Little lanterns are what I think of when I see a ground-cherry (Physalis). We have six species listed in FNCT. They are in the Solanaceae family.
When looking from above, the flowers and the papery capsules are small. Unless you happened to notice the nodding flowers, you might miss the “lanterns”. And so all the photos today are the Common Ground-cherry (Physalis longifolia var. subglabrata).
When you get down to eye level the capsules are easy to see.
Are these not the cutest? The papery covering is the inflated calyx.
The flowers are hidden as well. All in the genus, have the nodding flowers as in this example. Which is probably why they are hard to notice.
It is a lovely flower!
Next, the green fruit. It will ripen in the fall. According to Foraging Texas (Knight and Coplin), it is edible. However for now, I am going to stick to the grocery store.
😉
The stem has beautiful purple red striations!
While stopping to look closely at the plant, the Small Milkweed Bugs (Lygaeus kalmii) was mating. They apparently did not care for me and quickly left. LOL.
This was a very interesting caterpillar( correction-larva)! Notice that it is carrying fecal matter on its back. This is called a fecal shield. In addition, it was as wet and slimy as the photo shows. There were multiple of them on the Common Ground-cherry. All were busy chowing down!
Leaf Beetles (Chrysomelidae) was as close as I got to ID’ing it.
I love the lanterns. And the cat video is great. Thanks
What a neat beetle “cat”!
Yeah, i got them mixed up. 😂😂
Carrying fecal matter is pretty gross but I bet it is very effective in protecting them from being eaten. Yuk.
That was a great video you took to show us.
Do you know what species or genus of beetle it is?
I do not. And I didn’t want to raise it this time. 🤪🤷🏻♀️
I can’t blame you for that! 💩💩💩