Hold on, why would anyone love Ambrosia trifida or more commonly known as Giant Ragweed you may be asking? Well, I must say I have liked the plant for many years. Each winter, the sparrows and other bird species would flock to our Giant Ragweed to eat the seeds in the winter. I love ragweed! Even when the guy came to hay our fields, I would make sure he didn’t mow our ragweed (thinking he would be nice). I am sure he thought I was crazy. That is a different subject, eh.
Giant Ragweed can get up to 7 or 8 feet tall. If you want to cut it down, you may consider a chainsaw! Just kidding, but it is rather tough! It has a three lobed leaf.
Some folks call it the blood plant because of the reddish sap.
Here, I exposed tough fibers and the reddish sap.
The flowers are real tiny, but pack a lot of pollen! In this example, you can see the delicate white stigma.
I opened up the flower for a better view.
A type of Looper moth. It was very small. In fact, it snuck in with the next larger caterpillar.
Using the scope, you can clearly see its eyes!
This caterpillar is the one I meant to bring home with me. I believe it is a Flower Moth in the Schinia genus. Most of the Schinia’s have large heads and taper to the rear.
An in-house shot!
Awesome caterpillar!
Can you spot the caterpillar?
Maybe this helps if you had trouble with the one above. Another species of Schinia I think.
Caterpillars were abundant on the ragweed, but there was other stuff too.
In fact, this is what was in the spittle!
In a different spittle, I found this spittlebug. Looks different than the other one.
I found this chewed hole, but no one was home. I looked 😉
A red ant was slurping up honeydew.
The source of the honeydew, Typical Treehoppers (Entylia carinata) nymphs!
I wondered if this wasn’t the eggs of the Treehoppers, but not sure.
While I was looking for the caterpillars, this tiny bee paid me a visit!
In summary, there are a lot of critters that depend on Giant Ragweed. And I know I only scratched the surface!
Keep looking!
The more you know, the more you see and the more you see, the more you know.
5 Comments
A lot of life on one plant! Are you raising the Schinias?
Mary et al,
BRIT lecture series Sept program had a presentation about Solidago gigantea for the second half of the program. There is a link to the entire presentation at bottom of this BRIT page; https://brit.org/events/wichita-state-beck-research/.
A lot of life on one plant! Are you raising the Schinias?
I got a couple of them in jars🐛
Glad to know what ragweed is good for. Knew there must be something. And love the schinia.
Mary et al,
BRIT lecture series Sept program had a presentation about Solidago gigantea for the second half of the program. There is a link to the entire presentation at bottom of this BRIT page; https://brit.org/events/wichita-state-beck-research/.
Thanks Alan! BRIT has very good lectures!