Howdy, BugFans,

This episode was adapted from an article that the BugLady wrote in 2007 for the BogHaunter, the newsletter of the Friends of the Cedarburg Bog. 

Wanted: Colonists to settle in wide open spaces. Must be adaptable, able to put down roots in submerged or soggy soil, and stand firm in the face of wind and waves, rodents and carp. Temporary accommodations only.

It turns out that cattails are ideal candidates for this not-so-attractive job description. Their tall, strap-like leaves and conspicuous “wiener-on-a-stick” female flower and seed stalks emerge from standing water and from damp pond and stream edges. The leaves’ slender shape is typical of “sun-catchers” in open spaces. They are designed to bend without breaking via a series of internal veins or “struts” that divide the leaf’s interior into flexible cells.

But the infrastructure of a cattail marsh is as impressive as what appears above the waterline. That mass of leaves is anchored by a dense, interlocking mat of rhizomes (a rhizome is an underground/underwater stem that puts out both shoots and roots). Each fruiting plant may produce as many as 200,000 seeds called “nutlets” – this windborne fruit launches colonies, and seeds can sit in the seedbank for decades waiting for the right conditions to germinate. Though a new plant doesn’t flower until its second summer, it develops, during its first year of life, a rhizome system that may span 10 feet in diameter and produce 100 shoots. This botanical exuberance allows colonies to advance, like an amoeba, as much as 15 feet annually.  

Once a colony gets started, it spreads primarily by vegetative means, through the growth of the rhizomes. Plants that sprout from the same rhizome are called clones; a dense cattail stand is an impossibly intricate interweaving of clones from many rhizomes, so crowded that there is no opportunity for its own seed to germinate. Unless openings occur between the closely-packed cattails, there are few other large plants in the community.

But, what a cattail marsh may lack in plant diversity, it more than makes up for in animals. Oxygen is added to the water during photosynthesis, and the forest of submerged stems is habitat for myriad aquatic critters. Carp root at the rhizomes, breaking them up and aiding vegetative spread. Other fish, including sunfish, spawn and shelter there.

Muskrat lifestyles are bound to cattails; the shoots and rhizomes are eaten, and the leaves and stalks are made into lodges. These lodges, in turn, provide nest platforms for ducks and geese; and, by harvesting cattails, muskrats create open water for waterfowl. Many marshland birds like rails, coots, bitterns, grebes, Marsh Wrens, and waterfowl find food, nesting material, nest sites, and cover in the cattail thickets. Large flocks of blackbirds roost there and enrich the community with their droppings, and cattails are also used by frogs, beavers, painted turtles, and even moose. 

Insects? Cattails attract a variety of moths, aphids, and caterpillars that feed on its rhizomes, leaves, sap, stem, and flower/seed spike, and their predators are attracted as well. The female sac spider bends a leaf around herself to form a pyramid-shaped box. Inside, she lays eggs and guards them there until she dies; her carcass provides her young with their first meal. In winter, the cigar-like seed heads host the pupating caterpillars (birds pecking at seed heads are looking for this protein); the stalk is home to a variety of beetles, and the rhizomes conceal the larvae of cattail mosquitoes.

Common or Broad-leaved (Typha latifolia) grows on the damp soil and shallow standing water by a pond’s edge. It is less tolerant of pollution but is found in a wider range of soil acidity. Its base is fan-shaped, and the male and female flowers touch. Narrow-leaved cattail (T. angustifolia), which may have come from Europe in the 1800’s) can grow in deeper, more polluted water, and prefers more alkaline locations. Its base is cylindrical, its leaves narrower, and there is bare stem between the male and female flowers. The two species grow side-by-side, and they hybridize, and both the Narrow-leaved and the hybrid can out-compete the Broad-leaved cattail. 

If cattails are community builders, cattail marshes are communities in transition. They generally grow with land on one side and open water on the other, and their decomposing vegetation makes soil (the take-home – every lake is a dying lake), readying the marsh for eventual colonization by plants with dryer preferences. As the land encroaches, cattails move farther out into the wetland. Wetlands are among the most productive ecosystems in the world, rivaling tropical rainforests in their production of biomass (biomass is the measurement of the weight or volume of biological material produced in an area). For more information about wetland issues,

Are cattails good for anything? The BugLady once read that wars were fought over wetlands, and cattails are certainly worth fighting for! Some part of the plant is edible 12 months of the year, from the starchy rhizome (cooked like potatoes or pounded into flour) to the pollen (a flour substitute) – one report says that an acre of cattails could produce almost 6500 pounds of cattail flour. Both the rhizomes and flower heads were used medicinally.

American Indians wove the leaves into mats, baskets, and walls, used the fluff for diapers (the settlers stuffed quilts with it and caned chairs with the leaves). A jelly that was made by pounding the rhizome was used to seal leaky boats. Today, research suggests that the food value of cattails approaches that of corn and rice. Quikrete users please note – a mixture of cattail seeds, ash, and lime sets up harder than marble.

