Mountain Mint, Ol' Buddy Ol' Pal

Although I like to think I don't have any botanical enemies, I tend to divide the plants I encounter into categories of friends and...let's say acquaintances. The friends are those I love and look forward to seeing every year: the Ratibida pinnata, the Pineapple Weed, assorted Violets, the funny little rockets of flowering Narrowleaf Plantain. Usually they are entwined with a fond memory or something unique about their appearance or life that strikes me as appealing. 

Others--the rest--are enjoyable enough to spend time with, and while appreciate them in a general sense they don't inspire the same joy as those friends do. Until recently, Common Mountain Mint (Pycnanthemum virginianum) was among these. I've noticed it occasionally, its small, purple-spotted flowers often crawling with a variety of pollinators, but it never stood out among its taller, more robustly-flowered, or otherwise more interesting neighbors.

That is, until I discovered we had a friend in common. Hold on, what's that? 

There, a petal out of place, next to more browning petals. Moving in jerky starts and stops across the small cluster of flowers. A Camouflaged Looper (Synchlora aerata)! I've been enchanted by these sharp-dressed caterpillars from the moment I saw them, and finding them in my garden is always a treat. Because they make use of the petals of the flower on which they are foraging as camouflage, they use a variety of different flowers as hosts--though I spot them most often on the R. pinnata (maybe because it is easy to notice them on the smooth, rounded flowerhead?).

Not just one Looper, though. A whole armada of them, each in varying states of dress scattered around the stand of Mountain Mint! Some had just a few brown petals adorning their pastel bodies; others seemed to fully decked out, dried anthers dangling over their backs as they inched along. One unfortunate individual, camouflage working perhaps a bit too well, found a bee upon its back. 

Suddenly, with the discovery that we have a friend in common, the Mountain Mint has found a place in the always-growing circle of friends out along the Greenway.

A Thorny Encounter

And the heart that is soonest awake to the flowers
is always the first to be touch'd by the thorns.

                                        - Thomas Moore

 

Hunkered down in the mowed grass alongside the trail, looking for the minuscule grasshopper and katydid nymphs that spring away from my footsteps, I happened to glance to my left at a long green stem nearby.

Wow, those are some fierce thorns!

Curious. I didn't recall seeing anything thorny around here in previous years; the roses and other shrubby plants with prickles and thorns are found in other areas. The thorns were brown and pointy...and there were only two of them.

My eye followed the stem upwards to see the distinctive and familiar yellow petals of Ratibida pinnata, gray-headed coneflower, at the top. Those don't have thorns. 

Closer inspection revealed a set of eyes below the pointy protrusion, and veined wings aft, simulating the broad base of a prickle. A set of chunky, hairy-looking legs below the eyes completed the insect. What a clever disguise! I wonder how many predators are fooled as easily as I....

The Wide-footed Treehopper (Enchenopa latipes), like other treehoppers, has built-in camouflage that renders it difficult to spot when it is feeding on the sap of plant stems. Many species are commonly known as thorn bugs, for obvious reasons.

The long "thorn" is actually a fancy extension of the pronotum, commonly seen as a smooth, shield-like plate on the thorax of insects like grasshoppers and beetles, between the head and the base of the wings. The disguise serves double duty, not only helping the treehopper to blend in with its surroundings, but also deterring investigation by predators perhaps familiar with the sharp end of actual thorns they've encountered in the past.