Still, a lovely plume

It’s been two blooms since the milkweed received this plume moth.

Still uncertain about the species, I’ll venture narrowing it down to

Himmelman’s (Geina tenuidactylus) or Buck’s (Geina Bucksi) Plume Moth.

Based on illustrations in the Peterson Field Guide to Moths of Northeastern

North America (Beadle & Leckie, 2012)–and a hunch, I guess–my bet’s on Buck’s.

 

 

 

 

 

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Leaf eater

Commonly named for eating Asclepias incarnata (not  pictured),

a Swamp milkweed leaf beetle (Labidomera clivicollis)

makes do in our patch of Common milkweed (Asclepias syriaca).

 

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milkweed seeds

Autumn seeds         a rising choir         —         into what dark promise         will the sounding fly?

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Aposematic

Just where we expected — the red milkweed beetle.                            (Tetraopes tetrophthalmus)

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feed after feed …

Barely visible Myzocallis asclepiadis aphids in various life-stages

cling to the bottoms of milkweed leaves that I glean to clean

and feed to the season’s last monarch caterpillars.

All summer these underleaf-feeding aphids have been dropping what ecologist Anurag Agrawal calls “honeydew” excrement for ants and maybe others to eat on the leaftops below (a process just beyond the discretion & ability of this camera — so we’ll take his word for it).

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Why plant milkweed?

One

more

monarch

headed

in due time

for

Mexico

 

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Sown here

Sown here last year for the monarch and her brood
milkweed has grown to host a new visitor —
like this banded net-winged beetle
(calopteron discrepans, I think) —
on nearly every leaf turned

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