Calico scale (Eulecanium cerasorum) eggs located beneath helmet-shaped females are hatching in southwest Ohio and the 1st instar nymphs (crawlers) are on the move. All nymphal stages are mobile, so all nymphs can be called "crawlers." The tiny, tannish-brown, oblong-shaped 1st instar crawlers are around 1/16" in length. They migrate to the undersides of leaves and position themselves along leaf veins where they insert their piercing-sucking mouthparts into phloem vessels to extract amino acids dissolved in the sugary plant sap.

The Ohio Department of Agriculture (ODA) is currently deploying traps to continue its monitoring efforts for gypsy moth across Ohio in cooperation with the US Forest Service. The green traps are being placed throughout Ohio at different densities, depending on location and the known gypsy moth activity. 

Fall Webworms (Hyphantria cunea) have at least two generations in Ohio and overwintered eggs that produce the first generation are now hatching in the southwest part of the state. I took these images yesterday of a first generation nest on dogwood with 1st instar "black-headed" caterpillars constructing their characteristic silk nest and feeding upon the leaves enveloped within.

Overwintered Common Bagworm (Thyridopteryx ephemeraeformis) eggs are hatching in southwest Ohio. The 1st instar caterpillars are very small with their bags measuring around 1/8" in length. They're constructed with pieces of tan to reddish-brown, sawdust-like frass (excrement) stuck to the outside of silk. The tiny 1st instar bags look like little dunce caps.

Northern Catalpa (Catalpa speciosa, family Bignoniaceae) trees are in full-bloom in southern Ohio. Last year, I posted a BYGL Alert! extolling the virtues of catalpa trees; both northern and its southern cousin (C. bignonioides). Of course, I recognized a few minor shortcomings, but no tree is perfect. I noted that whether viewed as a beautiful, resilient native tree that will compliment any urban landscaping, or a coarse, messy, tree best confined to forested bottomlands, no one can ignore the beautiful bell-shaped blooms!

This is a byglbook-alert, premature since I have only read the first chapter of the featured book, but I have started down its path of poesy and prose and hope you will too. The book is On Trails by Robert Moor (not “Moop”, for George Costanza fans).

 

  Robert Moor set out to hike the Appalachian Trail, Georgia to Maine, in 2009.  He speaks of this and then from there starts to muse deeply on the idea of trails, of paths, in his words “a meditation upon trails.”

 

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Now we turn to a second plant identification discussion from arborist Carrie Paulus: this one of a native small tree or large shrub.  The above photograph is credited to Carrie.  She saw this small tree with husband Bill at Lake Hope State Park on Mother’s Day.  It is bladdernut, Staphylea trifolia.  It is not rare in Ohio woodlands, but often it is not noticed.

 

  Bladdernut eludes the usual mnemonics for native woodland trees with opposite leaf arrangement such as MAD BUCK (maple, ash, dogwood, buckeye) or BAMEV DOGWOOD (same along with tree-sized euonymus and...

Is this a cross between the weird David Lynch genre and early Stephen King horror?  No. I was meeting with an arborist extraordinaire earlier today and when we exhausted our arboricultural topics she showed me a picture of what she purported to be, scarlet campion.

 

  I thought not – and for once was right – it was fire pink, Silene virginica.  She encountered this great woodland wildflower with her husband Bill at Lake Hope State Park in southeast Ohio on Mother’s Day. It is unusual to see such brilliant red color in the spring and summer woods.

 

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Participants in Monday's Southwest Ohio BYGLive! Diagnostic Walk-About held at Stanley Rowe Arboretum observed final instar nymphs, called "pupae," of the Mulberry Whitefly (Tetraleurodes mori) on the undersides of holly leaves. The round, shiny black pupae are ringed in a white fringe and are commonly mistaken for a scale insect. Indeed, whiteflies are not "flies" (order Diptera); they belong to the same order (Hemiptera) as scale insects and share certain traits with both armored and soft scale insects.

Populus grandidentata, commonly called large-tooth aspen, big-tooth aspen, American aspen, or white poplar, is a deciduous tree native to eastern North America. In northeast Ohio, it is in full bloom and the floss is falling off the fruiting structure and sticking to the sidewalks or turf.