With Saturday’s beautiful spring weather, I went to the White Clay Creek Preserve in southern Chester County, just a mile or so from the Delaware state border. I surveyed wildflowers, saw a fox, trees cut by beavers, great blue heron, orioles, warblers, and more freshwater clams. I focused my studies for the day on the natural pollinators of one of the most striking and abundant wildflowers, Jacob’s Ladder (Polemonium reptans POLEMONIACEAE). Sitting in the middle of a patch of the bright blue blooms, just a few feet from the flowing creek, I watched the different flying insects come and go as they visited individual flowers.
Below, a patch of bright violet-blue Jacob’s ladder (Polemonium reptans) with a few visible spring beauty (Claytonia virignica) flowers mixed in. Patches like this in the sunlight were very busy with pollinator visits.
Below, a Halictid sweat bee, Augochlora pura, with copper-green metallic thorax and visible pollen on the hind tibia. This bee is resting on a leaflet of Jacob’s ladder. Moments later it burrowed into the soft decomposing wood seen two images below.
A different bee species (this is not Augochlora) visiting a Claytonia flower –
Castings of Augochlora pura excavating in rotting wood to carve out larval cells for oviposition and larval development.
Sketching Jacob’s ladder leaves, I used the strong sun shadows to provide outlines for leaf proportions and placement.
