{"id":119,"date":"2013-08-17T22:30:48","date_gmt":"2013-08-18T02:30:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/web.colby.edu\/aphanotus\/?p=119"},"modified":"2019-09-03T11:42:32","modified_gmt":"2019-09-03T15:42:32","slug":"the-great-black-wasps-of-tower-hill","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/aphanotus\/2013\/08\/17\/the-great-black-wasps-of-tower-hill\/","title":{"rendered":"The Great Black Wasps of Tower Hill"},"content":{"rendered":"

My family and I are enjoying the last days of summer, and we have been visiting my wife’s parents in Massachusetts. Thursday we drove out to\u00a0\u00a0Tower Hill Botanic Garden<\/a>\u00a0in\u00a0Boylston. North-central Mass is where I grew up, and it’s always interesting to visit. Tower Hill has only been around for a few years, but it’s already a really impressive garden. The place features a Linnaean garden, where plants are grouped by taxonomic family. This is a great idea for learning some plant taxonomy, although it makes for weirdly assymetrical gardens as some areas get all the showy plants. I was disappointed that the soapberrys (Sapindaceae) didn’t have a section.<\/p>\n

One of my favorite parts though, was that huge summer sweet bushes were being pollinated by tons of bees and other insects. Including a giant black wasp that got everyone’s attention. I happened to have a collection vial, and so had to catch one. (Yes, without a net.) This was the\u00a0Great Black Wasp<\/a>\u00a0(Sphex pensylvanicus<\/em>). The picture below is from the\u00a0University of Wisconsin\u2013Milwaukee field station, and it doesn’t convey that this thing is about 2 inches long and fast!<\/p>\n

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Wasps are one of those creatures that you love to hate. This species eats nectar as an adult, so it’s a useful pollinator. But while the adults are dining on nectar, they have less wholesome plans. Like most wasps, it has a venomous sting that it uses to paralyze other insects. They use their huge mandibles and great body strength to carry their victim into a underground burrow. There the wasp lays its eggs, which hatch into larvae that proceed to eat the paralyzed insect alive. Don’t anthropomorphize. It will give you nightmares.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My family and I are enjoying the last days of summer, and we have been visiting my wife’s parents in Massachusetts. Thursday we drove out to\u00a0\u00a0Tower Hill Botanic Garden\u00a0in\u00a0Boylston. North-central Mass is where I grew up, and it’s always interesting… Continue Reading →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5169,"featured_media":290,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13502,17559],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/aphanotus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/aphanotus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/aphanotus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/aphanotus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5169"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/aphanotus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=119"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/aphanotus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":291,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/aphanotus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119\/revisions\/291"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/aphanotus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/290"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/aphanotus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=119"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/aphanotus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=119"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/aphanotus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=119"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}