Month: August 2012 (Page 4 of 5)

Seed of the Week: Passion Vine

Our dimpled mystery seeds from last week…

… are from a plant with a beautiful and unusual flower.

Do you recognize it now? The plant is called passion flower or passion vine, Passiflora sp.

There are some 500 different species in the genus Passiflora, and many new hybrids and varieties being generated all the time.

This species is the Mexican passion vine, Passiflora mexicana. It is native to Arizona.

The Mexican passion vine has a bilobed leaf, which means it has two lobes.

Leaves of other species may have many lobes. The lobes may even be unequal in size, like a mitten with two or more thumbs like the species below.

See all the partially eaten leaves? Do you see the culprit?

Here’s a closer view. The caterpillars of the Gulf Fritillary butterfly feed on passion vines. If you are growing a butterfly garden, you will be sure to enjoy the colorful caterpillars and the butterflies they turn into. If you are mostly interested in the flowers, however, you may be dismayed because these caterpillars can defoliate a plant.

Just remember that in order to for the plant to produce fruit, it needs to be pollinated, and butterflies are important pollinators.

Beetles can be, too.

You might want to visit the link to see some absolutely jaw-dropping macro photographs of a Passiflora hybrid, with a lot of detailed information about the flower structures.

Aren’t those photographs amazing?

Bug of the Week: Citizen Science Opportunities Ants and Bees

For those of you who are interested in child-friendly citizen science projects, we have two special events happening this month as part of ongoing citizen science projects.

1. School of Ants has a writing contest for students.

School of Ants is the citizen science project where participants can collect backyard ants under different conditions and send them in for identification. This month the organizers are sponsoring a writing contest for students, with the deadline Sept 1, 2012.

Details:

  • Open to any student studying ants
  • Essay should be between 300 and 600 words in length
  • Be sure to include a short biography of author with photo
  • A photograph illustrating the essay topic may also be added (optional)
  • Multiple submissions are accepted
  • First prize is $500
  • Runner-up essays may be published on School of Ants website

See School of Ants for submission guidelines.

Even if your student is not interested in writing an essay, you may still gather samples to participate in the main part of the project. This video will give you an idea how it works and help get you started.

2. The Great Bee Count on August 11, 2012

In conjunction with the ongoing Great Sunflower Project, researchers are looking for volunteers across the country to spend 15 minutes on Saturday August 11, 2012 counting bees on flowers. If possible the flowers should be sunflowers (preferably, Lemon Queen), bee balm, cosmos, tickseed, or purple coneflower.

To participate, login or register at the Great Sunflower Project website. You will be asked to download a data sheet with detailed instructions to record your results. After you count,  you return to the website and click on the “Report your bee count” link to input your observations.

Just to be clear, you don’t have to have participated previously. This is a special, one time count.

To help with identification:

A honey bee is brown with not entirely distinct dark bands on its abdomen. It is moderately hairy and has four wings.

Carpenter bees are often black and the top of the abdomen is shiny, not hairy.

Here in Arizona we have many different species of solitary bees.

They tend to be smaller than honey bees and come in a wide range of colors. Some are mining bees, sweat bees,

and these brightly-striped digger bees.

Leafcutter bees are dark gray and have a pad of white hairs on the underside of their abdomen.

In general, bees tend to be fuzzy.

For more about different kinds of bees, see a slide show at Scientific American

If you do either of these projects, we would love to hear about your experiences.

Mystery Seed of the Week 126

If you have ever seen these seeds up close before, you will recognize them right away.

The surface is loaded with pits or dimples.

Any idea what plant produces these dimpled seeds? Be sure to leave a comment if you have an idea.

Please don’t be embarrassed if your guess isn’t correct. It is very difficult to tell from a close-up photograph with no scale.  I appreciate guesses because it gives me ideas for future posts 🙂

Edit:  The answer is now posted.

« Older posts Newer posts »