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| The Air potato looks pretty as it takes over. |
This morning the dog and I walked down to the west end of the dirt road. It was a very comfortable morning with fairly low humidity. At the end of the road we turned around and I spotted a vine of interest growing up a magnolia tree. The vine is what we call the potato vine. Apparently the correct name is the
Air Potato. This vine according to my research has been in Alabama at least since 1770 when it was first noticed. I don't know if you can call a plant that has been here over 200 years an invasive species or not so I will leave that one to the philosophers. The vine grows up and makes big green potato like spheres which hang from the stem. They do look very much like potatoes but the web site I checked said they were poisonous so do not eat them. I also noticed an example of our old friend the Golden Orb Spider.
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| Hard to see from this angle. |
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| Hiding in plain site. |
I had a chance to get fairly close to this one and I could see that it was very large. It was slowly and meticulously weaving it's web while as I watched. When you consider that they weave the web without ever actually seeing it you realize how much of a miracle these things really are. When we arrived home my quick walk through the garden turned up another of the spider family hanging out on my okra plants. This was another of the crab spiders that seem to be taking over my garden. This yellow one was I guess trying to look like a vein in the leaf so a fly might mistakenly land on her. As many of them as there are in the garden now I am surprised those little flies can survive but, I suppose there are plenty of flies to go around. Thanks for reading my blog. I hope you have a good day. Bye
