By Bev Johnson

Master Gardener

Old Mother Nature must have a good sense of humor. Here are some of her odder quirks.

Male milkweed tussock moth caterpillars ‘sing’ to attract females by making lovely clicking sounds. You may find him feeding on your butterfly weed. You probably would have to listen pretty hard to hear him and not all of us can bend that low anymore. All mints have square stems… but not all square stemmed plants are mint. If it is mint, it spreads like ice on a hot stove.

Migrating birds build fat deposits on the center of their breasts, so it doesn’t interfere with their ability to fly. Scientists determine this by blowing the feathers on the breast apart. How is that for an odd job? A Bobolink’s fat reserve is especially critical as it flies clear to the tip of South America.

There are at least eight different varieties of goldenrod that grow in Minnesota, none of which will cause you to sneeze, no matter what your Grandma told you. The pollen from goldenrod is quite large and sparse and is too heavy to move in the wind. The ‘sneeze weed’ is ragweed. It produces copious amounts of very fine pollen that the wind can easily blow around. Ragweed has a very interesting way of spreading. It has only a few seeds, but angleworms just love them. They haul them down into the soil. The worms also collect seeds from other plants like the sunflowers. Who knew?

The woolly bear caterpillar you see in the fall is the second generation of the year. Their host plants are mostly weeds, dandelion, dock, plantain, asters and goldenrod. To make it through the winter, they produce a type of antifreeze and hibernate under dead plant debris. This is why the gardener should leave some leaf piles in out-of-the-way places. No matter how wide the black belt he has in the fall, his ability to predict the length of the winter is as accurate as your grandfather’s arthritis. By the way, chipmunks only partially hibernate. They need to wake up every 2 to 3 weeks to eat the seeds they stashed last fall.   

Boxelder bugs are only attracted to female boxelder trees. If you see a black and red bug on a milkweed plant, it’s a milkweed beetle. It sucks the sap on the milkweed plant. This beetle is about ½ inch long with a red body and black wings. The head is black and has a red spot on its back.

Everyone hates grubs. How do you know if you have white grubs as opposed to southern masked chafer grubs? You turn them over and look at their backend. White grubs, the grass root eaters, have a pattern of hairs called rasters growing in a V shape. If you have the right kind of friends, have them hold the grub and look at the critter with a 10X lens to check for that V shape. When you are done looking, either squish it or go fishing. They make great bait. There is an old adage, “if you give a man a fish, he will eat for a day.”  If you teach him how to fish, he will sit in a boat all day and drink beer.