Above / Dating back more than 300 million years when the Earth swarmed with giant insects, mosquito-eating dragonflies in a variety of colors, shapes and smaller sizes have been a huge part of keeping nature in check. In fact, back in the Paleozoic era, some fossils indicate dragonflies were bigger than today’s drones with a wingspan of up to two feet. Imagine the mosquitoes back then.
PHOTO UPDATE, July 17, 2019 / For the first time in our memory, golden dragonflies with “bug” eyes and transparent wings gracefully landed on cherry tomato plants in our garden!
Original Post, July 7, 2019 / Every daily newspaper we picked up that was home delivered during Fourth of July week from Naperville, Ill., to Muncie, Ind., featured news of recent research from Switzerland, professing that the best way to fight climate change could be to plant a trillion trees—now. And we found ourselves thinking back to our elementary educational roots in the Midwest when we learned about the travels and dedication of John “Johnny Appleseed” Chapman, known to be a kind man from back East. He planted apple trees for the environment and by his example, our teachers taught how trees are essential to life.
As the story goes, back in the 18th and 19th century, the American pioneer nurseryman who lived from 1774 to 1845 introduced apple trees throughout Pennsylvania, Ontario, Ohio, Indiana and Illinois, as well as northern portions of West Virginia. He became an American living legend for his leadership in conservation. He was recognized for wearing his tin pan cap and for the symbolic importance he attributed to apples.
Certainly Naperville’s Arbor Day events and its campaign to save our parkway ash trees (a local Arborist fed our ash tree the other day) have placed local emphasis on the value of the urban forest that we can pass along to today’s youngsters.
“We all knew restoring forests could play a part in tackling climate change, but we had no scientific understanding of what impact this could make,” study senior author Thomas Crowther, an assistant professor of ecology at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Zurich (ETH Zurich), said in a written statement and news release.
Furthermore, beautiful mature and tall trees are the ones that shade our homes to help save energy, most effectively capturing and holding stormwater, filtering the air, and creating canopies to cool neighborhood streets and sidewalks.
It’ll take time before newly planted trees can offer all the benefits of the old trees that have stood the test of time and the elements, the news stories say to remind us.
Sustainability can begin in your own backyard—or front yard or side yard. Take care of your mature trees. Consider that every tree has a life span. Be prepared to plant a new tree when an old tree comes to end of its life. And plan also to plant a tree this fall, the best time to plant trees in Illinois.
As simple and ordinary as planting a tree may seem compared to costly solar panels, windmills and hybrid cars, the awareness is a start. Planting and nurturing trees just might be the most powerful and efficient way for all ages to begin making a personal and positive difference for the environment.
Simply put, spread the word and think a trillion trees.
Read more about “massive forest restoration” in a story featured in the Scientific American.
Protect dragonflies for all the good they do
We also found it newsworthy that many different species of dragonflies and damsel flies have discovered our backyard when it’s sunny. Like monarch butterflies, lightning bugs and ladybugs, dragonflies appear friendly and graceful as they swiftly soar from plant to plant. It’s easy to while away time watching them enjoy the landscape, swarming here and there, snapping up annoying mosquitoes and other pesky tiny insects that sometimes could use a flyswatter.
A visit to the Smithsonian Magazine website notes that “dragonflies, which eat insects as adults, are a great control on the mosquito population. A single dragonfly can eat 30 to hundreds of mosquitoes per day.”
Find 14 fun facts about Dragonflies on the Smithsonian website. Then trek outside and see how many you can spot. In a matter of minutes, we found six different species near our gardens of tomato plants and tiger lilies.
A dragonfly has four large wings and has been known to fly 50 to 60 miles an hour. While dragonflies can catch mosquitoes in flight, the large insect flies so swiftly that they escape most birds and animals.
RELATED PN POST / Monarch Butterflies & Milkweed
PN Photos, July 2019.
Last updated, July 17, 2019.
