Yucca Moth Biology

Yucca moth: A specific moth that is genetically programmed for stuffing a little ball of pollen into the cup-shaped stigma of each flower. Like fig wasps and acacia ants, the relationship is mutually beneficial to both partners, and is vital for the survival of both plant and insect. In fact, yuccas cultivated in the Old World, where yucca moths are absent, will not produce seeds unless they are hand pollinated.

Individual yucca flowers have six fleshy petaloid segments which are called tepals by some botanists since the petals and sepals are indistinguishable. The pistil of each flower terminates in a three-lobed stigma, the lobes in some species with glistening, feathery branches. The stigma lobes surround a central orifice that leads to a recessed receptive stigma. In order for pollination to occur, masses of pollen must be forced down into this central stigmatic depression. Herein lies the adaptive advantage and marvelous genetic programming of a little moth that is absolutely vital for the survival and perpetuation of yucca plants.

After inserting her egg into the flower ovary, the female moth (still carrying a pollen mass in her coiled palpi) climbs to the top of the ovary. Uncoiling her palpi from the pollen mass, she draws them back and forth over the stigma, pressing pollen into the central stigmatic depression. This insures pollination of the flower in which she has deposited an egg. Germinating pollen grains send hundreds of sperm-bearing pollen tubes into the ovary, resulting in the fertilization of hundreds of ovules (immature seeds) inside, some of which provide food for the hungry moth larva.

Unlike most other flowering plants, the pollen is not dispersed as individual grains. The gravid (pregnant) female yucca moth collects up to a dozen pollinia within the yucca flower and forms them into a golden mass. She uses a pair of long, curved, prehensile appendages in the mouth region (called maxillary palpi) to collect, form and carry the pollen ball. Male yucca moths (and most other moth species) do not have these greatly enlarged, specially adapted palpi.

Although the larva is a seed predator, it only consumes a small percentage of the hundreds of seeds within the capsule. Since the larva develops into a moth that pollinates the yucca plant, the relationship is clearly beneficial to both partners.

Orange on Orange

Well, the day lilies are in full and glorious bloom, so that means that the road crews will be along with their mowers to cut them down at their peak of blossom as usual. Maybe this year they'll take my suggestion and put this road on their list for a couple of weeks later in July so the lilies could know their glory days and not be brought low while in their prime.

But honestly, our 4 mile gravel road, like others in the county, show signs of budget cuts for roadway maintenance. Branches hang so low over our road that when they're wet, they drag along the top of the car when we pass by. The place is kinda looking neglected.

There's one spot on the high side where a tree fell across the road a month ago. Somebody cut just enough of the branches out of the top so folks can get past, but just barely. In times past, VDOT would have been on that in a day or so. We haven't seen them out this way in the month since the tree fell.

So. Today the orange day lilies that have escaped from cultivation from the more numerous homesteads that once inhabited this valley add color to every blind curve and hillside along Goose Creek. Occasionally, they come adorned with color-coordinated accessories like this Fritillary.

Click here for larger image.

Be Careful Little Ears

Ah, what's in a name? In this case, more beauty to the ear perhaps than the named is to the eye.

But contrary to a long history of misinformation, the earwig does NOT burrow into the ear of someone asleep and eat their brain. Hardly ever. Though I met someone in town yesterday who might have been a victim.

I tend to think of these creatures as "coffeewigs" because that's often where I see them--around the sink, often under the coffee pot on first lifting it for the emergency cup of morning alertness.

Pictured here on the buds of some nearby milkweed, they do no harm. Their "pinchers" or cerci are rather puny, and though theoretically they can defend themselves with them, they aren't much defence against a broom and a dustpan. (They do, however, emit a strong iodine smell if picked up and lifted to the nose. What! You haven't snorted an earwig? Well you certainly have lived a sheltered life, my friend!)

A Field Guide to Light

That title contains some essence of what I'd like any potential photography book to be about. In some cases, the actual subject of a photo would be of most interest. But more often than not, it would be about the magic of a lighting moment--the light itself, the thousand different species of light--that come and go in this single small cleft of landscape and span of sky through four seasons.

This grassy composition lies just beyond the maple tree seen on the weblog earlier this week. Both scenes become worthy of the time to capture them photographically because they both benefit from the very same early morning light, shifted so far south along the ridge in the summer months that the sun's rays drop just there, just then.

I could create my own private Stonehengian calendar: a shaft of light at nine o'clock in the morning on the first day of summer will spill through the cleft in the maple trunk and strike the earth exactly here, the pasture grasses from must that angle. I could place a permanent marker on the spot to honor the light, the day, the year, the lifetime it marks.

And so it is for all the light that comes to Goose Creek. It is predictable, and it is so very transient and unique to each given moment and place in time.

To be honest, this shot of the grasses came from this day last June. This year, in the very same spot, the pasture has been cut and is only a foot tall now. But I know what I would have seen on this date in that exact place at 9 am when the sun came over the ridge so predictably. Except this June 28 is cloudy; the sky is flat-gray and somber with a thin fog lying over the stubble of pasture grass--its own kind of special light.

Roadside Weeds: Chicory

This very common roadside "weed" pictured here is chicory, Chichorium intybus. It's a pretty little thing, but not easy to photograph to show it off at its best. Chicory is a relative of endive and radicchio, and I'm surprised I never experimented with its edible parts--with the exception of imbibing it this very moment as an adulterant of the Luisianne coffee in my cup.

Read more of this post titled "Slow Roads are Hard to Find" at Fragments from Floyd.