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Lantana Is Not Horrida

The native Texas lantana, Lantana horrida, is blooming profusely this year. I experimented with not cutting this one back this year. Will it take over my yard? We'll see...

Loquat Liqueur

It's loquat fruit time again in Austin, and this year, I discovered - vis a vis the Lee Bros. - a recipe for making loquat liqueur. (Don't even ask me how many times I've spell-checked the word "liqueur." What a strange one.)

The recipe is pretty straight forward:

Wash some loquats and stuff them in a jar with a lid. Fill said jar with vodka (I used Dripping Springs). Wait for at least one week and up to a year. Keeps for a couple of years.

I'm probably going to lean toward waiting a year. So perhaps this time next year, I'll be experimenting with loquat liqueur drinks. I'm thinking a splash of the loquat liqueur with some ice and soda water would be a refreshing springtime treat.

Here's a recipe for a nice breakfast treat made with loquats.

First Eastern Tent Caterpillar Siting (For Me) in Texas

You know, you can probably count me among a small handful of freaky people that would be excited to find colonies of tent caterpillars (I've posted about forest tent caterpillars here). John and I went out to Bastrop a few weekends ago and went hiking at the Colorado River Refuge.

I was very excited to come across an area of the refuge that was supporting a pretty good population of Eastern tent caterpillars, Malacasoma americanum.

Growing up on the East coast, these were a common sight - and considered a pest by most - among the ornamental apple, plum and prunus trees. But I rather like them. They are a fascinating colonial species, not truly eusocial like the ants and bees, but social enough to build a protective shelter.

They also lay little pheromone trails along branches that their colony mates use to find the best patches of new leaves to munch on.

The silken shelter protects these caterpillars from parasitoids, kind of.

Parasitoids are a special class of insect that spend their larval stage as a parasite to another insect. These caterpillars, for example, are host to a number of wasp and fly species. What happens is that the adult female parasitoid finds the caterpillars and lays her eggs inside the caterpillar. The larvae of the parasitoid then grow by eating the caterpillar from the inside out. So, yea. Maggots eating you alive. Kinda gross, but also pretty awesome.

Anyhoo, theory goes that these webby nests protect the caterpillars from the marauding flies and wasps trying to bomb them with their eggs. The caterpillars forage at night to try to escape the parasitoids. The parasitoids obviously make it through the protection on a regular basis, or...they would've gone extinct a long time ago. That's the arms race that is evolution.

Birds can also break through the nests of course, and would be getting themselves quite a tasty treat if so.

There you have it. Eastern tent caterpillars in Bastrop, Texas. Cool!

Texas Blue Grass

Texas blue grass (Poa arachnifera) is a fabulous native cool season grass that is making its way into the nursery trade. I bought these at Barton Springs Nursery. I just planted a few as a trial run in my front garden beds, but I think a large monoculture planting of these would be absolutely stunning when their soft, fluffy flower stalks are swaying in the wind.

Watching the Leaves Grow

Bodi is watching the leaves grow. The wrens chatter in the background. The air lush with the aroma of fresh green leaves and caterpillar poop. If you've ever been in a woods where caterpillars are at their work, you'll know the smell.