100 Species #76: Yellow toadflax #77: toadflax weevil

[urbpan]

This yellow toadflax Linaria vulgaris and it's attending weevil Gymnetron sp. were alongside the shed, not far from where we found the toadflax brocade a few weeks ago.

When I posted about the toadflax brocade, a deliberately introduced toadflax-eating caterpillar, the question came up: what's so bad about toadflax? Apparently not much, at least here in the suburbs. Out west where vast tracts of land are kept as rangeland for livestock, toadflax is unsuitable and persistent. One can imagine that certain interests have greater influence to move organisms from one continent to another these days. This has happened with toadflax weevils as well, though apparently without much success: Bugguide says that "all our spp. are native to Europe, adventive in NA and now occur across Canada and the US." Adventive--I word with which I was not previously familiar--means that the organism is native elsewhere, and not established or invasive.

Comments

[shellynoir.livejournal.com]

Neat!
A yellow dye is obtained from the flowers. A tea made from the plant has been used as an insecticide.
http://montana.plant-life.org/species/linaria_vulga.htm

[bosoxmom.livejournal.com]

It is a very pretty flower just the same!