St. John's Wort

Back to Pepperwood yesterday to resume the invasive plant clearing; only with a special focus on SJW.

As noted in my last post, the idea is to encourage the spread of these monomaniacally wort-eating beetles in the preserve. So far, a few patches of Wort are looking pressured by a vigorous infestation of these almost ladybug sized irridescent creatures; in other areas few or none are seen. Accordingly, we 'harvested' some from highly populated patches, and hand transferred the bugs to fresh pastures...

We realized we were conducting an unstructured experiment. One might argue that the beetles themselves would be best at this without our dubious help. as it was, there's no way to entirely strip a plant of it's tormentors. Most drop to the ground at the slightest touch; so we couldn't get more than a third of them with the greatest care.

I've wondered a bit about their love for this toxic plant. There are indeed neurochemicals--perhaps with mood-elevating virtues--in these plants. I read briefly that the insects have special adaptation to tolerate them safely. Thus, their love of Wort seems likely to be one of those things like monarch/milkweed or longwing/passionflower where a species specializes completely because of a king-hell predator deterrent. Likely all this is known and carefully elucidated by entomologists.

Meanwhile,the march of the beetles, assisted or not, appears inexorable through the fields of Wort. We shall see.

Posted on June 1, 2012 06:44 PM by