum, even carries around its own bacteria and 'farms' them.

 When food or moisture becomes limiting, the slimy amoeboid forms turn into what look like mini-mushrooms with a stalk and 'frutification' containing spores. Many are strikingly attractive and all bizarrely interesting. We think these pictures are of the sporulating bodies of a plasmodial slime mould (Class Myxomycetes), possibly in the genus Physarum. One thing that makes us not sure is that none of the pictures that we've seen are as furry as ours. But may it may be that a true fungus has been growing over the slime mould.

Marbled Feather-hair Springtail 

What is for certain is that a very handsome springtail, Ptenothrix marmorata (Packard, 1873), is munching on the furry bladders. The species name, marmorata, means 'Marbled', which is certainly apropos, and the genus name means 'Feather-hair', presumably referring to ornate body setae.

Friday Bug: Whiteflies

Greenhouse Whiteflies having a grand old time on a Pelargonium leaf

On offer for this week’s Friday Bug is a sort of antithesis to last week’s Ebony Bug: the nefarious Whitefly. I think these pictures show the Greehouse Whitefly Trialeurodes vaporariorum (Westwood, 1856) and it is not a good sign when you find them on a plant. Whiteflies (family Alyerodidae) are tiny even as adults (~a millimeter and a half long), and the young are flat, scale-like blobs, and so are easy to miss until your houseplant turns into a sticky mess. Even fungus gnats are large compared to whiteflies, but if you see tiny powdery white motes fluttering around your plant, be prepared for an outbreak.

Tiny + powdery white wings = Whitefly

The Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station has a nice webpage where they review control options for a variety of pests of Pelargonium (aka geranium) including several biocontrol agents that are effective against Greenhouse Whitefly. These probably work much better in a large greenhouse, than in a home. I find that insecticidal soap is all I need for home and my small backyard greenhouse. You do have to keep after them, though, and don’t wait until the population is too large.

Pollinator of the Week: Megachile

Megachile the 'big lip' of bees

I hope that I am impressing someone with my ability to identify a bee seen only as a bum protruding from a flower. This should be especially impressive too, since the bee I'm claiming this is, a species of Megachile, belongs to a family defined by its  'big lip'. In old Greek 'mega' means something impressively large and 'chillo' means 'lip'. I could be wrong here, because 'chilli' also means a thousand (must be where we get our 'kilogram', kilometre'). But after working my way through the chapter in Charles Michener's massive Bees of the World (2nd Edition, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007), I know these bees have 'a rectangular labrum that is longer than broad' - aka a big lip.

Snapdragon & Megachile with scopa

The reason that I can be fairly certain of the genus is because unlike many of the bees we are familiar with, species of Megachile do not use their legs to carry pollen, but the undersides of their metasoma (=+/- abdomen). Notice the dense brush of long yellowish hairs above (and also the large mandibles). This field of pollen-collecting hairs is called a 'scopa' (not to be confused with the card game popular in Italy, nor with 'scope' which is what the spellchecker insists on).

Megachile with full scopa over Eurybia conspicua

The abdominal scopa is, perhaps, better seen in my point-and-shoot moment of blurry glory above. The camera obviously preferred the flowers to the bee, but the picture is still illustrative. The common name of these bees, however, is not 'Yellow-bellied Bees', but Leaf-cutter Bees. Consider the large mandibles visible in the snapdragon pollinating bee above - very useful for cutting our circular bits of leaf or petal. These bees nest in burrows in wood and line their nests with plant material. I'm sure some people take offence at this behaviour and pay outrageous sums to have their gardens sprayed to save their roses from a trivial bee tax. In my garden Leaf-cutter Bees seem to prefer my peas, but I still have more than I can eat every year, so I do not begrudge them a safe haven for their young.

Megachile, I think, possibly a male

In fact, I have several of Splendor Awaits experimental bee homes. The only bees that made use of them last summer were Megachile species. A few wasps also seem to be interested, but I guess many of the bees in my backyard nest in the ground and patches of bare soil would do more to encourage them.

