A black-, orange- and white-checkered moth walked in...

...and decided to stay! Thus begins the story of the Ailanthus Webworm Moth and its excellent adventure. (This is a companion piece to an earlier post on the Common Buttonbush.) While Matty and I were sketching the Buttonbush flowers along the Little Miami River, we noticed a small black-, orange- and white-checkered insect was on a lot of the blossoms...

Ailanthus Webworm Moths on a Buttonbush Inflorescence
These two dapper moths look like they are tiptoeing through the styles of each tiny flower. 

Ailanthus Webworm Moth
I'd seen the bug before, but had never studied it, so when we got home, I got out my "Kaufman Field Guide to Insects of North America," by Kenn Kaufman, and sure enough, there it was, an Ailanthus Webworm Moth (Atteva aurea), a day-flying moth that pollinates a lot of flowers as it visits them to sip nectar.

An Ailanthus Webworm Moth clings to the underside of a Swamp Milkweed flower along the Little Miami River near Spring Valley Wildlife Area. 

Tree of Heaven
This moth, which looks like a long skinny beetle when seen from a distance, is "sort of" a native to the United States (and here is where its excellent adventure kicks in). The lovely little moth got brave one day and jumped host plants. Originally, the moth was native to southern Florida and Central and South American, where its host plant, the Paradise Tree grew, but one day, it found a Tree of Heaven (Ailanthus altissima), which is closely related to the Paradise Tree, and decided to live on it. The Tree of Heaven is not native to the United States. It's from China, but it was introduced to the U.S. in the 1700s.  Since then, it has spread across the country, and the Ailanthus Webworm Moth moved along with it. (Click here for a detailed history of the Tree of Heaven in the United States and control strategies to prevent its spread.)

The Ailanthus Webworm Moth originally was native to southern Florida, but it followed the Tree of Heaven, an invasive introduced from China in the 1700s, as it spread across the nation.

The Tree of Heaven looks a lot like our native Staghorn Sumac (Rhus typhina), which produces seeds beneficial to the birds. There are several ways to tell the two trees apart. The easiest is the Tree of Heaven has smooth leaflets that turn yellow in autumn, while Staghorn Sumac has serrated leaves and turns bright red. Click here for an earlier post on Staghorn Sumac to see what it looks like in the fall, and learn about how it helps birds get through deep winter.  Click here for a pdf titled, "Invasives Strike Force Plant Guide, 2012," from the New York-New Jersey Trail Conference. This guide teaches you how to spot many invasive trees and tell them apart from native look-alikes.

An Ailanthus Webworm Moth, an early instar Monarch caterpillar, and a Monarch butterfly all share a Swamp Milkweed flower. The larvae of the Ailanthus Webworm Moth only eats Tree of Paradise leaves, but the adult moths are not picky and pollinate many types of flowers. 

One more thing...
The Tree of Heaven is famous for its starring role in "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn," by Betty Smith. Click here for a link to a critical essay on the symbols in the book, including the Tree of Paradise described in the first chapter, where the tree was a metaphor for all the immigrants coming into New York City during the 1700s and 1800s.


Additional references
For more information on the Ailanthus Webworm Moth, click here for "Moths of Ohio Field Guide," by David J. Horn, Ph.D; Ohio Department of Natural Resources, Division of Wildlife, or here for an interesting post on the blog "MOBugs; Missouri's Majority."

(I really enjoyed spending the day sketching with Matty (8-7-2015) at the Spring Valley Wildlife Area. Getting out in the wild with pencil and paper is relaxing and helps cement memories. The next day, I drove out with my camera to get photos. Beauty was everywhere...)

Common Buttonbush along the Little Miami River...

A few weeks ago Matty and I went up to Spring Valley Wildlife Area along the Little Miami River with our sketchbooks. We spent the afternoon rambling about, sketching whatever we saw. When we came across a stand of Common Buttonbush (Cephalanthus occidentalis), we stopped and studied the tree and its blossoms, noting that the leaves occurred in whorls of three, and the "honey bell" was made of hundreds of tiny blossoms...

Common Buttonbush flower ball, also called a honey bell, dangles from a stem and looks a lot like a firework display, a starburst...or in a less romantic view, a pin cushion! 

Common Buttonbush is native to Ohio. It loves water and swampy areas, and true to form, we found a large colony hugging the edge of the lake and another in a low boggy area beside the lake, just steps from the Little Miami River. The flower balls were intensely fragrant, which is where it gets its nickname "honey bell" or "honey-ball," and butterflies were everywhere...

A female dark morph Eastern Tiger Swallowtail (Papilio glaucus) nectars on a Buttonbush flower-ball (inflorescence). The butterfly uses its proboscis to sip nectar from each tiny perfect flower and pollinates the florets in the process. 

Two Silver-spotted Skippers (Epargyreus clarus) cling to the pin cushion for a sip of nectar as well. The long, projecting styles of each perfect flower in the inflorescence create the pin-like, starburst look.

The cranberry red stems of a Common Buttonbush shrub are almost as striking as its flowers. Its leaves have both a three-stemmed whorled arrangement (often near the flower) and an opposite arrangement elsewhere on the shrub.

Before the inflorescence bursts open, the tiny flowers (florets) are encased in tight mint-green buds (sepals). Here the flowers are just starting to open, but you can still see remnants of some of the buds and the light-green color.

After the flower petals have fallen away, little ball-shaped seed heads remain. Some will hold on through the autumn and winter. Each tiny flower in the inflorescence produces two seeds called nutlets. Often buttonbush trees grow at the edge of ponds, lakes, streams and rivers (or even in the water), so when the nutlets ripen and tumble out, they float and are dispersed by the currents. Wood Ducks, Mallards, teal, and other waterfowl like to eat the nutlets.  

For more information on the Common Buttonbush, including its historical use as a quinine substitute for malaria, look in "The Book of Swamp and Bog; Trees, Shrubs, and Wildflowers of Eastern Freshwater Wetlands," by John Eastman, pgs 34-37. For an online resource, click here for a link to The Hilton Pond Center's website, or here for the Ohio Department of Natural Resources Division of Forestry website.

What is an inflorescence?
When you look closely at a Buttonbush flower you'll notice it's a collection of hundreds of tiny flowers, called florets. Each one of the florets in the collection is a "perfect flower," which means it has a pistil (stigma, style and ovary) and stamens (anther and filament). The collection or grouping of florets is called an inflorescence. Common flowers with inflorescences are sunflowers and all the flowers in the daisy family. Click here for a past post called "Hummingbirds and sunflowers" that describes an inflorescence in more detail.