My little garden this year is just ten steps from the backdoor. This is the first time in years that I have tried to grow anything. It is mostly a tomato garden with a couple of onions. Somehow a smartweed or knotweed decided to join the ‘maters. Of course, I left them because it was interesting. LOL. I also let the Silver-leaf Nightshade stay too.
While taking Grace out for her business, sometimes I look at the garden with my UV light. I find interesting stuff like this grasshopper. It is most likely a Differential Grasshopper.
Another one I found, was the Carolina Mantis!
The undersides of the mating stink bugs glowed too!
The Carolina Sphinx’s eyes glowed blue!
This is a daylight photo of the same moth above. It must have been very fresh.
This is the smartweed or the knotweed which ever you prefer to call it. So today, I finally decided to ID to species. Hey it was not going anywhere because this is the only place I water. LOL. You can see the tomatoes and cage in photo. 😉
Here is a close up of the spike-like inflorescence!
When keying out this species, I had to learn a new term, ocrea. Its definition is a tube formed by fused, sheathing stipules. In this photo, you can see the ocrea with the hairs (cilia).
A closer look. The length of the hairs made a difference to the species.
The individual flowers are only a little over a couple of millimeters across! So now I know the species, Polygonum hydropiperoides var. setaceum. The wildflower.org gives it the common name of Bog Smartweed.
The more you know, the more you see and the more you see, the more you know.
5 Comments
Love crab spiders and the moth is subtly pretty. Has polka dots on it. And im here to confirm that gardening is all the things that article says it is.
Love crab spiders and the moth is subtly pretty. Has polka dots on it. And im here to confirm that gardening is all the things that article says it is.
I knew you were in that group. 🙂
I really appreciate the closeups for keying the smartweed.
Wow! Great stuff just out the door!
Wow, like Kathy I sure appreciate the keying photos!