[Photos] Garden macros - Anoplognathus sp.

[moonvoice]

It's that time of year again. Actually it's just past that time of year again. But it's the time of year when all the jewel/Christmas beetles come out! I love these Anoplognathus and we had a really bad year for them last year, so I worried that something about my garden (or the weather) was killing them off. But this year they came back with a vengeance, and there's just been heaps of them. :D







And procreating to make a ton of new baby Anoplognathus!









Despite their brightness up close, they actually camouflage really well.

Comments

[tree]

beetle porn!

*cough*

i mean, these are beautiful.

[moonvoice]

Heh, beetle porn! Every time I see them, a little 'bow chicka wow wow' song starts up in my head. Especially when there's like 5 pairs *on the same branch* - like guys can you keep your enthusiastic orgy-porn to a minimum please? Lol.

[venturous]

I hope these are benign beetles - we have someting called the Emerald Ash Borer that is destroying great swaths of timber in the MidAtlantic and Midwest. but its pretty, ;-(

edit: sorry!! I forgot to RAVE about how gorgeous these pics are. so beautiful and excellent focus control.

[moonvoice]

These are fine. Most beetles are! I mean, most beetles in their native habitat, with native plants, don't destroy great swathes of anything. My Acacias are bigger and happier than ever, and there's never enough of them to do any damage - which is generally how beetles work (with exceptions).

Even your feral Emerald Ash Borer is completely fine in its native habitat (Asia) - feral creatures do a shocking amount of damage, unfortunately.

[venturous]

**nods**
as a nature lover I have run into many 'weed warriors' and others determined to eradicate invasive species. As I see us humans as the ultimate invasive, doing the most damage to habitats, I've always come down on the side of nature's opportunism: if the snakehead fish is successful now that its released in the Potomac river, half a world away from it's origins, well, so be it - the world has now changed. There was no way to call it back - the force of life, in the form of successful snakehead reproduction, is unstoppable. so, now we have snakehead tournaments, and it's a delicious fish. there is no going back.

where i grew up purple loosestrife is an invasive plant. Since I moved away, that and another plant, phragmites grass, have transformed the landscape. for good: loosestrife adds spectacular color to the roadside wildflowers, complementing blue chicory, orange day lily, and white queen anns lace in a fabulous array. for ill: phragmites, a tall cane grass that spreads by runners, has obliterated the native cattails, and blocks the view of our many canals and marshes.

so wonderful to see an acacia blossom - I have always loved that name, and once declared I'd name a daughter Acacia, after an icebreaker ship I got to ride on!

[moonvoice]

I wonder how you'd feel about feral animals in Australia, which has the highest extinction rate in the world almost entirely because of invasives. We don't have many 'it changed thing for the better' stories here. We have a lot of 'we've lost 40 species this year and bumped another 30 onto the Crit. Endangered list oh and we have more foxes in the single city of Melbourne than in the entirety of the United Kingdom, heh.

[silverjackal]

Who needs emeralds when you have these living beauties? They are very striking, thank you for sharing them.