Myrmecological Musings

I had an E.O. Wilson moment yesterday. In case the name isn't familiar, Edward O. Wilson is famous for his studies of ants and their behavior, and is considered one of the founders of the concept of sociobiology. And, being an insect geek and a behavioral studies geek, he's one of my heroes.  Anyway, I was moving things around in my shed and when I shifted a stack of disassembled and nested pet carriers, I dislodged a small colony of Florida carpenter ants. My initial reaction was along the lines of “Holy crap!” and quickly progressed to “I don’t wanna get bitten by those!” Not that I’d never seen carpenter ants before, I just had never seen them my shed. Carpenter ants are big, like half an inch long for the major workers (slightly smaller for the minor workers), so they make an impression when you send a bunch of them scrambling. I quickly took the stack of carriers outside and looked it over in a fruitless search for what I assumed was some massive glob of big, angry ants.

Smile! I have big mandibles and can bite real hard.

By the time I went back into the shed, probably less than a minute later, the survivors were well into damage control. The colony had been built on the shelf that housed the pet carriers, with the underside of the bottom carrier serving as a roof, so moving the carriers had been like ripping the roof of a house, leaving everything exposed where once it had been safely protected. There wasn’t that much to it. Larvae were scattered all over, and that was about it. It had been a very small colony, only 3 or 4 dozen adults (including casualties). It was probably a very new satellite colony recently branched from a larger colony nearby. Adult ants were running around gathering up the larvae and…here’s where I got sucked in, and where E.O. would be proud.

Save the larvae!

Their home was gone, what would they do? At first they just milled around with the larvae in their mandibles. Some ants carried one larvae at a time, but many were gathering several at a time. There were a few individuals roaming around the periphery of their former home, and they soon spread out beyond the old boundaries. On the same shelf, but to the left are a couple of 3 gallon pots stacked together. To the right is a clear plastic storage bin. Within moments, some of the adults were transporting larvae to the little hollow formed where the curved side of the storage container meets the shelf, while others carried larvae to the pots. The “shelter” at the storage container was minimal, kind of like standing under the roof overhang of a house in a driving rain storm: better than being out in the middle of an open field, but not exactly protection either.

Minor worker carrying at least 3 larvae.

The larva rescuers were running to their respective destinations along similar paths, no matter where their starting point was at “the scene.” Probably following pheromone trails set up by the scouts whose job it was to find a new safe place—maybe those individuals I’d noticed wandering around earlier. At first, about half of the rescuers stashed the young at each of the two possible destinations, but before long, most were carrying them to the pots, apparently depositing them, and then coming back to ground zero to gather more larvae. Within a few minutes they had gathered all the scattered larvae. Then they went to the storage container and took the larvae that had been stashed there and moved them over to the pots!

So now I apparently have a small colony of carpenter ants living in a stack of pots in my shed. It probably won’t take it long to become a large colony of carpenter ants and even though they don’t really do any harm (these ants eat rotting wood and fruit, but don’t damage sound wood), I will probably have to relocate them. Otherwise I’ll probably forget they’re there, take the pots off the shelf to use and discover them all over again, quite possibly as a couple dozen of them race up my hands and attack. I’ll put them near my compost pile, which is probably their main food source anyway.

Yay! I’ve got worms!

OK, not the sort of thing most people rejoice over, but fellow horties might understand. I’ve been thinking of starting a worm bin for months now and I’ve finally just gone and done it. I built the bin last weekend out of two 18-gallon plastic storage tubs, some screen wire and a bunch of shredded newspaper. Then, on Wednesday, I procured a pound of red wigglers from Suzanne Richmond of Funky Chicken Farm in Melbourne and my adventure into vermicompostilization has commenced.

Note the irony in that there's a cartoon cat watching these worms
 from the pages of the shredded newspaper bedding.

There will be lessons learned along the way, I’m sure. There have already been lessons learned. For one thing, they’re quite the escape artists, which is one reason I’m glad this bin is not in the house, even though some of the worm gurus say that’s the best place for them. I’ve got my bin on the lanai, where it’s easy to get to and will hopefully be somewhat buffered from the extremes of weather in the real outdoors. From what I hear, a few escape attempts are normal for a new bin that doesn’t feel quite like home to the worms yet (who knew worms had a sense of “home”?), and will subside within a few days. Meanwhile, though, I’ve got my “assistant” keeping an eye out for rogue wigglers.

