Earth Almanac: July/August 2008

Exquisite Moths

Sit by a meadow or garden on a summer morning and with the ascending sun will come a drowsy magic. Perhaps you’ll hear it first—a hum against the background music of cicadas and bees. There’s a blur of fairylike wings. A hummingbird! But no, it’s much too small. And yet there’s the flared tail and the body that seems feathered. The creature hovers, then darts to another flower. Everything about it seems birdlike save the head, with its long antennae. Suddenly a nectar-sucking proboscis unfurls, and you realize you are looking at an insect. It is the hummingbird clearwing moth, a species of sphinx moth that occurs almost everywhere in the nation. The wings of newly emerged adults are plum red to brownish black, but after the first flight the scales drop off, leaving translucent centers. Eggs usually hatch in about a week. Young caterpillars are yellow and green with gray or darker green stripes.

Summer Snow

From British Columbia to Alberta and south to California and Wyoming, moist, forested mountains and foothills are draped in a new blanket of white. It consists of the profuse, saucer-shaped blooms of beargrass, which tend to appear in five- to seven-year cycles and in large clumps atop stalks that may be five feet high. While the plant resembles bunchgrass, it’s actually a perennial herb related to lilies. Extremely frost tolerant, it remains green through harsh northern winters. The name beargrass may derive from the strong, bearlike odor of its blossoms or the fact that grizzlies use it to line their winter dens. Because it is relished by elk it is also called “elk grass.” Other names include fire lily (it usually sprouts from tough rhizomes in the wake of a moderate forest fires within a year) and Indian basket (western tribes wove its leaves into baskets, clothes, and even watertight vessels). Look for beargrass in cool forests of spruce, fir, larch, and whitebark pine.