So it becomes difficult for me to explain why a few particular creatures make me squeamish and even queasy. Noxious plants – poison ivy for example – have evolved camouflage, spines, thorns or clever chemical defenses to colonize challenging habitats, repel grazing animals or to attract specific pollinators. Spiders, snapping turtles, snakes, bats, blackflies, mosquitos - even parasites like ticks - are all animals with bad reputations but they surely serve a purpose in nature. Even slimy or creepy-crawly critters have some redeeming purpose. Like the forest, the garden provides a miniature ecosystem to study, tend and from which to learn…Īs a naturalist, I try to appreciate and understand ecological niches filled by all plant and animal life. "It’s pretty remarkable when they unroll it.Leaving the mid-summer forest to the hungry biting deerflies, I spend more time mowing fields or watering and weeding the vegetable garden. “They tend to feed on very deep-throated flowers, although they can use it on shallow flowers, as well,” Elsner says. And their proboscis is almost as long as their wingspan. In the spring, a tomato hornworm emerges as a five-spotted hawkmoth, with a wing span as wide as six inches. They hover like hummingbirds while drinking nectar. “I’d always take a fair share of them home and raise them, try to get some adults, since I was into moths and butterflies from a very young age,” he says. “It’s remarkable how many survive at all in this world,” says the retired MSU Extension educator.Īs a kid on his uncle’s tomato farm, Elsner would help squash hornworms but not all of them. Then they have to get back out as a moth. They pupate underground, six inches underground. Duke Elsner says that’s amazing since caterpillars aren’t really built to tunnel. While no gardener welcomes a tomato hornworm-they eat twice their weight in leaves each day-they are impressive creatures.
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