Geek out with me about critters and plants on a mountaintop in Virginia. I’ll share what I’m learning as I try to bring native plants back on 200 acres of old farmland and tell stories from my encounters on the mountain.

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Want to read it first? (I don’t blame you.)

In this issue

• Book swag and blurbs

• Field notes: creepy hoppy stompy crushy

• Signs of life: late bloomers

• Recommended listening

• Can you ID these seeds?

• The Official Mountain Poodle

Free books! and a poodle!

There’s a book giveaway afoot. My publisher is holding a sweepstakes. Anyone can enter—there is no purchase required!

Twenty-five people will win:

• an advance copy of the book

• an awesome Bad Naturalist/mountain poodle tote bag (made of recycled cotton), and

Everyone who enters will receive:

• exclusive access to my Bad Naturalist Survival Guide list of “essential” tools, which is not published anywhere else.

ENTER HERE TO WIN!

Bad Naturalist The Book is endorsed by native plant mavens

Doug Tallamy, author, scientist, and founder of the Homegrown National Park movement, says:

Benjamin Vogt, author and native plant guru of the Midwest, says:

Just a reminder that the book is officially available for pre-order. You can order it from your favorite retail site and it will be delivered to you once it’s published. Why pre-order? Pre-orders are considered in “the biz” to be an early indicator of a book’s potential life in the world, and they help bookstores decide how many copies to stock.

You can PRE-ORDER HERE😊

You can ENTER THE SWEEPSTAKES HERE 🐩🐩

Okay—enough about my book!

On to the mountain…

Field notes: creepy hoppy stompy crushy

Say hello to my little friend, the spotted lanternfly. If you’re in the northeast, you’ve probably heard of it. If you’re in the southeast, get ready, because it’s headed your way. If you’re west of here, it may still be in your future. This is an invasive insect that loves to eat about 100 species of plants. It can kill or ruin grape vines and black walnut and willow saplings. It’s less likely to kill other trees it attacks, but it will weaken them, so if they’re stressed, say, by drought or other diseases, the lanternfly could be the last straw.

Some people think they’re beautiful. I don’t. But my opinion may be colored by the damage they can do and the sheer annoyance factor. In addition to drinking plant sap, and, in various stages of life, eating a tree’s bark, they secrete a sweet nectar that can coat leaves and eventually darkens into a black mold, preventing photosynthesis (and ruining your patio chairs). This nectar attracts stinging insects. I watched a yellow jacket approach a lanternfly. I was hoping it would attack, but of course it didn’t. It crawled all over the insect drinking the lanternfly’s nectar, and then flew off. I watched large spiders ignore the lanternfly completely.

Like most invasive species, the insect has no natural predators in its new environment. For one thing, it tastes bad because it gets its flavor from its primary host, the ailanthus tree, or tree of heaven—which is also invasive. I’ve been working on eliminating the ailanthus from the meadow for 3 years now. Even if I succeed on the mountain, the tree lines the highway; it’s everywhere.

One study showed that an invasive species of praying mantis and some chickens will eat the lanternfly. If the lanternfly doesn’t have a chance to dine on the ailanthus, which imparts protective toxins to the insect much like milkweed and monarchs, its flavor may be more palatable to local wildlife. (Yet another reason to get rid of your ailanthus trees.) But until something comes along that can take the lanternfly down in numbers, we’re going to be inundated with the creatures. So, if you see them, stomp away.

I’ve read that lanternflies will nibble on milkweed, not knowing that it will kill them. There is a lot of milkweed on the mountain, so I hope this is true.

This time of year, the lanternfly is laying eggs. If you find any egg cases, destroy them. They look like flat beige splotches a few inches long. I found egg cases on the windows of my house that I initially mistook for errant smudges of paint.

Signs of Life: The Good News

The good news is, I’m sticking with good news for the rest of this issue. There is plenty of it. (Sometimes I need to remind myself of this.)

The good news: the late bloomers have arrived

Summer flowers may be gone, but on the mountain, September brings loads of meadow color, along with a welcome chill in the air.

During a recent walk on the mountain, my friend Beth found a tiny plant I’d never seen here before. It was growing amid tall hay grasses at the edge of a path. It was an orchid called “ladies tresses.” Its genus is spiranthes, but I’m not sure of the species. There are so many species—spring ladies tresses, northeastern, Atlantic, northern slender, little ladies tresses, and on and on—and they can be difficult to differentiate. Anyone want to venture a guess?

The field where the orchid was found had been burned in early 2023. Prescribed fire is one tool that can help delicate native plants like this return to the meadow, and maybe this orchid is proof that it worked. Ladies tresses can continue to flower until the first frost, so if I’m lucky, maybe I’ll find more of them. But they are tiny—the stem pictured here is only a few inches long.

Field thistle

A couple of weeks later, I was walking with my friend Amy, and she pointed out the large tree-shaped thistles growing in the meadow. I thought they were invasive nodding thistles, but they aren’t—although we have plenty of the latter, those have finished flowering. The native field thistle is in bloom now. The field thistle’s flowers sit more upright than those of the nodding thistle, its leaves have white undersides, and its stems are not prickly. There were native pollinators all over these plants.

Mellow yellow

Yellow crownbeard is flowering…everywhere…

Yellow crownbeard, over hill and dale…

Plus, there’s hairy aster:

And ironweed:

Recommended Listening

The Field Guides

The Field Guides is an entertaining and information-packed podcast that’s a lot like tagging along on a hike with the three hosts, guys whose engaging banter reflects their various areas of expertise, including botany, biology, and conservation. Each well-researched episode focuses on a different species and includes myths vs facts, genetics, breeding and young, diet, conservation status, and lots of interesting tidbits. In a two-parter about timber rattlesnakes, they revealed a fun statistic: most people bitten by rattlesnakes are drunk young men. (Can’t imagine why…) They’ve covered a range of plants like jewelweed, black walnut, and the American chestnut; and wildlife as diverse as fishers, Florida panthers, and daddy longlegs.

Readers: can you name the plant this seed comes from?

I pulled these seeds off of Cleo’s floof* after a walk. They’re tiny, about a millimeter in length. Any guesses?

*floof = hair on top of poodle’s head

Remember to tell me what you’re seeing in your area. Plants flowering? Spotted lanternflies? Interesting spiders?

What books and podcasts are you reading or listening to?

Official Mountain Poodle

Queen of the Crownbeard (so named for the crownbeard seeds that were also stuck in her floof).

Now’s a good time to subscribe for more mountain discoveries, book news, and the requisite poodle photos.

Thanks for joining me on the mountain!

Until next month—

Paula W.

Bad Naturalist: One Woman’s Ecological Education on a Wild Virginia Mountaintop

Coming January 7, 2025 from Timber Press/Hachette Book Group

Remember, you can…

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