The Awesome Everyday Ordinary
Dogbane and Its Beetle
I am not the most expeditious person to walk or drive with if you are in a hurry, because I am consistently guilty of botanizing: rubber-necking along any trail or county road, lest I miss something interesting.
“What was THAT!” I call from a position of extreme left cervical rotation from the driver’s seat.
With such temptation, I will find a less-than-perfect place to pull over; walk back a few hundred yards, in spite of the consistently predictable barking beagles from the nearest farmhouse. I step off, poison ivy be damned, into the roadside tangle of green. And I will come home with a snapshot or a sample of a mystery plant for later identification.
On a hike, I will always be at the very end of the stragglers, having maybe stopped to scratch-and-sniff an old favorite aroma, often a year after having smelled it last. “Yep, that’s Wild Ginger.” And the smell transports me to some other when.
Or I MUST capture the light on an otherwise ordinary bit of greenery: the light!! to capture the instantly-morphing light! It will never shine just so again.
Coming back one day last week from Skyline Bank, as we worked through the process of steps involved in the ultimate settlement of mom’s estate, we walked past the would-be outdoor dining at Blue Ridge Cafe in downtown Floyd VA. Botanical whiplash: Wait a minute!
I always note what’s growing in that spare strip of soil along the handicap ramp just outside Floyd’s favorite place for breakfast. I especially note the 4’ high Equisetum or horsetails that I imagine volunteered just in that spot a few years ago rather than being planted there intentionally. It is a rough and primitive survivor from the Carboniferous. I like that it can make its own way, even in the Anthropocene.
And all of that is my long-winded way of sharing a slice-of-life plant vignette about a crack-in-the-sidewalk plant spotted fifty yards from The Light in our one-traffic-light county.
The long bean-like pods caught my attention, because they most definitely do NOT belong to a BEAN FAMILY plant. I plucked a leaf to confirm my suspicions. If sap was milky, it was a Dog Bane species.
Yep. Milky sap. Hmm. I had not known (or more likely, had forgotten) that Dog Bane and Milkweed are both in the same family and share some of the same insects who dine on them. They both possess the poisonous cardiac glycosides in their Elmer’s Glue-like milky sap that discourages predators, like birds, from eating red and orange insects that ingest the toxic white latex.
HINT: if you see RED in the insect feeders on a milkweed OR a dogbane, that is “warning coloration.” It says: “Eat me, you’ll be sorry!”
The Monarch Butterfly’s eggs-to-chrysalis dependence on milkweed is well known. And, in another post, I will share my delight that both milkweed AND monarchs are more common in this, our second year, overlooking 15 acres of open land and uncut pasture grasses.
But there are certainly other insects (like the Milkweed Beetles below) who come to the plant to hook up and make babies) that hang out here.
Below, another one to look out for, on dogbane or milkweed. It is not a great photo, but it shows you the Dogbane Beetle I discovered on a milkweed near our mailbox. You’ll find this beetle on both milkweed and dogbane—which is also called Indian Hemp (Apocynum cannabinum). Why hemp?
Women of some tribes rolled dogbane stem fibres on their legs to make fine thread, said to be finer and stronger than the best cotton thread. It was used for sewing and for making twine, nets, fabric and bowstrings. A number of varieties occur across the continent.
This species can become a serious weed as it is aggressive and difficult to control.
Once thought to be a larval food for Monarch butterflies, research has shown that while adult female Monarchs will occasionally oviposit on this species, their offspring will not mature on it.
This polished jewel is one of the most extraordinarily colored common insects you’ll see locally. Take the time to look for them now. They won’t be around too much longer this season. (Watch the video!)
MORE ABOUT….
What Good is Dogbane? | The Natural Web
BUT WAIT: There’s More!
And another red insect you’ll find on milkweed: Large milkweed bug - Wikiwand Also poisonous. Don’t eat them, even though they look delicious.
And rounding out the milkweed feeding guild, expect to find Oleander Aphids, likely being tended by ants who feed off the “honeydew” or they may be eaten whole by the flashy black-and-red Milkweed Beetle adults.
I’m hoping to double my tiny readership going forward. I’ll be posting more regularly, and maybe a bit more frequently (he said.) It helps to think a few others might benefit from time to time from such peregrinations. @fred
The monarch caterpillar is neither read nor orange, but it is poisonous like the red insects. I love your botanizing and entomology!
Awesome everyday ordinary indeed