So, if the wildlife likes it, what’s the problem?  As one researcher said, narrow-leaved cattail can be beneficial to a wetland community “in limited quantities.”&�Բ�����;Broad-leaved cattails form dense stands, but there are breaks in the stands where other vegetation can grow and open water can be found. Narrow-leaved cattail crowds out native vegetation by forming impenetrable monocultures, and monocultures reduce food sources and don’t support a very diverse array of wildlife. 

On the up-side, cattails keep pond edges from eroding (while it’s eating the pond).

The BugLady once worked at a Nature Center where thinning the cattails in a small pond by the Education building was an annual task. Here’s what she learned: when you pull on cattails, they pull back.

The BugLady

The post And Now for Something Different – Cattails appeared first on Field Station.

Howdy, BugFans,

The BugLady is already fantasizing about warm, sunny days in a wetland, photographing Swamp milkweed (and dragonflies), because she loves its color, and she loves being in wetlands, and because it’s a very busy plant, indeed!  

Also called rose or red milkweed (there are a couple of species of southern milkweeds that are also called red milkweed), white Indian hemp, water nerve-root, and water silkweed, Swamp milkweed prefers damp soils and full sun near the water’s edge. 

Indians, and later, the European settlers, used it medicinally (a tea made from the roots was reputed to “drive the worms from a person in one hour’s time”). It was used with caution – its sap is poisonous – and the cardiac glycosides that protect Monarchs also deter mammals from grazing on all but the very young plants.��The fibers in its stem were twisted into rope and twine and were used in textiles.

Its flowers are typical milkweed flowers – a corona of five parts (hoods) with curved petals below and curved, nectar-secreting horns above.��The flowers are tricky – sticky, golden, saddlebag-shaped pollinia are hidden behind what one author calls a trap door (a��stigmatic slit).��Insects walk around on the flower head, and when one of their feet slips through the slit by chance, a pollinium sticks to it.��When the bug encounters a stigmatic slit on the next plant it visits, the pollen is inadvertently delivered.��A quick-and-dirty, pick-up and delivery is what the plant had in mind; but, like the story of the raccoon (or was it a monkey) that reaches into the jar for a candy bar and then can’t pull its fist out of the small opening, sometimes the insect’s foot gets stuck to pollinia inside the trap door. Insects that can’t free themselves will die dangling from the flower, and insects that escape may be gummed up by the waxy structures.�� Look carefully for pollinia in the pictures.

Milkweeds support complex communities of invertebrates – their nectar attracts ants, bugs, beetles, flies, butterflies, moths, bees, and wasps, plus predators looking for a meal.��Here are some of the insects that the BugLady sees on Swamp milkweed.

MULBERRY WING SKIPPER – A small (one-inch-ish wingspan) butterfly of wetlands with an arrow or airplane-shaped marking on its rich, chestnut-brown underwings ().��Adults fly slowly through low vegetation, where females lay their eggs on the leaves of sedges.��

FLOWER LONGHORN BEETLE��BRACHYLEPTURA��CHAMPLAINI��(no common name), on a Swamp milkweed leaf. Other than a “present” checkoff in a variety of natural area insect surveys, there’s just about nothing online about this beetle, and not much more in Evans’ book,��Beetles of Eastern North America. It’s a long-horned beetle in the Flower longhorn subfamily��Lepturinae, a group that feeds on pollen in the daytime. This one has pollinia on its mouthparts.

Also seen were ants, leafcutter bees, sweat bees, Great black wasps, Great golden digger wasps, Red soldier beetles, Fiery and Broad-winged Skipper butterflies, and Thick-headed flies.  

The BugLady

The post Wildflower Watch – Swamp Milkweed appeared first on Field Station.

Greetings, BugFans

While you’re still paying attention, let’s get this correction out of the way.

Nota Bene: The BugLady misread an email from BugFan Tom, who supplied the photographs for the recent episode about Black widow spiders. Tom can leap tall buildings in a single bound, but he does not handle Black widow spiders. If you passed that episode along to a friend, please send this correction after it.

This episode started out many years ago as an article that the BugLady wrote for the BogHaunter, the newsletter of the Friends of the Cedarburg Bog, but she rewrote it.

The BugLady visited one of her favorite wetlands the other day, looking for spring. It’s early days for flowering plants around here (and for insects, other than flies), but our two earliest wildflowers – pussy willows and skunk cabbage – are happily doing their thing. It will be a little while before the flowering plants in the wetlands start to bloom, but mosses and liverworts are putting on a show ahead of that, and soon the fern fiddleheads, lichens, liverworts, and horsetails/Equisetum will join the chorus. Nothing beats the smell of a wetland!

Skunk cabbage (Symplocarpus foetidus) (Symplocarpus foetidus means “clustered fruit that is fetid,” and isn’t that awesome!) is a member of the Arum family, Araceae (culinary cabbages aren’t). There are more than 3700 Arum species worldwide, mostly tropical, and the members of the family that grow in and around our area wetlands – skunk cabbage, Jack-in-the-pulpit, and wild calla (plus arrow arum in a few parts of the state) – are some of our oddest-looking wildflowers.

