The Wildflower Mystery (read info text for story)

 

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My best photos (mostly not yet on Flickr) are here: www.lacerta-bilineata.com/ticino-best-photos-of-southern-...

 

THE STORY BEHIND THE PHOTO:

The above photo - a field poppy (Papaver rhoeas) in full bloom - is a rare exception for me, because I normally don't photograph flowers. Not because I don't like them; I assure you I hold no grudge against the most colorful emissaries of the plant kingdom, nor do I have floral allergies of any sort - it's just that I'm no good at it. Believe me, I've tried, and the results were not pretty.

 

I've never found out why; I adore the magnificent flower photos I encounter here on Flickr and have attempted to replicate their style many times, but it never worked. With animals I tend to know what to focus on - usually the eyes - and have at least a vague idea how to compose a shot, but with flowers I'm at a loss.

 

Unlike the accomplished floral compositions of the photographers I admire so much, all my efforts looked lifeless and dull, and the poor subjects in my photos ended up with about as much charm as a salad in fast food restaurant (I'm talking about the one they actually serve you - not the nice one they've photographed for the menu ;-).

 

Now the photo above is the first flower shot of mine that I like, even though some of you might think it is a bit a of cheat, since there is also a honeybee (Apis mellifera) visible in it. But in terms of mere percentages, there's much more poppy per-square-inch-of-photo present than bee, so to me it counts as flower photography (and my lawyer agrees ;-).

 

The main reason why I posted it here, however, happens to be another one, namely that it was incredibly hard earned. And I'm not referring to the photo itself but the subject in it: the poppy - or rather the poppies. You have no idea how much it took until I finally had a few of those gorgeous flowers blooming in my garden.

 

Some of you might recall that with my last photo, I told you about my remodeling of the garden and how I scattered seeds of wildflowers - including poppies - all over the premises to increase biodiversity. I might have given the impression that it was all smooth sailing, and that everything went just as I had hoped it would, but that isn't exactly how it happened.

 

In truth, it was a hard-fought battle against an almost invincible army of adversaries that tried to prevent my intended wildflower meadow for my beloved "creepy crawlies" at almost every step of the way. But I have to start at the beginning.

 

After I had removed the old lawn and emptied a big bag full of seeds all over the upper part of the garden, I regularly went to check on their "progress" - of which there was, unsurprisingly, none. Now I'm not a complete idiot, and I didn't expect my wildflowers to sprout right away as if they were on steroids - after all it was still February and very cold - but what struck me was that I soon didn't even see most of the seeds anymore. No matter how hard I looked - and I even dug a little in the ground - most of them seemed to have mysteriously vanished.

 

It didn't take me long to identify the likely suspects: a gang of siskins (Spinus spinus) had appeared in the neighborhood a while ago, and I actually had caught them red-handed (or rather red-beaked) when they were picking around on the ground where I had removed the lawn. So I went into the gardening center and bought a new "wildflower mix" - along with a huge bag of sunflower seeds.

 

This is how I intended to save my flowering paradise: I would just offer the siskins enough calorie-rich delicacies as an alternative to the meager wildflower seeds for as long as it took the latter to sprout. The idea was genius - or so I thought. Unfortunately I hadn't taken into account the competitive, greedy nature of my avian adversaries.

 

Once I had put a bunch of sunflower seeds on the tree trunk that serves as my "bird buffet", it didn't take long until the hungry flock arrived. Now the first thing you have to know about siskins is this: they really, and I mean REALLY don't like to share their food. Not with any other bird species, nor with their own kind.

 

The leader of the gang, a tiny - but ferocious - female immediately took possession of the tree trunk, and anyone attempting to join in the feast got chased away with a vengeance. The remaining gang members sat in the fig tree while they had to wait their turn at the buffet, which they didn't like one bit. And that's the second thing you have to know about siskins: patience is not their strong suit, and so they immediately got bored - and started looking around for other sources of food.

 

And guess where they found it? Exactly: within two minutes most of the rowdy bunch had fluttered onto the ground and started picking away my beautiful future wildflower meadow, one seed at a time. After all, who doesn't like a little appetizer before the main course - right?

 

It was a disaster. In my desperation, I didn't know anything better to do than opening and shutting the living room window loudly - which worked: the feathered little gangsters fled the crime scene immediately. So this became my new strategy: I sat near the window with my laptop all day (which I'm apt to do during the colder season anyway), and whenever I saw the siskins starting to veer away from the "official" buffet, I used this "opening-shutting" tactic to scare them back where they belonged.

 

Over the following days, the siskins and I continued this lovely routine: whenever the first bird showed up near the wildflower seeds: "BANG"! went my window. Unfortunately, the intervals between these bangs got increasingly shorter, because the bird buffet and the loud flock of siskins attracted other birds - as well as more siskins - to my garden.

 

This was obviously not what I had intended at all! Now pretty much the whole feathered neighborhood sat in my fig tree, impatiently waiting until the next ravenous little bird at the buffet had finally had its fill and vacated the tree trunk, and to pass the time the hungry onlookers would inevitably start searching for other delicacies in my garden.

 

It got to the point - and this is the sad truth - where I opened and shut the window almost every five minutes! I can only imagine what my neighbors thought (although they're used to many weird, mostly garden-related activities from me and probably stopped wondering ;-), not to mention any unsuspecting tourists passing my house, who must have believed it was haunted by a poltergeist. :-)

 

Then, one day, the whole flock of Spinus spinus was gone - just as they had appeared out of nowhere a few weeks earlier, they'd now left without prior notice, presumably to pursue their seed-stealing activities further south and bully some other poor wanna-be gardener. "Problem solved!" I thought, and opened a bottle of champagne (well, it was just a beer, but you get the idea ;-)

 

Once the siskins were gone, the other birds co-existed much more peacefully around the tree trunk/buffet, and I was soon able to reduce my window-shutting duties to a minimum. As temperatures in March gradually got warmer, I expected the first tiny wildflower saplings to emerge from the ground - but still nothing happened. I was getting worried, so I went to investigate. A close inspection of the ground led to a shocking surprise: there was no trace of the seeds.

