By Megan Hart, Park Biologist
When you think of words that describe nature, you may come up with awe-inspiring, verdant, majestic, scenic and beautiful. However, nature can also be just plain weird—at least to us. Plants and animals have specialized in every ecological niche or role within their ecosystem. These specializations have led to some strange adaptations to fill those roles. Let’s look at some of the weird, spooky and interesting residents of Lake Metroparks.
Let’s begin with strange plants:
The first plant is staring straight at you: white baneberry or doll’s eyes. The things that make this plant creepy are the berries it develops in the summer. These berries are bright white with a black center and red stem and look just like a bunch of eyes staring straight back at you. The berries are also very toxic, so look but don’t touch.
The next strange plant is a common resident of moist soils—skunk cabbage. Skunk cabbage is famous for its flowers that smell like rotting meat to attract carrion-feeding insects. If that isn’t enough for it to be considered strange, it can also create its own heat from 27 to 63 degrees more than the air temperature through a special type of respiration. It can melt snow around its flowers and spread its odor through the late winter and early spring months.
Ghost pipe is the next strange plant. Its name is derived from its ghostly white appearance. This plant doesn’t contain chlorophyll, so it cannot produce food utilizing sunlight like most other plants. It is a parasitic plant that steals nutrients from host fungi of trees like the American beech.
Next up is the spring blooming bear corn. Bear corn is named for the strange corn cob like appearance of its stems that contain its small tubular shaped flowers. This wildflower cannot produce its own food because it lacks the green pigment chlorophyll that is needed for photosynthesis. Bear corn derives its nutrients by acting as a parasite on the roots of woody species like oaks and beech. Fun fact: it takes bear corn four years of growth underground before it emerges above ground.
Jack-in-the-pulpit is up next on our list of weird plants. Jack-in-the-pulpit is so named because the flowering structure looks like a pastor standing in a pulpit. The strangeness of the flower goes beyond the name. It is pollinated primarily by fungus gnats, which are attracted to the flower. These gnats then become trapped inside the flower. In male jack-in-the-pulpits, there is a small escape hole for the gnats in the bottom of the flower. However, once the gnats fly off to enter a female flower, there is no escape to be found. This strategy allows maximum pollen transfer to the female flower, which proves fatal for the gnats. You can find jack-in-the-pulpit during the spring in forested habitats.
Our final plant is wild cucumber vine. This vine is easy to overlook most of the year as it climbs over other vegetation. The strange part of this plant is its fruit that appears in late summer. If you look closely amid the vegetation, you will see a green, spiked ball, which is the wild cucumber. Despite the name, the fruit is not edible and is not spread by wildlife consumption. The fruit hangs on the vine over winter until it dries and bursts open to release seeds.
Next, we will focus on the world of insects, which is a strange world indeed. Insects have diversified in many ways to take advantage of their environment.
The first stop on the weird bug tour is the wheel bug. Wheel bugs are named from the cog-like wheel formation on their backs. Wheel bugs are voracious predators of caterpillars and beetles. They feed upon their prey by piercing them with their beaklike mouthparts that contain a chemical to help dissolve soft tissue into fluids that they then drink. This may seem creepy, but these insects are actually quite beneficial because they feed upon pests like Japanese beetles and tent caterpillars. Be warned: do not pick up this insect because it can deliver a painful bite. If you leave them alone, they will leave you alone.
The next strange insect is the tomentose burying beetle. This beetle plays a strange but important role as the undertaker of the forest. Burying beetles locate small dead animals, dig holes under the carcasses and cover them with leaf litter. They then lay their eggs in the soil near the carcasses, which will provide food for their young. Both males and females feed their larvae with predigested food and protect them from competitors until they are fully developed and ready to “leave the nest.”
