Midwest Native Plant Conference

 

A nymph-stage Snowy Tree Cricket (Oecanthus nivalis) noshes on a disk floret of an Ashy Sunflower (Helianthus mollis). The singing insects (Orthoptera) do not get their fair due for pollination services. This animal has plenty of pollen dusting its face. I have seen pollen-dusted tree crickets snacking on flowers many times.

I took this shot this morning while leading a field trip for the Midwest Native Plant Conference. This was our 17th year for the conference, and as usual it sold out in short order. Thank you to all of the organizers for their hard work in making the conference a success and providing the opportunity to hear lots of interesting speakers, interact with like-minded persons, and access to many of Ohio's top native plant nurseries who bring lots of floral goodies.

Bergamo Center at Mount Saint John in Dayton is our venue and has been for most of the conference's life. It is a perfect site for this type of event, with plenty of lawn space for vendors, a beautiful auditorium, a number of smaller rooms for breakout sessions, dining facilities and lots of lodging. The staff is superb and wonderful to work with. Also, there are plenty of field trip opportunities, both on the expansive grounds and at myriad interesting sites within a half-hour or so of Bergamo.

There were about 150 attendees, in addition to all of the organizers and volunteers. At least nine states were represented, as distant as Delaware and Missouri.

If you have an interest in botany and native plants, I encourage you to attend. The 2027 conference dates have not yet been picked, but it'll be about this time of year. Sometimes it fills with one day of opening registration, so I'd encourage you to use the website to register ASAP. I'll post the 2027 dates as soon as I know them.

The Eurasian Skylarks of Hawaii

 

I made this image on November 20, 2024, on the island of Maui, Hawaii. It is hard to beat Hawaiian sunrises, and even this iPhone snap captures this one well.

Thanks to my buddy Marty Sedluk, we got to go to Maui for a week back in November 2024. He's got a place over there and visits routinely. Shauna and I got to hang out with Marty and Eleanor and see some of the sights of this island. If you search "Hawaii" in the search engine (top left corner of the page) you'll see posts about stilts, turtles, honeycreepers, lizards and probably more.

Hawaii probably struck me differently than it would most first-time visitors. It didn't take long to learn that nearly everything we were seeing (or so it seemed) both floral and faunal was introduced. Especially at the lower elevations; higher mountainous areas seemed much better.

But introduced or not, I wanted to write about the marvelous little creature that inhabits large shortgrass meadows such as the one above. It is the legendary Eurasian Skylark (Alauda arvensis), whose aerial song is one of the great melodies of nature.

A skylark watches his surroundings from a small hillock. From this point - and points like it - skylarks would launch themselves skyward, rapidly ascend to a sufficient altitude, which is often in excess of 300 feet. Especially ambitious singers might rise to over 600 feet.

Once satisfactorily high aloft, the lark faces into the wind and hovers in its aerial display song. The complex, beautiful melody is a swiftly delivered babble of buzzy and squeaky notes interspersed with clear whistles and other notes. I find it impossible to adequately describe the wondrous song produced by this amazing lark. One must hear it for themselves, and you can do so HERE.

The skylark returns to terra firma for a well-deserved rest. Incredibly, one song can go on for 20 minutes or more! This propensity for creating aerial music, and lots of it, was the reason that Eurasian Skylarks were exported to foreign lands. The skylark is indigenous to a huge swath of Asia and Europe, but only very rarely showed up in North America as a vagrant.

Attempts were made to introduce the lark to many areas in North America, including Cincinnati, Ohio. Most of these efforts failed, but the skylarks flourished for a time on Vancouver Island, British Columbia. Various land use development has reduced this population to less than 100 birds.

Introductions to the Hawaiian Islands began in 1865, and the birds did pretty well, eventually colonizing all of the islands. They've apparently since disappeared from Kauai Island.

Unlike many invasive species, I suspect introduced Eurasian Skylarks are innocuous in that they probably don't compete much with native species, nor rob the natives of resources. 

Common Butterwort, a very showy carnivorous plant

 

These low cliffs along the shore of Lake Superior host lots of interesting plants, but here I'll focus on perhaps the most amazing of their lot, the Common Butterwort (Pinguicula vulgaris). This location is along the northeastern tip of the Keweenaw (key-wuh-naw) Peninsula of Michigan's Upper Peninsula. Wet seeps provide a steady moisture regime - perfect conditions for this post's protagonist.

