The greeneyes is starting to bloom in the backyard prairie! This grew from seeds that I put out a year, maybe two years, ago.Hmm… What is this brown lumpy thing on the butterfly milkweed?An exciting, dare I say unexpected, find by Paula… The Unexpected Cycnia moth caterpillar!I spotted this second Unexpected Cycnia caterpillar on a different plant a few inches away. Apparently they only eat milkweeds, so we are very pleased to find one in the orange butterfly milkweed section of the rainbow garden. It’s also our 150th yard species on inaturalist!A dead cicada. No fun buzzes but Briar hoped.Watermelon in the farm share this week. Yum!!
Plant A: the volunteer. It has generated two fruits and Paula wants to eat them. I want to know what this plant is first. Help me not let Paula get sick.Close up of plant A leaf.Close up of Plant A young flower. A more mature flower a few months ago (see below) has more brown/purple on petals but not I think on the anthers?The north central Texas flora keys out to two main groups by hair type. These, on Plant A, appear to be simple, and possibly retrorse (curving down). No hair joints eliminates P. heterophylla.Plant A: the leaf and the two fruits. The fruit calyxes are five angled.I zoomed in on a picture of the previous flower, same plant A. I believe the anthers are yellow. I would like help with that, as it’s been a while since I’ve tried to confirm anthers. Yellow anthers and simple hairs get it to P. longifolia or P. virginiana in the NC TX Flora. The leaves for both species are are ovate to lanceolate, which seems inconsistent with Plant A. Longifolia also is said to often have purple stems. This one has stripes but not fully purple. The NC TX Flora says these two are possibly toxic. The new Foraging Texas book says all the Physalis are fine. Other sources claim virginiana’s fine or may need a frost. One of the sources is this book about Physalis and relatives so I may get it via interlibrary loan.This is the underside of Plant B. Plant B should be a cultivar of Physalis pruinosa based on its location and what I have planted there. It has similar simple, possibly retrorse hairs. Plant B is not flowering yet this year. I had a really hard time finding flower pictures for P. pruinosa, as most people sort of reasonably are interested in the fruit. It does appear to have yellow anthers. Plant C. This is from a probably perennial wild Physalis (I have never planted any Physalis that made it to fruiting in the backyard). Its hairs are distinctly stellate. None of the individuals in the cluster of 2-4 Plant C individuals were flowering, but the hairs seem to narrow it to P. cinerascens or P. mollis. I think P. cinerascens seems more likely on leaf shape, but both are edible and neither have simple leaf hairs.Plant C leaf (left) and plants A (upper right leaf, bigger) and B (lower right leaf, smaller – it’s from a younger plant), and plant A fruits.
So, am I missing anything obvious here? Is this identifiable? Have any of you consumed P. longifolia or P. virginiana and lived?
Update: Mom showed me a few other keys and they get it to P. virginiana too. None of the keys contain P. pruinosa. P. virginiana is also a perennial while P. pruinosa is an annual, so maybe next year will also provide a clue.
Baby cushaw squash!Recovering from removal of benign sebaceous cysts is more complicated than either of us expected.Purple hulled pinkeye cowpea.I really like the little signs Paula got me for Christmas. They stand out well.A gray hairstreak on a Madhu ras canteloupe flower.Paula’s Coryphantha sulcata is blooming!In fact, it has two. She says it had six earlier this year too.New tiny moth – a spotted thyris!Bee butt in loofah gourd.Paula made Thai green curry for dinner. It contains last year’s garden white currant tomatoes (from frozen, so that works well), garden onions, and garden walking onions.The Texas buckeye is very angry. I put a hose out to soak there. Jeanne has let me know the wild ones do this too, so maybe it will recover.Possibly purple prairie clover from free packet from prairiemoon.com?A second round of standing cypress flowers on a different plant.A volunteer Carolina snailseed in the front yard.Will Rogers Zinnias are looking good in the rainbow garden.Briar loves escorting Shackleton for a walk.Shackleton doesn’t know why we have to ruin a good thing by bringing the dog.We were about to go back inside, but she got up and scooted closer. He turned to glare while she got a treat for laying down.Shackleton says no eye contact.Here you can pretend there is no dog, only lush, succulent grass and corn.
Partridge pea blooming.A big skipper caught my attention this morning.I think it may be a Confused Cloudywing or an Outis Skipper. The pale ish area below the antennal club is why I think maybe Outis Skipper, but I also get the impression that one is rarer, so I wonder if I’m missing something obvious that makes it a cloudywing. Both have been recorded in Cleveland county, Oklahoma though.Saw a two spotted bumblebee on mealy blue sage again!The juniperleaf cuttings have started to perk up and poke at the plastic wrap, so I am unsealing them a bit to see if they can handle less humidity yet.Silly sleep
The second Coryphantha sulcata seedling seems to have died, but the original is getting longer.Another two spotted bumblebee (Bombus bimaculatus) visited the mealy blue sage today!There was only one but I took a lot of angles. You can see the two spots if you zoom in.In flight you get the best view of spots.I liked the pollinating wasp zooming through in this picture.Baby mantis!I believe this is a baby red yucca, as that’s what I planted here, and it seems too sturdy to be grass.A big ol mydas fly in the backyard!!The native clematis likes its new sunnier spot about 20 ft to the west. It already has two or three new leaves!I weeded the strawberry/honey berry bed but got called in for dinner when there was still a patch left. Maybe tomorrow.I found a second pale zig zaggy spider in the backyard. Looking at it closer, I think it’s the wrong pattern and shape for Argiope aurantica, the usual banana spider.Filling up the bird bath intrigued the dog.African blue basil has flowers!One of the many marigolds in the raised beds (we mixed the old seedheads and plants in over the winter) is beginning to flower!The corn is going to town! A vaquero bean is flowering!A fine little bell pepper!!Cooling off after gardening with the mysterious Paper Protozoan. Note the hairy flagellum sticking out.
Will Rogers Zinnias came back true.A little Solanaceae volunteered in the rainbow garden.It conveniently has a yellow flower.Paula started a batch of kimchi fermenting. Walking onions for the green onion.Who is thisThis friend not want to play
