First Week of April: Trees

A roundup of quick Sidewalk Nature updates: one warning and three wonders.

Trouble with Double

Kwanzan cherry trees don’t feed pollinators or birds. They look great two weeks of the year but they don’t support our foodweb. Prunus serrulata ‘Kwanzan’ / ‘Kanzan.’

My concern is that when people have room to plant one tree, this is the one they’ll want. It is cultivated for pretty, and pretty it is, but it doesn’t have nectar, doesn’t make fruit, and as a nonnative congener, its leaves support only a fraction of the Lepidoptera species a native Prunus / cherry can.

But at the Cherry Blossom Festival this month, festival-goers can walk away with a free Kwanzan cherry tree from the Nashville Tree Foundation.

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Nashville Mustard Tour: a Trace of the Trace

Keen to see Nashville Mustard while it lasts? It only blooms a few weeks each spring, and now’s the time. Why go see it? It’s yellow and gorgeous, it’s a mini superbloom, it’s a good photo op, and a true native. Think of it as a remnant of our historic grasslands, or as I like to imagine: a trace of the Trace. Trace, as in buffalo roads, when bison travelled to the salt lick that “made” Nashville (near what is now Bicentennial Mall.)

This post is to show where the Mustard is, so you can visit your nearest site, or go see them all.
And, it’s a happy update to last year’s post about Cutting the Mustard…

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Periodical Panic: Why Not To

Nashville’s 13-year periodical cicadas are coming this May, but what’s already here is panic.

For months, worried people have been asking about the 2024 “invasion.” Should they cover their trees? Should they wait to plant new trees? Should they reschedule outdoor events, and even indoor events? Will there be “too many” cicadas? No. The answer to all these questions is “no.”

3 reasons not to panic about “too many” cicadas:

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Winter Wasp

Today’s Backyard Nature: wasp rescue. I found this wasp floating—motionless, submerged—in a bucket of water. My bucket, my fault. I hadn’t realized that last month’s snow had blown into the porch, filled the bucket, and melted. So, I fished her out and laid her on a rock. Within a minute, she moved a front leg, and the other, and began walking to higher ground.

I should tell you she’s been a house guest since first frost. She showed up on the wall of the laundry room and stayed put for weeks. Then on a warm day, she got restless, and rather than let her wander into the kitchen, I carried her to the screened porch where I thought she’d be fine: safe from predators and bad weather, with places to hide and to escape. And then, boom, the bucket of (almost) doom.

Now I don’t know where she is.

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Cottonwood petiole gall

Underneath Cottonwood trees right now, you might find leftover leaves. They tell a story. A strange story.

It’s the story of a particularly interesting aphid. Virgin birth! Live birth! Eggs! Wings! No wings! Sexual! Asexual! Above ground! Below ground! Sucking mouthparts! No mouth at all!
These aphids do it all.

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Secret Sidewalk: eight late-November wonders

As fall drifts toward winter, nature doesn’t slow down, not really. Amazing things happen all around us, all the time. This site’s tagline: “Everyday wonders in everyday habitat loss” includes not just “natural” areas, but our own yards, trash alleys, parking lots, roadsides. For example, our Secret Sidewalk …

The Secret Sidewalk is a shortcut through 3 neighborhood blocks, but rather than running along a street, it runs between homes. It’s a 5-foot-wide Metro right-of-way flanked by property lines, and it feels intimate, despite crossing four roads, and despite tall privacy fences. It takes walkers past a mix of cultivated and wild. Exotics, natives, volunteers, invasives: all here. Signs of the season change daily.

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Pipevine Swallowtail Clues

Today’s Front Door Nature: A little clue to a big change.

I saw the tiny, black blip this morning. On the porch, by my feet. Picked it up, and knew it was the last molt of a Pipevine Swallowtail caterpillar: the old, squashed skin (and face!) that drops when a caterpillar becomes a chrysalis.

So, I looked up. And there was the chrysalis, fresh and glistening, above my head on a brick in the doorway.

But the best part was when I made my kid “look at the black blip,” and then he too, looked up. He looked to find the butterfly-in-progess who dropped it. He knew.

The wad of caterpillar skin tells a big story. It’s the story of a native plant / animal interaction, and of the astonishing specificity of a larval host plant.
The host plant here is Wooly Pipevine (Aristolochia tomentosa), and it covers our porch rail. Native Pipevines are the only plants a Pipevine Swallowtail butterfly will lay eggs on because they are the only plants the caterpillars can eat. They’ve evolved together, in the habitat native to this place.

This is why I grow plants that make new butterflies. And why we knew what the blip was.

A butterfly host plant at the door means we get to see—just by taking a few steps outside—every life-cycle stage all summer. It’s an ideal Show and Tell for why native plants matter.

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Save the Stems

Today’s Backyard Nature: bee butts. These are the back ends of little bees: native, solitary bees who make a nest *inside* last year’s flower stems.
Each bee is one female making one nest: laying one egg at a time in its own little chamber and with its own cake of pollen as baby food.

This is my proof that “Save the Stems” works.

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Cicada Magic

Have you seen cicada husks lately? Or actual cicadas? These aren’t our annual cicadas yet, these are periodical cicadas, one year too early. Next spring—May 2024—is when Middle Tennessee gets our Big Emergence of 13-year cicadas.

I say “emergence,” not “invasion,” because invasion is a bad thing, but emergence is a normal, natural, functional, wonderful, amazing, and magical thing!
Cicadas are magic!

After all, the genus name for our 13 year species is Magicicada.

But, magic or not, cicadas can’t always count properly. The ones who emerge a year (or more) before or after their due date are called “stragglers.”

For the past few days, stragglers have commanded my undivided attention. They are small, dark, and handsome. They have round, red eyes! And they are fascinating.

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The Selective Squish: Aphids

I am lucky to be in a gardening group with a friendly email list. We share plants, news, tips, questions. Today, someone asked what to do about April aphids on a late-blooming aster, and added, “There are a gazillion of them on the plant (I counted).”

This is someone who had done due diligence by looking for answers, but had found too many: No, don’t kill; Yes, do kill, but only with this, not that. What should they do?

What I should have done was congratulate them on having late-blooming asters—so important for late-season nectar / pollen / leaves / seeds! —and on trying to find a “best practices” solution to avoid harming the foodweb.
Good job, gardener!
But what I did was jump right in with zero manners and lots of info:

[Too-Long-Didn’t-Read version: pesticides will kill aphid predators along with the aphids.]

This time of year, most aphids are wingless, so they can’t fly away from us if we decide The Big Squish is required. The Big Squish = running a thumb and forefinger along a stem (or using a moist paper towel if squeamish).

Actually, it should be called the Selective Big Squish. Please keep reading to see what not to squish.

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