Farmland Insect Flowers

     Early in September, several kinds of flowering plants commonly bloom along roadsides, moist ditches, hedgerows, and in uncultivated corners of fields and pastures and abandoned fields and meadows in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania farmland, as throughout much of the eastern United States.  All these lovely blooms in those human-made habitats draw attractive and interesting insects that sip sugary nectar from the blossoms, pollinating the flowers in the process; a win-win situation, as most of them are in nature.  For over an hour one warm, sunny afternoon in the beginning of this September, I saw several kinds of insects visiting pink red clover flowers and yellow goldenrod and wingstem blossoms in a corner of a field, and orange spotted jewelweed blooms, white boneset flowers, pink ironweed blooms and blue great lobelia blossoms in a moist roadside ditch bordering that field corner.  Those beautiful flowers and intriguing insects represented life in abundance where one doesn't expect to find it.
     Each flower head on red clover plants has several tiny florets in a clump.  Red clovers begin to bloom by the end of May and through summer into autumn.  A variety of pretty butterfly species sip nectar from red clover blooms, particularly cabbage white and yellow sulphur butterflies.
     Multitudes of tiny blooms on pointing goldenrod "fingers" begin to blossom toward the end of August.  Goldenrod flowers attract numerous digger wasps, which have dark heads and thoraxes and rusty-red abdomens.  Digger wasp larvae consume June beetle larvae in the ground, pupate there and emerge from the soil as attractive adult wasps.
     Wingstem stalks grow up to six feet high, have drooping, yellow petals on each bloom and small ridges on their stems.  Bumble, carpenter and honey bees, digger wasps and several kinds of butterflies visit wingstem blossoms.
     Reaching a peak of blooming early in September, the overwhelmingly abundant spotted jewelweed blossoms grow on bush-like plants that reach four feet tall.  Each flower is shaped like a one-inch cornucopia and dangles from a long stem like jewelry.  Jewelweed blossoms are visited mostly by bumble and honey bees that push their way into the blooms to sip nectar.
     Jewelweeds are also called touch-me-nots because their small, green seed pods spring open when touched by animals and people, which shoots their seeds a few feet from the parent plants.  Seeds not eaten by mice and small birds sprout the next spring.
     Each boneset plant bears several flattened clumps of tiny blooms.  Those flowers attract digger wasps, and smaller kinds of butterflies, including skippers and pearl crescents.
     Ironweed grows up to five feet tall and has several blooms in August and September.  A variety of attractive butterflies, including monarchs and tiger swallowtails, flutter among these flowers and land on them to ingest nectar.    
     Great lobelias have blooms on two-foot tall stems.  Bumble bees are the insects most likely to enter them to consume nectar.
     But bees and butterflies that visit the flowers of these plants are not the only members of their vast class of animals to feed on flowering plants in human-made fields and meadows late in summer and into fall.  A small variety of grasshoppers, plus field crickets and mole crickets also get sustenance from those plants.
     While watching the butterflies and bees fluttering and buzzing among the flowers, I also noticed several grasshoppers jumping among the tops of the green foliage of those blooming plants, and grasses.  They were there to ingest that foliage.
     Watching even closer, I saw a few dark field crickets hopping over the ground among the bases of the same plants, where they fed on the living foliage.  And as I watched bees, butterflies, grasshoppers and crickets, I heard the seemingly unending, measured chirping of a mole cricket in his shallow burrow in a damp part of the roadside ditch.  Mole crickets are built like moles with shovel-like front legs and small back legs.  They eat the roots of plants that hang in their tunnels.
     It is always amazing to me how much lovely nature is in human-made habitats created to serve human needs.  Those habitats are quickly populated by adaptable plants and animals, to their benefit in having homes, and our benefit in enjoying the presence of those adaptable, wonderful living beings.