Plant ID outta nowhere

Back in April of 2010 I went to Fannie Stebbins Wildlife Refuge. My post from that trip included the following photograph, of an unidentified plant that I thought might be related to lady's thumb.


"If you haven't already ID'd that as Polygonum virginianum -- Jumpseed, then I am pointing you to look there. I regularly encounter this plant in the shady, wooded areas of the park near my house here in Baltimore City. See: http://milwaukeeriveradvocates.org/?cat=10 - Tom of Baltimore"

That message was in my email this morning. Thanks Tom!

I like the fact that LiveJournal posts are up forever. I celebrate my 10th anniversary here this year--someone suggested that I duplicate the journal somehow, in case the KGB or whoever knock it offline entirely some day. Anyone else done this, or know how it might be done?

3:00 snapshot #1180

I found a unique bouquet of long-stemmed tubes out in the cold back area.

Daily Zoo Animal #34: Chinese mantid

Chinese mantid Tenodera aridifolia sinensis

This mantid perches on a jar of fruit flies provided as easy prey. It and its many brothers and sisters hatched from an ootheca produced by this large female. Chinese mantids are becoming the most common mantids in North America, due to deliberate releases to control garden pests. I heard of more folks encountering mantids this year than any time since I was a child.

Mantises used to be lumped in the same Order as cockroaches and termites, and the information on Bugguide.net makes it sound like they still should be: "The concept of an order that includes at least cockroaches, termites, and mantids is nowadays widely supported by scientists." Furthermore, mantids "can be reasonably described as predatory roaches."

That last part doesn't quite pass the sniff test for me--the elongated thorax, the mobile head, the raptorial forearms...Even if it is correct taxonomically, it's a violation of the language: calling a mantid a predatory roach robs both words of their meaning.