Sunday, July 6, 2014

Viper's Bugloss

Clouded plant bug(Neurocolpus nubilus)

Things sometimes change very slowly in the natural world; the Manordale students that first planted trees out on the berm have mostly all graduated to middle school or even high school by now, yet many things persist out on the berm. The patch of devil's paint brush is ever in the same spot; the patch of chickory keeps coming back despite the mower, and there are always one or two viper's bugloss flowers tucked under the sumac by the road. This year the mower hasn't seen fit to mow the path between the 2009 planting area and the trees so one of the viper's bugloss plants has ventured out into the sun. When taking a picture of it I noticed a bunch of familiar looking bugs hanging out on the spike of flowers. I think they are clouded plant bugs; although there are so many similar plant bugs I am not confident in the identification.