Forest ranger Frans Kapteijns shares his knowledge of nature every week. Anyone can submit questions via [email protected]. This time Frans pays attention to, among other things, the small acorn borer, a fire salamander that was once thought to actually step out of the fire and a large dancing fly that is caught by the wood crab spider. Part two of this Stuifmail will be published on Sunday morning.
Poll question number 6
Which famous fruit has seeds on the outside instead of the inside?
A) Kiwi.
B) Gooseberry.
C) Strawberry.
D) Red currant.
Comments please [email protected]. The winner receives the honor and a beautiful quartet game with a lot of information about the Dutch national parks donated by the Van Gogh National Park. You will hear the answer on Sunday between eleven in the morning and noon.
Which ‘beautiful’ did I photograph?
Cora Peemen sent me a photo of a beetle. A ‘beautiful’ one, as she wrote herself. She would like to know the name. The name of the beetle in the photo is rose beetle. This beetle has light brown elytra. The head and thorax are green. The rose beetle, also called the John beetle, is one of the beetles from the leaf beetle family, such as the cockchafer. The name Johanneskever is probably based on the fact that the beetle is often seen around June 24. Nowadays they emerge earlier, even as early as mid-May. So let’s just call them rose beetle or garden beetle. The latter name fits best. Adult rose beetles eat plant parts such as flower buds, which is somewhat harmful. But the many larvae (grubs) are really harmful. They eat the roots of grasses but also other plants. You can see this ‘beautifully’ in your lawn, because the grass then becomes loose. In many cases it dies. In addition, the enemies of grubs – various birds but also moles – make a mess of your lawn when they go looking for the grubs. They then plow the lawn completely. You can combat this with biological control this link.
Correction
Last Sunday, May 17, I responded to the question from Ies Vossenberg from Boerdonk, but this turned out to be wrong. When I saw the photo she sent, I immediately thought of a small acorn borer, but Kevin Gielen doubted that. He came up with the name cherry pit beetle (I had never heard of it myself). Upon reviewing the photo, I have to agree with him one hundred percent.
Cherry stone beetles, also called stone fruit blossom beetles, are beetles from the weevil family. Female cherry stone beetles lay their eggs in the ovaries of, among others, the common bird cherry and sweet cherry. This allows the larvae to eat the soft kernels completely from the inside. Later, when the fruits fall, they burrow into the soil to pupate and overwinter.
Which mushroom is this?
Mieke van Splunder wonders which mushroom she photographed. Her photo clearly shows two fruiting bodies of the fungus Judas ear. This fungus is most commonly seen on elderberry bushes, but it can also be found on other deciduous trees or shrubs, such as lilacs. True Judas ears can be parasitic on living trees or shrubs. Then they cause the well-known white rot. Afterwards they often remain in place and then become a saprophyte. This is more common with tree fungi.
The name Judasoor is based on the Biblical story about Jesus’ betrayer Judas. That Judas probably hanged himself on an elder after betraying Jesus. His drops of blood that fell on the branches would have turned into reddish-brown fungi. By the way, it is strange that you can hang yourself from an elderberry bush, because then your body would have to weigh almost nothing. Living elderwood consists mainly of a soft, spongy core and therefore breaks down quickly. These branches are therefore very weak, even very flexible, and therefore sensitive to wind. The branches will therefore quickly break under heavy loads, for example a human body or during a storm. Israel also only knows the common elder within the elder tree family, so Judas must have hung on a different tree. Anyway, if you look at the inside of the fungus – against the light – it really looks like an ear with even a vein.
What is the name of this flower, found in a meadow along the Meuse?
Gerard van Sambee saw a beautiful flower in the meadows along the Maas. He would like to know the name of that beautiful white flower. The name of that beautiful plant is bird’s milk. Bird’s milk belongs to the bulbous plants and the asparagus family. Bird’s milk plants bloom in May and June. When it hatches, a screen-shaped cluster with ten to twenty flowers appears. You will then see that the lower flower stems are strongly elongated and thus form a screen. I think the petals are the most beautiful. They are green on the outside with a white border. What’s funny about this plant is that the flower closes in bad weather. The plant also does this in the afternoon when there is sun. In addition, bird’s milk has something special: the plant can reproduce both vegetatively and via seed. The scientific name is ornithógalum. It comes from an ancient Greek plant name meaning bird’s milk. ‘Ornithos’ stands for bird and ‘gala’ for milk.
What is the name of this salamander in the Belgian Ardennes?
Menno van Rooij was walking in the Le Herou nature park in the Belgian Ardennes at the beginning of May when he came across a beautiful salamander. He sent me a photo. The salamander he encountered is called a fire salamander. In our country you can only encounter them in South Limburg. At just under twenty centimeters, the fire salamander is one of the longest salamanders in Europe. In Europe we only know of two salamanders that are longer. The largest is the cave olm, which can even reach a length of forty centimeters. In second place is the Spanish ribbed salamander (the largest land salamander), which can reach a length of more than thirty centimeters. The fire salamander is easy to recognize because it has a stocky black body with a pattern of yellow spots or stripes. In our country there is no other salamander that looks like this. The larvae are brown-black and as they grow older they also develop light yellow spots on their legs. Fire salamanders have their mating season from the second half of August to November. A very big difference between the newts and this fire salamander is that mating takes place on land, while mating of newts takes place in the water. Newts also lay eggs. Fire salamanders do not lay eggs, but give birth to complete larvae, which are already 2.5 to three centimeters in size at birth. The menu of adult animals mainly includes earthworms and slugs. When the larvae are small, the menu includes water fleas, black and red mosquito larvae and fruit flies. The large larvae hunt for larger prey such as moles, water woodlice and small tadpoles. These salamanders owe their name to an old, persistent myth. People used to think that this animal was truly immune to fire and could even live in it. If you want to hear more about salamanders, listen to the Stuifmail podcast numbers 190 and 191.
Who is in the photo?
Alex van den Akker came across a special scene on a daisy flower. He sent me a photo. What he saw is a large dancing fly that was probably caught by a wood crab spider.
Large dance flies belong to the large fly family, but they live on other flies. The males often offer females a captured fly during the mating season. This gives the male the opportunity to initiate mating, while the female sucks the prey empty. You often see such a large dancing fly sitting on flowers where they suck the nectar. Of course that is very dangerous, because crab spiders, such as the common chameleon spider and the wood crab spider, know this. They are there waiting to put another large dancing fly on their menu.
Wood crab spiders live primarily in deciduous forests and hunt from ambush rather than building a web. Such an ambush can be a litter layer or flowers of low plants. The spiders then grab such a large dancing fly with their strong forelimbs. They then overpower the insect with a powerful venom bite. That is what can be seen in Alex’s photo.