Adrian's bee hotels stuffed with leaf circles & baby bees

Wild Flower Wednesday: Twinflower

Two pairs of Twinflowers: Linnaea borealis

Personally, I tend towards liking the smaller things in life. If given the choice between a dinner-plate dahlia and a tiny and delicate wildflower, I'd choose the latter every time. I guess it's good I didn't try to earn my living as a gardener. That would be especially true here, because I have not done very well by this tiny beauty.

Twinflower thriving under aspen

Twinflower is a relative of honeysuckles and snowberries, both of which may feature in some future Wednesday Wildflower. They are interesting plants, but pale in comparison to their tiny cousin. My particular HBG experiment came via an accidental severing of a Twinflower while taking a soil sample. I couldn't bear to toss it out, so I've tried to nurture it along. Maybe the soil isn't acid enough, or maybe some essential mycorrhiza didn't make the transition, but my plant barely made it through the last two winters. It's not happy. I'd suggest trying a nursery bred plant if your are interested, and if you can find one.

Thrips like Twinflower too

I'm not alone in liking Twinflower. It is claimed that the great systematist Linnaeus also loved the plant, and apparently coerced a colleague into naming it after him. Wikipedia has what seems to be an informative write-up - and a great picture of Linnaeus mugging with the flower. The subtle attractions of the Linnaea continue into modern times and I especially like this doubly twinned vignette.

Myco Monday: Scaly Pholiota

Probably Pholiota squarrosa

We think this is a cluster of Scaly Pholiota (Pholiota squarrosa) sprouting from the base of an aspen. We think this mostly because we have a mycologist friend who said that's what he thinks it is and because it more or less seems to be doing what Scaly Photiola is supposed to do. When younger (e.g. here) the 'scaly' bit of the name is easier to understand, but these are mature, possibly over mature, mushrooms and probably well on their way to becoming fungus gnats.

According to David Aurora "Pholiota is the largest genus of brown-spored, wood-inhabiting agarics" and with over 200 species, some poisonous, some apparently not, it's probably not the kind of mushroom you'd want to take to dinner. Leave these for the flies, beetles, and microphotographers.

Adventures in Spider Misidentification: Tegeneria not

Mystery Basement Spider

Although we have a caveat in the sidebar (HBG Names & Claims) about the ids on this blog and our openness to suggested corrections, we've had few alternative hypotheses offered. Ted MacRae and Matthias Buck helped on occasion, but I can't think of any others offhand. Such an absence of feedback can lead to a sense of complacency and a mistaken feeling that one knows what one is doing.

Tegenaria not!

Last December I had a post on what was afoot in the basement wherein I featured a picture of what I thought was an immature Barn/Sink/Basement Funnel Weaver Spider Tegenaria domestica. I arrived at this conclusion because I knew we've had the spider in its funnel webs in the basement for years and after consulting the information on BugGuide, I decided it was close enough and what else could it be anyway? But fortunately, last week John Sloan discovered the HBG and was good enough to tell me that I was probably wrong.

Not an upside-down Funnel Weaver

To John, the legs didn't look right but were reminiscent (e.g. here) of a family of spiders not known to be in Alberta: the Pimoidae. This spider family is on the West Coast and our guest room in the basement has hosted many visits by West Coast relatives and scientists - so colonization by suitcase is well within the realm of possibilities. I think the match looks good, both the habitus of the spider and the upside-down habit in the web, but as John pointed out Pimoidae is close to the Linyphiidae - a family of mostly tiny spiders that is very diverse in Alberta.

Pimoa or Linyphiidae: Lepthyphantes cf nebulosus

Our Mystery Basement Spiders are only about 4-5 mm long (chelicerae to spinnerets) at the moment and probably just juveniles. We'll be hoping that some make it to adults so that we can send them to John for a more authoritative identification. But wait - there is more! John has offered several other corrections to past posts and I have updated those posts and will be sharing more Adventures in Spider Misidentification with you in the future. Everyone is invited to join in and help (mis)identify a spider.

UPDATE: Thanks to Alberta Bugs, Robin Leech, and ultimately and authoritatively, Don Buckle - we have a winner: definitely Linyphiidae and most likely Megalepthyphantes (Lepthyphantes) nebulosus - a spider that likes people (synanthrope).