FLOWERS AND INSECTS IN LATE-SUMMER FIELDS, MEADOWS AND ROADSIDES

      In August and September of 2024, while driving through Lancaster County, Pennsylvania farmland, I saw several alfalfa and red clover hay fields, abandoned, overgrown meadows and roadside edges populated with several kinds of lovely flowering plants and intriguing insects.  All those species of adaptable life flourish through summer and into autumn in those human-made habitats called croplands.

     The alfalfa fields and red clover fields were spangled with cabbage white butterflies, yellow clearwing butterflies, bumble bees and honey bees, all sipping nectar from alfalfa and clover blossoms.  And there were other kinds of butterflies in those hayfields, including at least a few each of monarchs, swallowtails, fritillaries, red admirals and skippers.  

     Many local meadows have been abandoned because of a reduced milk business.  Some of those pastures had been plowed and planted to corn and soybeans.  Others were planted with deciduous trees, which caused succeeding habitats of young trees and tall grass to older trees, which provide homes for several kinds of wild animal life.  But other meadows were just let go, allowing seeds of flowering plants to blow in on the wind, sprout and produce nectar-producing blooms.  

     One deserted meadow I visited in late August was a mixed jungle of spotted jewelweed with orange blooms in moist parts of that pasture, five-foot-tall ironweed with hot-pink blossoms and equally-high Canada goldenrod with innumerable, tiny golden flowers.  What a lovely color combination those blooms created.  The beautiful ironweed and goldenrod blossoms were buzzing with bees, digger wasps, skipper butterflies and other types of butterflies, including striking monarchs and red admirals, all sipping sugary nectar.  There are other meadows in Lancaster County like this one, and each one has a community of lovely blossoms and insects.

     Early in September, I noticed large patches of brown knapweed's pretty lavender-pink flowers in some pastures and along certain farmland roadsides.  Stopping to admire the beauty of those blossoms, I quickly noticed several kinds of insects among them.  Grasshoppers of a few kinds were eating the grasses and other plants among those lovely blooms.  The usual multitudes of cabbage whites and yellow clearwings, honey bees and bumble bees were sipping nectar from knapweed blossoms, and the lovely flowers of red clovers.  And I also saw a couple of monarch butterflies, several skipper butterflies of a few species, and scores of meadow fritillary butterflies among those same flowers in hay fields and along rural roads.  

     Skippers and fritillaries dominate some roadside and meadow plants in early September.  These butterflies, at times, are the show in those built habitats late in summer.  Skippers as a group are small butterflies, with furry bodies and large, dark, appealing eyes.  Most of them are mostly brownish, which camouflages them, with some orange or yellow trim.  They hold their two front wings upright when at rest, but their two back wings are held flat when skippers are perched.  Their wings make them look like tiny jet planes.  

     Skippers have a quick, darting flight, which gives them their name.  Their small size, swift flight and wing structure identifies them.  

     Though fields, meadows and roadsides are human-made habitats in cultivated croplands, these adaptable, flowering plants, and the insects that depend on them for food, are abundant in some of those habitats.  Those life forms have homes, and we benefit from the beauties and intrigues of them, often close to home or while riding or walking through farmland.  

 

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