Month: October 2013 (Page 5 of 6)

Seed of the Week: Shoestring Acacia

The mystery seeds from last week were from a shoestring acacia, Acacia stenophylla.

shoe-string-acacia

Originally from Australia, these trees have been planted in the Southwest as landscape trees.

another-shoe-string-acacia

They grow rather quickly.

The trees get their name from the fact they have long, slender leaves that resemble shoestrings.

Acacia-stenophylla-flowers(Photograph by Don A.W. Carlson, Wikimedia)

Their flowers are pale yellow, round puffs, common to most acacias.

Although not too common, this tree is definitely becoming more popular recently. People like it because it keeps its leaves throughout the year and doesn’t produce a lot of litter. It is also very drought tolerant.

Do you have shoestring acacias where you live?

 

 

Bug of the Week: Megarhyssa Wasp

So, what was the mystery insect last week?

mystery-insect-2

It is a wasp of the genus Megarhyssa. This particular specimen is a male wasp.

In case you are wondering, that is not a stinger pointing out of its body, but the wasp’s extra-long abdomen. The female wasps have an extremely long, slender ovipositor or egg-laying tube that they use to drill into wood to lay their eggs into the larvae of wood-boring insects. The wasp larvae then eat the wood-boring insect larvae.

In this video, you can see the female wasp pulling her ovipositor out of the wood after laying eggs.

 
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This is one of those insects that can alarming to look at, but are not harmful at all.

Have you ever seen one?

Mystery Seed of the Week 175

 

mystery-seeds-1751

The pods of these plants are chains of seeds linked together, almost like a string of beads.

mystery-seeds-1752

Inside, the seeds look like this.

Do you know what plant these came from? If you’d like to, please leave a comment with your idea.

Edit:  The answer is now posted.

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