Dozens of Common Butterworts brighten the damp rock face. This interesting carnivore is a true northerner, and the northern Great Lakes marks its southernmost occurrences in eastern North America. The plant becomes more common to the north, and Common Butterwort has a circumboreal distribution (worldwide, at northerly latitudes).

The violet-like flowers of this butterwort species are quite striking and often likened to violets in appearance. The oft-used English name, "Common" Butterwort is not a very good one and is derived from the epithet of the scientific name, "vulgaris", which means "common". A far better name, in my opinion - and one that is occasionally used - is Violet Butterwort. That descriptor describes the flowers beautifully, and this species tends not to be very common across large swaths of its range.

There are about 125 Pinguicula butterworts currently described, and unlike the northern species featured here, the largest number of species occurs in Central and South America.

This site almost looked surreal, is if it were some sort of odd, planted rock garden. And a rock garden it is, although no one created this one. The butterworts are highly ornamental in appearance, and it was great to finally clap eyes on flowering specimens.

As I mentioned this plant is a true carnivore, and it belongs to the world's largest family of carnivorous plants, the Bladderwort Family (Lentibulariaceae). There are some 250 species in this group, and about half of them are butterworts, and the remaining majority are bladderworts in the genus Utricularia. A smaller genus, Genlisea (corkscrew plants) make up the remainder of the family.

As always, click the image to enlarge

Unlike the high-tech traps of bladderworts, the butterworts use a simpler bug-killing design. The thick fleshy basal leaves (the genus name Pinguicula is derived from the Latin word pinguis, which means "somewhat fleshy") are quite sticky and about any hapless insect that alights on them will be stuck fast. Tiny hairs on the leaves' dorsal surfaces are capped with adhesive mucilage. The effect is like flypaper. Glands on the leaf surface generate digestive acids and enzymes that quickly break down the insect's soft parts. Eventually, the plant digests the meat of the bug through tiny pores in the leaves, thus deriving essential nutrients while growing in nutrient-poor substrates.

If you click the above photo to enlarge, you'll see all manner of trapped insects, and other debris.

While a butterwort patch may look like a showy little garden to us, it is a minefield for any insects venturing through. One misstep and their fate is to be eaten by plant, and at least from a human-centric perspective, that would not be a fun way to go.

Black Witches in Ohio!

 

This post dives a bit deeper into this amazing moth than did the last post.

A female Black Witch (Ascalapha odorata) perches on the foliage of Chestnut Oak (Quercus prinus) deep in Shawnee State Forest, Scioto County, Ohio. This is the largest moth, by dimensions, that occurs in Ohio and similar latitudes. The witch in my photo was shot where it was found near a mothing station that was part of Mothapalooza, on July 17, 2026. Amazingly, a sharp young attendee, Yann, found this one off in the woods, some distance from the illuminated sheets that most of us were inspecting for easier moth fare. A truly great find.

This Black Witch turned up Friday night - a truly epic night for mothing - and amazingly, another turned up a few miles away the same evening, at a mothing station at the Shawnee State Park Lodge. Diana Malas later contacted me to tell about yet another witch that appeared at her house in Dayton. Amazing! Three witches in one day, in Ohio! One must wonder how many that were out there went unreported.

Female Black Witches can have a wingspan approaching 9.5 inches, which is utterly huge for an insect (males are somewhat smaller). The only regularly occurring moth in the Midwest that rivals that is the Cecropia Moth (Hyalophora cecropia). It may outweigh - slightly - a Black Witch but falls short in the wingspan department.

The Black Witch is a tropical species, and the Rio Grande Valley of Texas and the southernmost reaches of some of the Gulf states is as far north as it typically reproduces and occurs in any numbers. But this species is a powerful flyer and well known for its northward wanderings. I believe they are becoming more frequent northward. Following are the iNaturalist records for Ohio for the last decade:

2026 - 12 (so far, there will likely be more to come)
2025 - 13
2024 - 8
2023 - 5
2022 - 7
2021 - 6
2020 - 5
2019 - 5
2018 - 2
2017 - 1

Going back further in the iNat database reveals very few sightings, with no records for many of the preceding years. While a more in-depth analysis of Black Witch records over a broader region would provide a more robust data set to document increases, I think that the Ohio data shows a clear trend in increased sightings in the last decade or so.

