Ask a Naturalist: Part 1
The "Ask a Librarian" questions were certainly fun for me to answer, and I will continue to respond to those questions from time to time. However, while working on a recent blog post (Pandemic Librarian Gets Back to Nature), it occurred to me that I could fill a need that all hikers have at some point.
I am, of course, referring to how convenient it would be to have a botanist with me whenever I'm hiking. That way, I could ask him or her about the plants along the trail. I do have a couple of botanist friends, but they don't always answer right away when I send them texts with photos of some plant or another.
I won't answer your questions right away, either - but like "Ask a Librarian," the answers to your questions to the natural world will not be ones you can find with any kind of Google search, or any other reputable database, for that matter.
So, without further ado, here are the first questions.
The first question comes from Eowyn, who asked, "What is the most berserk animal in the ocean that you have seen?"
That would have to be my brother. The same year that the move Jaws opened in theaters and made most of the country afraid to get in a bathtub, let alone the ocean, my family was visiting friends in Houston. We spent a day at the beach near Galveston, and when someone yelled "Shark!", my brother got out of the water so fast that he nearly took out a couple of little kids who were building a sand castle.
Jocelyn wondered, "What is the fastest way to get rid of caddisflies?"
As some readers may know, caddisflies hatch in water and then live a terrestrial life. Since they have no mouths, you don't have to worry about one biting you or a swarm of them devouring your tomatoes.
Caddisflies sometimes swarm around outside lights at night, much like moths, but they are harmless. Chemical companies will cheerfully sell you insecticide, but please don't go for that. Caddisflies are a sign of river and stream health. They can't live in poor water, so swarms of caddisflies mean that the water they came from is relatively healthy.
On the other hand, if Jocelyn is referring to a popular tie that trout fly fishers use for the caddis hatch, the answer is easy: give the flies to inexperienced anglers, who will quickly get them tangled up in the brushes beside the stream.
Nathan asked, "What insect bite hurts the most?"
The best answer I found came from the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), which wrote about an American scientist named Justin Schmidt, who figures he has been stung "over a thousand times by 150 different species. Most of those stings were accidental, but some were on purpose.
Dr. Smith has been stung often enough that he has created the Schmidt Sting Pain Index. Think about that for a minute: a man stung so often, by such a wide variety of insects, that he has a pain index.
To answer Nathan's question: the most painful insect sting comes from the bullet ant, which lives in the South American rain forest and grows up to a inch long. The sting feels like, well, a bullet at first, followed by 12-24 hours of agony.
The tarantula hawk wasp joins the bullet ant at the highest pain level, 4. Honey bees, yellow jackets, and bald faced wasps are "only" at level 2.
Female tarantula hawk wasps, by the way, poison much larger tarantulas, which they then feed to their young. Female insects and arachnids are not to be messed with.
Kaeleigh asked, "What is the world's most deadly fungus?"
This is a tricky one. If by "deadliest" we mean the fungus responsible for 90% of the world's deaths from mushrooms, then the answer is Amanita phalloides, commonly known as the death cap mushroom. The mushroom probably got to North America by hitching a ride with Norway spruce seedlings. They have spread up and down the east and west coasts and may be coming to a forest near us soon.
These are very dangerous. They look like mushrooms you might buy in any store, and they taste fine. But within 24 hours, people who eat the mushrooms get severe stomach cramps, terrible diarrhea, and then a false recovery period of up to three days. Then, over the next four to nine days, organs start to fail, seizures begin, and the poor sufferer slips into a coma followed by death.
Before it arrived in North American, the death cap already had a long history of killing people, including a Russian tsar (ruler), the Roman Emperor Claudius, and a Pope Clement VII. A small piece of the mushroom can kill a grown man, and the poison is unaffected by freezing, drying, and cooking.
I am, of course, referring to how convenient it would be to have a botanist with me whenever I'm hiking. That way, I could ask him or her about the plants along the trail. I do have a couple of botanist friends, but they don't always answer right away when I send them texts with photos of some plant or another.
I won't answer your questions right away, either - but like "Ask a Librarian," the answers to your questions to the natural world will not be ones you can find with any kind of Google search, or any other reputable database, for that matter.
So, without further ado, here are the first questions.
The first question comes from Eowyn, who asked, "What is the most berserk animal in the ocean that you have seen?"
That would have to be my brother. The same year that the move Jaws opened in theaters and made most of the country afraid to get in a bathtub, let alone the ocean, my family was visiting friends in Houston. We spent a day at the beach near Galveston, and when someone yelled "Shark!", my brother got out of the water so fast that he nearly took out a couple of little kids who were building a sand castle.