 

I couldn't believe it. I had no explanation; by now I was sure it couldn't have been the birds - so who was secretly sabotaging my future wildflower meadow? Was it my neighbors? Had I finally gone too far with my window-banging after all my previous, highly suspicious "creepy-crawly-furthering" activities over the years?

 

I tried to imagine them all coming together in my garden during the night as I was sleeping, a group of men and women mostly in their late 80s and 90s (I'm by far the youngest inhabitant of our village), armed with tiny tweezers to pluck the seeds out of the ground, to punish me for disturbing the quiet in our peaceful community. It just didn't make any sense (though I didn't rule it out completely ;-)

 

I was at my wits end, but I'm stubborn as hell: I had made up my mind to have a wildflower meadow, and I would will it into being - regardless of the costs. So I went into the gardening center once more to purchase yet another "wildflower mix", or rather several (I bought three bags, which theoretically should have provided enough seeds to turn the entire area around our village into a blooming paradise ;-).

 

I scattered the content of one bag in the garden as I had done before, but now I went to check on the seeds every day. And each time I checked, they had become fewer - there could be no doubt about it. It was truly puzzling: whoever the thieves were, they kept their identity hidden; I even went into the garden at night several times with a flashlight, but I never saw any small rodents or other possible suspects.

 

Then, one day in late March, as I was closely scanning the ground, I noticed something peculiar: a particularly large seed appeared to be moving all by itself across the dark earth. Imagine my disbelief: the thought that the seeds themselves were leaving my garden of their own volition had obviously never crossed my mind! What an insult - was my garden so horrible that the wildflower seeds had sprouted legs just to flee to a place that was more suitable to their taste?

 

I immediately went on my knees to further investigate this new mystery, which - as some of you with more gardening experience than me might have already guessed - revealed itself to be no shocking new step in plant evolution, nor any mystery at all: it was an ANT that was carrying the seed! And now that my eyes and brain had become adapted to recognizing the little bugger, I realized he wasn't alone: they were everywhere! And many of them were carrying seeds!

 

As I watched them carrying the loot - my poor wildflower meadow - away to their colony, all the pieces finally started to fall into place. The ants were hard to make out against the dark ground (and admittedly my eyes aren't the best), which is probably why I hadn't seen them, but it also had been raining most of the time for the past few weeks, and they had to have carried out their raids during the short dry spells or perhaps even at night when I wasn't in the garden.

 

Just to make sure you don't think I'm a complete ignoramus: it's not that I wasn't aware that several species of ants were living in my garden, but when I had removed the lawn it had been February and still winter, so the ants were deep under ground. And they'd never been on my list of suspects in the first place, because I'd had no idea ants even collected seeds!

 

I'd always thought the kinds of ants living in Switzerland were predators and preferred a largely carnivore diet (with the occasional sip of honeydew or other sugary treats for dessert if the opportunity arose) - which in the north, where I grew up, is largely true. But of the many ant varieties present in Ticino - which lies on the southern side of the Alps - one in particular has specialized in foraging for seeds.

 

A search on the internet quickly educated me on the matter: my tormentors were "harvester ants" of the Messor structor species; apparently I had a so called "super-colony" of them in my garden, and the more I read about them, the more fascinated - and shocked - I became.

 

These ants build gigantic underground colonies (on the surface only tiny mounds of earth or sand around the entry hole are visible) and store the foraged seeds in huge chambers: but not before cutting the seeds' appendages to prevent germination! Isn't that pure genius? But my greatest shock came when I read that their storing chambers can hold up to 2 kg of seeds or more! One wildflower mix from the store consisted of perhaps half a kilo (if even that): I needed more and bigger bags!

 

And as I found out, these Messor fellas aren't just thieves, they're also bakers - and I'm not kidding you! They chew the seeds into a paste-like substance that is called "ant-bread" which is their staple food (and sorry: whoever makes bread is a baker in my book, regardless whether they actually "bake" the bread or not ;-)

 

These tiny, bread-loving thieves had stolen the seeds from right under my nose, and perhaps they had already started doing so back in the siskin days, whenever temperatures were warm enough for them to venture out. They'd completely outmaneuvered me, and I felt about as foolish as Donald Duck trying to defend his pick-nick against an army of ants in the old Disney cartoon. But at least I now had finally managed to solve the mystery of the disappearing flower seeds.

 

In the end, I found a solution to my ant problem. I simply went to the gardening center once again and bought a half dozen more bags of wildflower mixes, all of which I emptied into my garden. It wasn't the most sophisticated strategy, but it worked.

 

Once the ants had filled their pantries to capacity - and I imagined they were now able to gorge themselves on 10-course menus of ant-bread every day - there were still enough seeds left that my wildflower meadow eventually started to grow.

 

In June, the cornflowers, ox-eye daisies - and of course: the field poppies - opened their buds, and my garden exploded with the most gorgeous colors. And thus, dear readers, I managed to get the above photo ;-)

 

As always, many thanks for reading and commenting: have a great start into the new week everyone! ❤🙏😊

 

P.S. I documented the transformation of my garden here, the photos of the blooming wildflower meadow are towards the end of the post: www.lacerta-bilineata.com/post/attract-lizards-to-your-ga...

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