Keep your eyes open for Black Witches (they are usually hard to hard to miss). It'll be interesting to watch the continued increase in this species in the north, and to see if they eventually start reproducing regularly at this latitude. The caterpillars feed on various members of the pea family (Fabaceae), including Black Locust (Robinia pseudoacacia) and Kentucky Coffee Tree (Gymnocladus dioicus). The latter is very common statewide, and the former is less common and more range-restricted but is being increasingly used as a landscape tree. They also use various mimosa trees such as Silk Tree (Albizia julibrissin), and some mimosa species may be becoming more frequent in plantings in the north.

If you search "Black Witch" in the search box in the upper lefthand corner of this blog, you'll see other posts about them from years past, including some that have photos of the huge, spectacular caterpillars.

Mothapalooza and the Black Witch

 

Another Mothapalooza is in the books, and it was great. This one was based at Shawnee State Park Lodge in the midst of Shawnee State Forest in Scioto County, Ohio. About 140 people (plus guides, speakers, and organizers) came from nine states, including Washington and Rhode Island.

There were scads of moths and other biodiversity. Friday night was especially good, and a standout mothing station was high on a ridge at Copperhead Fire Tower. This Black Witch (Ascalapha odorata) turned up there (great find by Yann), and another turned up the same night at another locale. Black Witches are largely tropical, ranging from southern Florida and Texas south into northern South America.

Witches are powerful flyers and regularly move northward in summer and fall, with one having made it all of the way to Michigan's Upper Peninsula. A few generally turn up each year in Ohio, but records seem to be on the increase. Diana Malas in Dayton had one last Friday night as well.

This is a huge moth, with a wingspan on 9.5 inches. A truly impressive beast!

Plains Puccoon, impending storm, and Kirtland's Warbler

 

As always, click the photo to enlarge

A storm rolls into the jack pine plains of Oscoda County, Michigan. This is a magical place, with the most famous denizen being the Kirtland's Warbler. While the large pine in the center is a Red Pine (Pinus resinosa), a sprawling stand of young Jack Pine (Pinus banksiana) is in the backdrop. I could hear the rich songs of Kirtland's Warblers from this spot.

That's Plains Puccoon (Lithospermum croceum) in the foreground sporting copious yellowish-orange blossoms. The sandy soils support all manner of interesting and often specialized flora. The plains are, essentially, a well-vegetated desert.

A male Kirtland's Warbler strikes a pose on a Jack Pine branch. This bird was in the immediate area where I made the shot above. Extensive stands of Jack Pine, roughly between the ages of 5 and 20 years old, are required for this extreme habitat specialist. Kirtland's Warbler now could be referred to as "conservation-reliant". If people stopped managing the pines (cutting/replanting) for their favored growth stages, the warbler would soon disappear. Wildfires used to create the successional habitat for them, but fire suppression has mostly put an end to natural management. Kudos to the Michigan DNR and the US Fish & Wildlife Service for all of their management efforts.

Over the years and many visits to Kirtland's Warbler country, I have seen them in all their required age classes of pines. Best are the very young stands - about the size of Christmas trees. It's very easy to observe them in such places.

Male Kirtland's Warblers are anything but shrinking violets, and often rather inquisitive. This bird approached us so closely that it got inside the minimum focus range (19 feet) of my big lens. One time, on a solo trip, I was near a singing male and decided to lay down in the mats of Pennsylvania sedge and just soak in the scene. The curious warbler approached to within five feet of me, singing all the while. At that range, I almost needed earplugs! I thought he was going to hop on my leg at one point!

Oscoda County, Michigan, July 9, 2026.

The magical Twinflower, Linnaeus's favorite plant

 

One of the botanical delights of the summertime North Woods is this stunning little wildflower: Twinflower (Linnaea borealis). It is not rare in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, where I made these images on July 7, 2026. It often forms small colonies via its trailing stems adorned with tiny round leaves.

Twinflower is, believe it or not, a member of the honeysuckle family (Caprifoliaceae). The flowering stems rise but two inches or so in height, and it's more than possible for a careless observer to walk right by a colony without taking notice.

A diligent plant photographer will spend much time on the ground, ear to the soil, to properly portray elfin species such as Twinflower. I was fortunate to spot a few plants at the crest of a small hummock, which allowed me to put the camera nearly on the ground below the flowers, and shoot up at them.

A number of tiny insects - bees, wasps, flies, beetles - are said to provide pollination services, some of them no doubt lured by the blossom's sweet fragrance.

This was the favorite flower of Swedish scientist Carolus Linnaeus, the father of binomial nomenclature and hierarchical classification. Fittingly, he is immortalized in the scientific epithet of his beloved Twinflower: Linnaea. Linnaea is also a monotypic genus: Twinflower is the only species placed in it.