Every summer I eagerly await the return of the Gray-headed Coneflowers (Ratibida pinnata), not just because they are beautiful and prolific bloomers, but also because they host a huge variety of pollinators and other insect life—including my beloved Camouflaged Loopers.
Said loopers are one of the reasons I will stop and closely inspect any slight aberration on the head of a flowering Ratibida. Sometimes it is just an errant yellow ray floret, twisted up at an angle, or a sneaky ambush bug lurking until its unsuspecting lunch shows up, or maybe some warty-looking galls. But on lucky days, I find a little Camouflaged Looper in its petaled finery.
Last summer I noticed many Ratibida that had clumps of yellow thready material tangled among the brown disc florets:
It appeared as if the pollen-carrying anthers (stamens?) from the florets had been pulled out and collected together in a mass. What was causing this phenomenon? Could a bee or other pollinator be collecting them, purposely or inadvertently, and discarding them as they snagged on the florets?
Stumped, I took my question to the
IOWA-NATIVE-PLANTS listserv (always an amazingly friendly and helpful group), which yielded several theories but also a general puzzlement as well. Perhaps a bit of webbing was visible that would indicate an arachnid origin, or maybe some kind of fungal growth? But alas, no definitive answer surfaced. After a stretch of rainy weather, I failed to locate the mysterious clumps again for closer inspection that summer.
Skipping ahead to this summer, around the same time, I again found the yellow clumps during routine Ratibida inspections! This time, I broke off one of the flowerheads and brought it home for a deep dive into the mass. With my trusty 10x magnification loupe, I thought there might be something visible beneath the fuzz, just a hint of something pale amid the brown florets:
Gently teasing away the threads caused whatever was under them to retreat into the forest of florets. A tiny worm! Caterpillar? Something....
Again gently, I prodded the critter closer to the surface for a better look. Definitely a caterpillar, and did it have bits of pollen and florets stuck to it? Could it be....a super-tiny early Camouflaged Looper?!
iNaturalist's suggested ID supports the suspicion. The Camouflaged Loopers I'd encountered previously were small—maybe 1.5 cm long?—but readily visible. These? Super tiny. Each of those brown disc florets in the photos above are maybe 1 mm across, so the caterpillar itself was perhaps .5 cm?
What caused it to collect the yellow thready clump? Was it a purposeful effort at concealment? Or maybe more likely did the threads just snag on the assorted protuberances and edges of the caterpillar's body as it moved around the flower? Or was excavating the caterpillar beneath the fuzz merely a coincidence, and the fuzz was caused by something else entirely?
I'll have to again be on the lookout for bits of fuzz on the Ratibida to see if the discovery can be replicated. Regardless, what a fun demonstration of what there is to see right along the trail if you slow down to look!
Note also the even tinier critters scampering around the Ratibida florets!
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