Jocelyn wondered, "What is the fastest way to get rid of caddisflies?"
As some readers may know, caddisflies hatch in water and then live a terrestrial life. Since they have no mouths, you don't have to worry about one biting you or a swarm of them devouring your tomatoes.
Caddisflies sometimes swarm around outside lights at night, much like moths, but they are harmless. Chemical companies will cheerfully sell you insecticide, but please don't go for that. Caddisflies are a sign of river and stream health. They can't live in poor water, so swarms of caddisflies mean that the water they came from is relatively healthy.
On the other hand, if Jocelyn is referring to a popular tie that trout fly fishers use for the caddis hatch, the answer is easy: give the flies to inexperienced anglers, who will quickly get them tangled up in the brushes beside the stream.
Nathan asked, "What insect bite hurts the most?"
The best answer I found came from the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), which wrote about an American scientist named Justin Schmidt, who figures he has been stung "over a thousand times by 150 different species. Most of those stings were accidental, but some were on purpose.
Dr. Smith has been stung often enough that he has created the Schmidt Sting Pain Index. Think about that for a minute: a man stung so often, by such a wide variety of insects, that he has a pain index.
To answer Nathan's question: the most painful insect sting comes from the bullet ant, which lives in the South American rain forest and grows up to a inch long. The sting feels like, well, a bullet at first, followed by 12-24 hours of agony.
The tarantula hawk wasp joins the bullet ant at the highest pain level, 4. Honey bees, yellow jackets, and bald faced wasps are "only" at level 2.
Female tarantula hawk wasps, by the way, poison much larger tarantulas, which they then feed to their young. Female insects and arachnids are not to be messed with.
Kaeleigh asked, "What is the world's most deadly fungus?"
This is a tricky one. If by "deadliest" we mean the fungus responsible for 90% of the world's deaths from mushrooms, then the answer is Amanita phalloides, commonly known as the death cap mushroom. The mushroom probably got to North America by hitching a ride with Norway spruce seedlings. They have spread up and down the east and west coasts and may be coming to a forest near us soon.
These are very dangerous. They look like mushrooms you might buy in any store, and they taste fine. But within 24 hours, people who eat the mushrooms get severe stomach cramps, terrible diarrhea, and then a false recovery period of up to three days. Then, over the next four to nine days, organs start to fail, seizures begin, and the poor sufferer slips into a coma followed by death.
Before it arrived in North American, the death cap already had a long history of killing people, including a Russian tsar (ruler), the Roman Emperor Claudius, and a Pope Clement VII. A small piece of the mushroom can kill a grown man, and the poison is unaffected by freezing, drying, and cooking.
Bottom line: be very, very, very careful about eating mushrooms you find in the wild!
Nikki rolled several questions into one: "How many years can a tick
live without feeding? With feeding? How many years does it take for a blue
spruce to grow 11 feet tall? How long can a Ponderosa pine live? What is the
most colorful animal that you know of?"
Well, Nikki, it all depends on what kind of tick we are talking about, and what stage of life it's in. Rocky Mountain ticks, which are what we get here in the Bitterroot, lay between 3,000 and 5,000 eggs at a time. Ticks on the larval stage usually need to find a host within 30 days, but can last as long as 117 days without finding a host. Adult ticks can go for up to 600 days - nearly two years - without feeding. Three years is the limit for ticks that do manage to find a host.
Compare that to a typical 7th grader, who feels the need to eat every two hours.
The question about blue spruce growth time is a tricky one, which boils down to, "It depends." That is, growth rate will depend on annual precipitation, soil quality, and so one. On average, blue spruce grow less than 12 inches a year, but up to 24 inches a year when young. So, assuming decent soil and precipitation, it might take anywhere from five to six years for a blue spruce to grow to 11 feet in height.
Ponderosa pines typically live for 300 to 500 years, a ones as old as 600 years have been found in in places like Colorado's Front Range west of Denver. One tree over 700 years old was found in Colorado. Ponderosa pines have a large range in the Rocky Mountain states, and trees of around 200 years old are common.
Think of it this way: there are trees in the Bitterroot Valley that were already big when Lewis and Clark wandered through here a little over 200 years ago.
But if you want to talk really old, consider a 2018 story in the Salt Lake City Tribune about a pine that a researcher found in southwestern Utah. After counting its rings - some narrow that he needed a microscope - he was able to estimate that the tree appeared around 1075, which made the tree about 940 years old.
Finally, the most colorful animal I know of is the male mountain bluebird. Sure, there are dozens of birds with brighter, more brilliant plumage, and some fish present an astonishing range of colors. But a male mountain bluebird is only slightly less blue than a western sky, and when they appear in March, I know that spring is not far behind.
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