2026: The pussy willows near the BugLady’s lakeshore home are in bloom.��Here’s a BOTW about pussy willows from late March of 2012 – a few new words and pictures.

2012:��People get excited when pussy willows whisper the spring.��The BugLady loves skulking among them when they’re blooming, ogling the diversity of insects that come to visit when very few other flowers are out.��Willows are��dioecious��(separate house), bearing their male and female flowers on separate plants.��The gray, fuzzy buds are future male flowers that will morph into catkins bearing long, slender filaments (pollen-producing stamens).��The thicker, “caterpillar-like” flowers – fleshier stalks with what looks like a tiny flower at the tip, are future female catkins and seeds.��Pussy willow (Salix discolor), which is a prodigious pollen producer, is almost finished blooming, but other willow species are still in bud.

Remember that pollination is an accidental service performed by animals that visit the pussy willows for another purpose altogether – to perch, to set up housekeeping, to browse an important, early food source (the male flowers produce a little nectar and a lot of pollen, and female flowers supply nectar), or to browse the browsers.��Mining bees and syrphid flies made up the majority of the insects that the BugLady saw, with flies (blow, flesh, and house) next.��The BugLady also saw a spring azure butterfly checking out the willow flowers.��

For all their attractiveness and importance to these early pollinators, pussy willows are largely wind-pollinated.��Wind-pollinated flowers produce massive amounts of pollen because wind pollination is pretty random.

The BugLady found:

ANTS��– Ants become active when the spring sun warms the soil they nest in. If you put all of the people on the globe at one end of a teeter totter and all the ants on the other, our feet would be dangling. There are many kinds of ants with many lifestyles and many diets.��

ASCLERA RUFICOLLIS��– Adult Red-necked false blister beetles feed on early spring flowers in woods and wood edges; their larvae dwell in rotting logs.��Apparently, despite its name, a crushed false blister beetle produces highly irritating chemicals that will make a (false?) blister.

BROWN STINKBUG��– Some species of brown stinkbug are vegetarians, but the BugLady thinks that this is one of the predatory stinkbugs.��The BugLady wonders if the heavy dusting of willow pollen works as an inadvertent disguise.

CAROPHILUS BEETLE – A sap beetle – although most sap beetles are consumers of rotting fruits and vegetables and fungi, some are found on flowers.

DISONYCHA��BEETLE��– The very spiffy Striped willow leaf beetle is in the huge leaf beetle family Chrysomelidae.��Members of the small genus��Disonycha��(according to one source) mostly eat “weeds.”��This one eats willow-parts.

GREENBOTTLE FLY��– These members of the Blow fly family are listed as carrion feeders. Apparently, this fly was cleansing its palette.

CYNOMA CADAVERINA – Another member of the Blow fly family, with a decidedly un-wholesome name, stared at the BugLady from a willow branch. The BugLady moved on down the trail.

HONEYBEE��– an important – and imported – pollinator, honeybees are on the landscape starting in late winter and early spring.��Bees foraging for pollen near wetlands may warm up within the insulated comfort of a skunk cabbage spathe, which may be 30 degrees warmer than the ambient temperature.

MINING BEE��– Mining bees are a mainly solitary bunch of bees; females stock brood cells with pollen and nectar for their emerging young.��They are important early, native pollinators.��

SWEAT BEE – Sweat bees collect prodigious loads of pollen and transport it to their underground nests. Most are solitary; a few are marginally social.”

SYRPHID FLY – Syrphid/Hover/Flower flies are bee mimics that feed on nectar and pollen.

SPOOKY TACHINID��(probably) – Tachinid flies have an ulterior motive.��They lay eggs, or sometimes live young, on flowers so that their young may board another insect and become a parasitoid.��The BugLady thought this ghost-colored tachinid was a bit creepy-looking.

NOMADA WASP – The BugLady is amazed at the antennae on this Nomada wasp.

EUROPEAN PAPER WASP – Negotiating the thicket of flower parts on the male flower must be a challenge.

Go outside and watch the willows!

The BugLady

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