The next insect is the American pelecinid wasp. The moment you see this wasp, you are likely to think “what is that thing?” Your next concern is probably about getting stung, but you have nothing to fear because this wasp doesn’t have a stinger. It has a long modified abdomen that helps it lay its eggs on the backs of June beetle grubs that are buried in the soil. Their larvae feed upon the June beetle grubs once they hatch. The adults feed on nectar.
Next is the American carrion beetle. As the name suggests, this beetle feeds on the flesh of recently deceased animals and fungi. These relatively large flat beetles can be identified by their dark bodies with pale yellow on the dorsal thorax as they trundle through the forests in search of fresh carcasses to feed on and lay their eggs on. When larvae hatch, they have a ready food source to feed on until they are ready to pupate. Though their diet may be off putting, it is important to note that American carrion beetles are an important part of nature’s cleanup crew.
Our next invertebrate looks more like a toupee than a living thing: the spotted apatelodes moth caterpillar. As an adult, the spotted apatelodes moth camouflages with tree bark. However, their caterpillars seem made to stick out. These caterpillars are covered in a dense covering of white or neon yellow hair, black chevrons running along the back, and black-gray spines on the head and body. The dense covering of hairs is thought to help deter predators. You can find these cool caterpillars feeding on the leaves of oak, hickory and other hardwood trees in forests.
Our last invertebrate looks like an alien: the butternut woollyworm. These masses of moving wool are the larvae of a type of insect called a sawfly, which is a small non-stinging wasp-like insect. The waxy filaments that are seen on the back of the butternut woollyworm are the remnants of previous sheds. It is believed that these long waxy filaments act as a deterrent to predators by making them harder to eat. Butternut woollyworms feed primarily on black walnut, butternut and hickory species.
The final stop on the strange nature tour is the wild world of fungi. Fungi are not quite plants and not quite animals.
The first fungus has a very creepy name—dead man’s fingers or dead moll’s fingers. These are two different, but closely related species of fungi that feed upon decaying wood from hardwoods, especially maple and beech trees. These fungi get their names from the black finger-like fruiting bodies that pop up from the decaying wood.
Next up is the devil’s tooth or bleeding tooth fungus. This fungus has a striking appearance with young fruiting bodies with drops of bright red liquid on the surface that looks suspiciously like blood. These droplets have been found to have anticoagulant properties, which fits with its bloody appearance. Devil’s tooth is a mycorrhizal fungus that forms beneficial relationships with coniferous trees.
If you take a close look at the leaf litter in late winter and early spring, you may have a colorful surprise waiting for you: scarlet elf cup. This small fungus resembles a small tea cup on the outside. The inside is bright blood red, which stands out against the grays and browns of the forest floor. This fungus grows on decaying branches in damp areas. It is often one of the first mushrooms to emerge in the new year.
This next fungus looks strange, but is easy to miss on a walk through the forest if you are not looking down carefully: collared earth star. Collared earth star starts out looking like a puffball in its early stages. As the fungus matures, the outer layer of tissue splits open to reveal segments that spread outward in a star pattern with the spore sac sitting in the middle. This species is found in areas where there is a healthy amount of organic matter built up in the soil. These mushrooms can be found in the late summer and autumn after rain has soaked the ground.
Our next fungus looks more at home on the seabed than in the forests of Lake Metroparks: violet coral fungus. This stunning fungus is neon purple and can be found growing near hardwood trees and usually with mosses. They seem to sprout from nowhere on the forest floor during the summer and fall and can be seen in large populations during wet summers.
Our final strange resident is the dog vomit slime mold. You can’t miss this slime mold with its strange foamy appearance. It is often found on mulch after a heavy rain, but it can also be found on rotten wood, plant debris, and sometimes living leaves and stems of plants. Dog vomit slime mold is not a fungus. It is more closely related to amoebas than to fungi, plants or animals. These strange organisms can move about and will never be in the exact place as the previous day.
This list barely scratches the surface of the wild and weird residents of Lake Metroparks. I recommend heading out on the trail and paying attention to everything around you—you never know what bizarre things you may see.