Here's how I discovered that I even have an assistant: Last night as I was shutting down for the evening, I went out to the lanai for the usual cat herding session. My four useless felines are typically draped over various tables, shelves and chairs out there just before bed time, hoping that I’ll forget to bring them in and they can watch the armadillo circus that evidently takes place every night in the back yard. (Oreo actually lucked out on that one earlier this week). I always say, in my most authoritative voice, “You must come in now.” What normally happens is that 2 or 3 of them hop right up and come inside. There’s always one trouble-maker who goes completely limp—or maybe deaf—and must be physically lifted from his/her comfy spot and brought in. Last night Calyx, who is normally Mr. Upstanding Cat Citizen, refused to budge. He was sitting upright and perfectly still, like a statue, his gaze fixed upon a spot on the floor. The spot was moving. The spot was a worm. My ever-vigilant fat cat was apparently keeping the escapee under surveillance until I could gain control of the situation. So now Calyx the Worm Watcher is in charge of making sure no more worms run amok on the lanai floor.

I’m sure there will be more fascinating reports on what my worms are up to once they’ve settled in and gotten down to the serious business of devouring my apple peels, egg shells and coffee grounds. I can hardly wait to find my first batch of baby worms or pour off my first jug of worm tea. Seriously, with things like that to look forward to, who wouldn’t say “Yay” to the idea of having worms?

A new purple leafed plant...Tomato??

You know how we hortie types tend to get all excited about plants with leaves of an unusual color? We’re especially smitten when leaves are purplish or black. Well, hold onto your hort hats, horties, because I’ve got a new one! The leaves are a gorgeous dark, dark purple, bordering on black. And they’ve got a lovely texture with a prominently quilted surface that further accentuates that inky color when the sun bounces off the leaf. Sounds like a plant nerd’s dream, doesn’t it?

Not quite. It’s a tomato plant. Several tomato plants, in fact. These are plants I started from seed back before the winter turned, well, wintry. I’d started sowing seeds late and someone had gifted me with larger plants, so those went into the garden once it cooled down enough to grow things this fall. My plan was for these late seedlings to be a second planting, or possibly back-up plants in case a freeze killed my garden tomatoes. I’ve dutifully toted them in and out of the garage with every freeze and they’re still alive, although now they’re horribly pot-bound and are exhibiting an assortment of symptoms that would make for an excellent essay question on a plant pathology exam. My garden tomatoes are also still alive, thanks to my fabulous Tomato Protection Contraption, so these poor little plants sit patiently on the bench in my backyard nursery, awaiting their fate and doing their best to photosynthesize. I suppose the humane thing would be to go ahead and put them on the compost pile.

This ain't what a termater
is spozed to look like.

But it’s interesting to observe so I’ve kept them around…in the interest of science, of course (nothing to do with laziness). I’ve been watching the purplish cast creep into the foliage all winter. I’ve got three different tomato varieties on the bench and only the ‘Sapho’ are turning purple. And every plant of that variety is purple. Apparently 'Sapho' is more sensitive to P deficiency—purplish foliage is a symptom. Which is kind of ironic, since P deficiency is rare in FL, because our soils are typically very high in this nutrient. But in this case, it makes perfect sense because (a) these seedlings are in grow mix, not soil; and (b) plants have a harder time extracting the P they need from cold soils. Ain’t science fascinating?

I Love Calendula

There is a happy orange glow emanating from my vegetable garden on this gray and dreary January morning. The veggie garden has largely been a disappointment this year. I’ve been blaming it on weather, which has been uncharacteristically cold and gray for Central Florida. But regardless of its effects on the tomatoes and basil, one plant has declared itself immune to winter’s curse: Calendula officinalis, aka, pot marigold.

Back in my days at the UT Trial Garden, we used to plant it every year, and every year it would get torched by Botrytis fungus by mid-summer. Obviously it wasn’t happy with the humidity of a southern summer. I tried it again as a winter annual in the trial garden at the place in South Florida where I worked. At its peak it was mediocre. I guess I tried it again this year more out of habit than anything else—and because someone gave me a few plants–and I finally get it! Take a look at these babies and see if you can resist smiling.

How can you not love those happy flowers? Dontcha just want to draw smiley faces on them all? Anyway, according to cultivation information that’s out there, they aren’t frost hardy, although I haven’t covered mine during our cold snaps and they’ve done beautifully. I suspect they must be able to withstand a light frost but maybe not a full-blown freeze. Past experience (and “the literature”) says they don’t like excessive heat and humidity, so we deep-southerners must grow them in the winter, as we do with pansies, dianthus, snapdragons and petunias.

I’ve always heard that the petals are edible and are sometimes added to soups and salads for color effect, although I’ve never actually tried it, not having had a lot of actual flowers bloom before the plants croaked. It’s also said that they are used in various medicinal concoctions and to make fabric dyes, which gets my Mother Nature/science geek gene all excited. Part of me wants to clear out the entire back yard and scatter zillions of calendula seeds so I can harvest the flowers, boil them down and see what happens when I soak old sheets and t-shirts in the resulting liquid…for varying intervals…and with different mordants…this could become a big project. OK, maybe next year. For now I’ll just force myself to enjoy the flowers on the plants I have.