These black swallow caterpillars really love the dill and the fennel, wish I had planted even more of it earlier in the year to have some to harvest as well. The adult pictured on the grape leaf is the male black swallowtail adult, Papilio polyxenes.
That yellow adult pictured below is eastern tiger swallowtail, Papilio glaucus, I haven’t found any of their larvae yet they look quite different). It is after that vining milkweed Cynanchum laeve, aka sandvine or honeyvine, which I did make a point of allowing a few to grow in the garden although this was spotted out and about.
I also wrote and posted a guide for how to build this and posted it on my site here with my tutorials. In this blog post I’ll feature more photos, and also lay out some personal context and history.
Emplaced into the natural line of drainage east of my grandmother’s home on the hilltop while she was very young, a farm pond was dug out of the clay soil and a retaining earth berm added by the Works Progress Administration in the late 1930’s. She says my great grandfather was a great advocate of the WPA, the New Deal, and FDR’s populism. The west side of the pond was nearer the house and popular for fishing bass, perch, and bullhead catfish. The far, east edge of the pond was messier to access through either the brush or the feeding watershed, so the the continued growth of the bamboo that had been planted there maybe around 2000 by my father evaded his attention until 2019 when I started working there as Grandma’s caregiver. At this point it was a massive and well watered stand, constrained only somewhat on the east end by the regular tilling of the upslope field by lease farmers and the regular glyphosate runoff that stunted its growth most at the field’s edge.
The bamboo when crowded or cut back would stunt and come up as a short grass but when sufficiently spaced it ranged in height from 12-18 feet tall. The taller, thicker canes were suitable for makeshift catfishing poles and carved flutes. The thinner canes had a nice flexibility. The flexibility waned as it aged or dried out, and it dried out much faster after cutting. Provided one acted within a few days could often use older or senescent canes that still had some green in them without too much snapping.
These seeds came in from the Ozark Chinquapin Foundation earlier in the year. One is instructed to keep them in a bag in the fridge in lightly moist loose soil media, taking it out and aerating / stirring every week as the roots emerge. Here the roots are barely peeking out. In spring after frost they can be planted with precautions including a tree tube and a mesh staked into the ground. They are very high in protein so wildlife tend to devour them.
I still am unsure where this is going into the ground given the recent move, so holler if you covet an excellent mast crop tree and a reliable place for it. (Edit: they’ve been sent on with someone already) They prefer excellent drainage, and they’re not self fertile so need at least two in a given place. Old growth chinquapins are believed to have grown to upwards of 60 ft.
Previous year’s attempts were thwarted by not having the ground cleared, not having enough battery life to clear the ground when power tools were available (vs tick precautions this very much constrains the schedule) and then turns out the place was getting gutted for arable fields anyway, etc. There’s a coal chat pile at family property that’s the new candidate if I don’t find a place in town, although it’s overgrown with oak and they might have to clear ground to remove some debris parked up there. I’m equipped with a pole saw and a brush cutter but I’m not set up for felling trees or moving big items. Sigh.
They used to be more abundant like the other chestnut species before chestnut blight severely damaged the wild protein availability of north american forests. Chestnuts proper linger in old root stock but haven’t managed to produce viable seeds without dieback, the Ozark chinquapin had some healthy outliers with a degree of resistance to blight so the foundation has been conducting a breeding program and makes seeds available.
These lovely elder flower umbels were huge! That year was the first big crop I had but I didn’t harvest the elderberries because there was some nearby poison ivy somebody mowed and I didn’t fancy a dusting of that. 2024 ended up being my last year at the farm. Hopefully the birds would have enjoyed them when I wasn’t looking, and the new owners would appreciate them without first running them over with a brush hog.
There’s an embarrassing amount of ragweed in the backdrop, a lot fell to the wayside that summer, although I did manage to eventually cut all that down with a sharp brush cutter blade. At that time of year it was a pollen heavy task that especially required a respirator and some nettle leaf supplementation.
