White Clover and Fireflies

     Short-grass lawns are widespread and abundant human-made habitats in much of the United States.  Those regularly cut lawns of only a couple inches tall provide little food and cover to wildlife and seem barren.  But, besides the planted grass, two forms of life are overwhelmingly and obviously abundant on many mowed lawns- white clover and fireflies.  Together, they add much beauty and entertainment to those lawns, particularly in July.       
     Originally from Eurasia, the great abundance of white blossoms on white clover plants turn many lawns silver, because of regular lawn mowing.  Cutting clover flowers off encourages the plants to grow new blooms, week after week, all summer, and into autumn.
     Fireflies inhabit most every habitat in the eastern United States.  As larvae, these abundant native beetles inhabit soil at the plant roots level in woods, fields and lawns, where they prey on tiny snails, slugs and other invertebrates in the ground.
     And most every dusk from the third week of June until the end of July, with a peak of abundance early in July, hordes of adult, winged male fireflies crawl up grass stems and white clover plants and launch themselves into the air to find females to mate with.  They hover like thousands of tiny helicopters and flash their cold, abdominal lights to females still in the grass and clover, then fly a little higher and flash again and again.  Multitudes of blinking male fireflies create a magical, fantasy-land in the dark of July nights in woods, fields and lawns.  
     Lawns sprinkled liberally with white clover flowers are also lively with honey bees, bumble bees and other kinds of insects that buzz from blossom to blossom to sip the sugary nectar of those blooms.  Regular mowing encourages clover plants to produce new flowers every week, which provides insects with a continuous source of nectar all summer and into autumn.
     Many people benefit from fireflies and white clover on short-grass lawns.  The fireflies provide hours of intriguing beauty and white clover blooms give us beauty, and honey, through the work of female worker honey bees.  The bees sip nectar from clover blossoms and swallow it into a special stomach that changes it to honey as they fly back to their home in a tree hollow or hive.  Each bee regurgitates that honey into a waxy cell where it is stored to feed the queen bee, larvae and drones, and as food for overwintering worker females.  Bee keepers, however, extract and sell some of that stored honey, including white clover honey, and/or consume it themselves.
     The six-sided, wax cells to store honey and raise larvae, by the way, are made from honey worker bees ate and "sweated" through their bodies.  They scrape the wax off themselves to shape the cells.  And scientists discovered that six sides are the strongest shape, and most efficient use of space in nature.    
     Nature is resilient.  Even short-grass lawns are not barren of life.  White clover and fireflies live in that human-made habitat in overwhelming abundance.  And other kinds of small plants and animals reside there as well.  Some lawns are two-inch-tall "jungles" of life. 
     Lawns cover many thousands of acres in the United States.  They, and other human-made habitats, might appear barren at first, but they are not lifeless.  To me, life in built environments that serve people are inspiring because those living beings' adaptations, including multitudes of white clovers and fireflies, allow them to thrive in human-disturbed places, which increases that lifes' populations.  Built habitats are interesting to me because of the adaptable life in them; life that has a future because it can adjust to less than ideal conditions.