Habitats of the Llano Estacado
Sanddunes
Photoessay – Shinoak-Covered Sanddunes (October, 2009)
Nathan Taylor’s family farms cotton west of Lamesa. In 2009 Nathan was 15 years old. He is homeschooled, and before or after lessons, or while he is working on the farm (hoeing or driving the tractor) he explores his homestead. His family’s house sits in the middle of shinoak covered sanddunes. His photography records the changing seasons, and through the year he discovered a number of organisms (both plants and animals) that had not been recorded in western Dawson County before his observations. In November 2009 he was elected Vice-President of the Llano Estacado Chapter of the Texas Master Naturalists.
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Related Photoessays: April | June | July | August | September | Early November | Mid-November | Early December
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Amaranths like cotton fields, and Nathan spends a lot of time in cotton fields. What tiny spider species uses the bloom stalks for a killing ground?
A plant sucking bug investigated a normal amaranth
While a deformed amaranth bloom head had another species of a plant sucking bug...
...and a caterpillar, but did either have anything to do with the deformity?
Would any one buy a lavender blooming amaranth for an ornamental?
The lavender buds in closeup revealed the dragline of another spider.
Some of the amaranths have bright red stripes on their stem
While others are green, where a tiny white moth rested.
Nathan found a new species of Artemisia (for the Sibley Staff)
In bloom, it looks like most of the true sages.
And in the pasture, it adds a silvery haze to a field turned sere with the effects of fall.
Nathan looked closely, and found yet another species of plant sucking bugs. Is this one related to the two species above?
A tiny fly was imprisoned by dew on the purple amaranth.
Blister beetles can be found on amaranth, too. The photo also reveals the bloom of the amaranth, too.
Annual buckwheat is common in sandy soils. The blooms are often pink.
The spent blossoms of the buckwheat are more orange in color.
The buckwheat has an intricate dendritic pattern to its inflorescence (bloom stalk.)
Nathan caught several ornately colored plant sucking bugs.
Even an earlier instar of the species above has intricate patterning.
Why did this bumblebee have such strange growths on its wings? It did not hurt its ability to fly.
This webbing appears to hold both a caterpillar and eggs, but of what?
Cowpen daisies are sometimes stripped by the bordered patch butterfly caterpillars.
Cowpen daisies are great butterfly attractants. Unfortunately, the plant is somewhat malodorous.
A dainty sulfur could not fly because it was covered with dew.
Damselfly legs have bristles so it can clutch a plant stem dancing in the wind, and catch its prey.
Filaree is a wildflower that can bloom as early as February, so the seeds germinate in the fall, if there is moisture.
The whitish tendrils appear to be a fungal growth on the seeds of a grassbur. How does Nathan notice such detail?
A dalea was visited by three different species of insects. A cucumbeer beetle, a bee (mostly hidden) and two ambush bugs about covered the blooms.
Are the strands draped over the shelf fungus related to the fungus? It appears that some are attached to it!
A white shelf fungus looked prickly to the touch.
Indian blanket sparkles when covered with dew.
A horned lark lit briefly in front of Nathan’s tractor.
Is this hornworm only found on devil’s claw, or does it eat other species of plant?
A webworm colony created a web that looked like a funnel on a shinoak.
Johnson grass is a pest in cotton fields, but when the blooms are covered with dew, they are beautiful.
Lark sparrows return to the Llano Estacado to nest, but most are gone before Christmas.
Gray, green, and yellow lichen grew on a soapberry tree.
What a striking perspective of a lizard’s hand!
A black and yellow longhorn beetle (a bore) visited an amaranth.
In the August photoessay by Nathan is a photograph of a mesquite bean cluster deformed by a gall. This is the wasp that parasitizes the midge (fly) that caused the gall.
Here is the midge that did the damage. After Nathan photographed the galls and their insects, the pictures were posted on a Facebook page, where experts from around the country discussed its identity, and these pictures are now on Bugguide, too.
Sibley staff does not know the species of grass these blossoms belong to.
Pie melon is watermelon gone wild, and the fruit is usually pale.
But sometimes it does have the coloration of a watermelon.
A cucumber beetle liked the bloom of the pie melon, which makes sense, since it lays its eggs in the family Cucurbitae, which pie melon belongs to.
A female preying mantis hung upside down on an amaranth.
Nathan noticed it had blue lips.
It was busy creating an egg case to winter over. It did not take long for it to go from white...
...to brown (only four hours).
Pygmy blue butterflies formed a puddle club on damp soil in the fields.
This orange robberfly species was also photographed at a salina (salt lake) 60 miles away, but it seems to be an unusual species for the region. Someday there will be a field guide for this interesting group of predators!
Is this a saltmarsh caterpillar
As this might be, too?
Sand sage has the typical artemisia blossoms.
Sand wasps are hard to find. Swarms of them have been seen in August by Sibley staff, but not in October.
Sanddune groundsel is only found in deep sanddunes.
A species of plant sucking bug laid eggs near a spider web.
But in closeup, was it really laying the eggs, or just walking by? And were the eggs empty?
When a shinoak acorn falls to the ground, and the ground is moist, the acorn will germinate, and the roots will emerge and go down into the ground. This may not happen often, but Nathan did find several doing so.
Six weeks grama only germinates on bare soil. Its lifespan is about six weeks.
The bloom of the six weeks grama looks like most of the other gramas.
The sleepy orange on the right can be seen with its proboscis touching the ground. Somehow it can pull moisture from the soil.
A camphor daisy had a swollen stem, which probably housed the larvae of an insect.
The tallest shinoaks on Nathan’s property have the smallest and most narrow acorns of any of the phenotypes of shinoaks there.
Thread waisted wasps catch caterpillars to feed their larvae, so they spend quite a bit of time clambering about in plants.
Nathan found a trompillo (silver-leaf nightshade) with dwarfed leaves
And blooms. He believed it might have been sprayed with a herbicide, but the herbicide did not completely do the job.
Is this a 2 year old couch’s spadefoot toad?
Tumbleweed will also have red stems late in the growing season.
There are several species of paper wasp on the Llano Estacado. This mostly red species is found with regularity.
Flies, wasps, and bees swarmed over a watermelon left outside.
This group of black wasps with orange spots may have been part of a mating swarm.
What is this species of tiny white butterfly? A skipper? We need a full time entomologist to identify all the insects the Master Naturalists photograph!
This widow’s tears has 4 blue petals. They are supposed to only have two. It also has two white petals, where it is supposed to have one.
One widow’s tears plant had several normal flowers, but one of the flowers was white and smaller than normal.
Why did the seeds in the windmill grass germinate while they were still in the seedhead panicle?