Herself’s Houston Garden

While I’d heard a fair bit about leaf miners my first run in with them came this fall on the tomatoes I planted.  You can easily identify the damage.  It looks like someone took a beige marker and drew a squiggly line all over several leaves.  They are especially fond of vegetable crops.

Leaf miners are actually fly larvea.  The feed between the top and bottom of your plant leaves on the inside of the leaf.  As you can imagine this makes it very difficult to do anything about them.

In all but extreme cases they do little damage to the crop and are not something to be overly concerned about.

leaf miner damage

I planted this vine with the greatest of hopes. It grew, and grew and every week I beat it back. Nary a single flower. Tiring of beating the vine back, I cut it down and am now trying it in a new location. Perhaps next year I’ll have some flower photos of my own?

Fast grower! Can easily reach 20′ tall in two summers.

Grows best in moist woodland areas. But must have several hours of sun for blooming.

Blooms appear early summer, flowers can be anywhere from 8″ to 20″ on older vines.

This is one of the few vines that is easier to grow from seed than from cuttings.

Aristolochia grandiflora is originally from Central America, there are about 350 species worldwide. Some grow in tropical areas others in temperate forests.

Highly toxic plant - do not ingest.

Problems:
Spider mites may attack this plant.

This is an interesting plant in that its flowers give off a scent to attract flies. Flies fly into the flower and it traps them. They fly around inside the flower getting totally covered in pollen. In the morning the flower opens allowing the pollen covered fly to escape and pollinate another flower.

Swallowtail and birdwing butterfly caterpillars use this as a food source. They absorb the toxins making them toxic to birds that would eat them. Some species of this plant are toxic to butterflies and they can get confused and lay eggs on the wrong species of Aristolochia ( elegans ). So know your species before you plant it.

One of the most fascinating things about plant and insect evolution is the defenses they mount to protect themselves from prey. Often plants or insects become toxic to the critters that eat them. Sometimes they grow to look like closely related toxic plants.

Milkweed has taken a different approach. It grows faster to better feed the caterpillars. This is great news for us monarch lovers. Monarchs have evolved to resist the toxins in milkweed. Tracing milkweed back it appears milkweed has given up on growing better hairs and more toxic latex and decided to concentrate on faster growth and repair.

The adage that your enemies know your weaknesses best is especially true in the case of plants and predators that have co-evolved: As the predators evolve new strategies for attack, plants counter with their own unique defenses.

Milkweed is the latest example of this response, according to Cornell research suggesting that plant may be shifting away from elaborate defenses against specialized caterpillars toward a more energy-efficient approach. Genetic analysis reveals an evolutionary trend for milkweed plants away from resisting predators to putting more effort into repairing themselves faster than caterpillars — particularly the monarch butterfly caterpillar — can eat them. . . . [ read more Milkweed's evolutionary approach to caterpillars: Counter appetite with fast repair]

So far down here in Houston, aphids have only been a problem with the tea roses and not very often there.  When I find them I spray with orange oil ( you can find it with the organic pesticides at any nursery ).  A couple of days of treating with oil generally takes care of even the worst aphid problem for me.

Mercer recommends just giving them a good blast of water with your garden hose in the afternoon.  This removes them from the plant and they rapidly dry out in our afternoon heat.

Aphids are amazingly tiny and damage your plant by sucking all the fluid out of the plant.  Aphids are rapid multipliers.  They are all born female and pregnant. Aphids come in green, white, black and yellow.  But green is by far the most common color.

You will often find ants on plants with aphids. The ants come for the sap the aphids leave on the plant stems and eat the aphids.  The ants don’t hurt the plant.  Some ants will also treat the aphids like cattle, keeping them alive, moving them to healthier plants, and generally watching out for them so they may get more of the sticky sap.

Aphid damage often shows in malformed flower blooms or curled leaves and wilting of new stems and young plants.