Arums are famous for their decadent odor, for containing calcium oxalate crystals that make eating them painful and even dangerous, and for the ability of many species to produce heat. They are not poisonous to touch, and both the odor and the crystals discourage (most) grazers. Familiar houseplants like dieffenbachia, philodendron, and calla lily are also members of the Arum family, and all contain calcium oxalate crystals, so keep an eye on those plant-munching toddlers and cats.

Skunk cabbages are like Russian nesting dolls. Small flowers sprout from a fleshy, spherical structure called the spadix, and the spadix is enclosed in a maroon, hood-shaped spathe (there are populations with greenish spathes and with variegated green and maroon spathes, too). After the flowers have bloomed, the spathe will be dwarfed by big (18” to 36”), cabbage-like leaves. Smelling a pinch of the spathe or of the leaves in spring will explain the plant’s name.

Heat is generated when the plant uses oxygen and an aspirin-like substance to break down stored starches. “To produce heat,” say the folks at the In Defense of Plants website, “the spadix is hooked up to a massive underground energy reserve largely in the form of carbohydrates or sugars.” Skunk cabbage blooms right at ground level, so the heat it produces can melt the spring snow around it, and the heat broadcasts the plant’s pungent odor.

The Styrofoam texture of the spathe insulates the spadix. Wind that enters the spathe circulates in a vortex that keeps the inside temperature stable. When the soil temperature reaches 32 degrees F, the respiration of the spadix warms the inside of the spathe to a constant temperature of about 72 degrees F (and as high as 90 degrees F) despite the ambient air temperature. One source mentioned warming one’s hands over the spathe.

Blooming before many flying pollinators emerge, skunk cabbage’s rotten odor and liver-colored streaks attract carrion-seeking flies and small beetles to the tiny yellow flowers on the spadix (it’s called “dung mimicry”), and insects that come for the carrion may stay for the heat. Early-foraging honey bees and other insects visit the spathe to warm up, and, incidentally, pollinate the flowers. Opportunistic spiders sit on the spathe or spin webs across its opening.

Skunk cabbages grow from thick, underground stems called rhizomes or rootstalks that put out both roots and leaves. Skunk cabbage may grow for a very long time – potentially for centuries if its habitat isn’t disturbed – and its root systems can get so extensive that it’s almost impossible to dig up. The rhizome of an older plant can be a foot thick. Its roots are “contractile” – after the plant blooms, the roots contract slightly and keep the plant snug against the soil.

It likes to grow with its feet in or near the water, with spathes sprouting from wetland hummocks and sometimes emerging semi-submerged in standing water. Like the habitat that surrounds it, the tissues of its leaves and flowers are very watery, and they decay quickly.

Each skunk cabbage flower has both male and female structures, but they’re not self-pollinating. The female parts bloom first and then become unreceptive as the male structures at their base start releasing pollen. The fertilized flowers on the spadix form a compound, berry-like fruit that reclines on the wetland floor where the seeds will be released to float away or to germinate near the parent plant.

During a long, mild fall, skunk cabbage sends up green, cone-shaped flower buds – ready for the following spring, when the dance will begin again.

Despite the calcium oxalate, Native Americans used skunk cabbage rhizomes and leaves as food and medicine, but only after neutralizing the calcium oxalate by drying the plant or by lengthy cooking. BugFan Mike once told the BugLady that skunk cabbage is listed as an emergency food, but in order to disarm the crystals, the leaves must be boiled in successive changes of water until the water in the pot no longer has a “bite.” Mike said that after all that boiling, the leaves were about as appetizing as a wad of wet Kleenex (the moral of the story is that if you’re going to get lost and need to eat skunk cabbage, be sure to have a large pot and lots of water at hand). It was used as a medicine to treat toothaches, asthma, bruises, blisters, scurvy, headaches, and more. The fresh root of skunk cabbage is toxic, but it’s rarely fatal because it tastes so bad that it would be hard to eat a lethal amount.

And it’s used by wildlife – muskrats browse on the unopened spathes in early spring, and the young leaves and flowering structures are favored by bears, snapping turtles, turkeys and geese. Snails and slugs graze on the leaves; the seeds are eaten by squirrels, Wood Ducks, Ruffed Grouse, quail, and pheasants; and millipedes and sowbugs feed on the decaying vegetation. Maryland Yellowthroats nest in its dense thickets, and the BugLady found a funnel-web spider that spun its web in the angle of the leaves.

The BugLady is always amazed at how frequently she finds an emerging skunk cabbage leaf that’s trapped in a dry leaf from last fall – amazed first because of all the stars that have to align in order for the tip of the skunk cabbage leaf to insert itself into a random tear in the dead leaf above it, and amazed because these robust leaves can’t seem to burst out of their fragile bonds.

Thoreau wrote that the opening of the spathe usually faces south, but research does not confirm this. In the BugLady’s experience, the opening usually faces away from the boardwalk she’s standing on.

Yes, there is a .

The BugLady

The post And Now for Something a Little Different – Eastern Skunk Cabbage appeared first on Field Station.