In lower Montgomery, upper Harris county we have 4 venomous snakes, only 3 of which you are likely to run across: Southern Copperhead, Western Cottonmouth, Texas Coral snake. Below are photos pointing out the identifying marks.
I often see coral and copperhead snakes sunning themselves on trails along the bayous in the summer.
Other resources:
Venomous Texas Snakes
What snake is that?
Texas Snakes
Venomous Snake Safety
The USGS Bee Inventory and Monitoring Lab has an amazing Flickr account with hundreds of macro shots of bees and other assorted 6 legged critters.
You can also find them on Twitter @USGS
Scientists removed insects from fields of primrose for several years.
In just a few generations the primrose relaxed it’s defenses against insects and devoted more energy to competing for space and resources.
In the study, 16 identical plots were set up that contained the same relative numbers of 18 unique genotypes of native evening primrose. During each growing season, half the plots were treated biweekly with an insecticide; the other half were not.
The offspring of evening primrose are mostly clones of the parent due to self-pollination and other factors in primrose reproduction.
Of the genotypes that remained in the plots without insects, the researchers found more plants with relaxed defenses. By 2010 and even more in 2011, there was a shift toward plants that flowered earlier. When insects are present, later-flowering plants do better due to the timing of insect development, where larvae tend to eat the fruits of early flowering plants. Also, over time, there was a shift toward primroses with lower amounts of insect-deterring chemicals in the fruits, suggesting that in the wild, selection had been strongest for defense against flower and fruit eating insects.
Finally, without insects, primroses were better able to compete against dandelions – primrose genotypes that led to larger plants were favored when compared to the controls.
“The effects of insect pests can have immediate consequences for plant health and also sweeping consequences for evolution of entire communities,” Agrawal said.
Video interview with Anurag Agrawal
Insect Herbivores Drive Real-Time Ecological and Evolutionary Change in Plant Populations
Insects shape the genetic landscape through plant defenses
This plant showed up of its own accord and grew to about 3′ in a month.
A bit of digging revealed it to be a Candle Bush. Since it was in the butterfly garden next to the driveway I thought I’d leave it a bit and see what happened.
It will grow 3′-4′ tall around here, I met someone who claims to have one 6′ tall in her garden. Flowers are yellow, spiky and attract bees, butterflies and hummingbirds. They do not winter over in cold years.
Like most butterfly attractor plants it does best with lots of sun.
Unfortunately they also attract fire ants, I had been warned of this and inspecting the plant last week I found several fire ants crawling around the base and a nest built right next to the trunk of the plant, so out it went.
It is supposed to be a good fungicide for ringworm and other skin fungal infections. It also well known as a laxative among other medicinal uses.
Like most plants here it is toxic, do not use it medicinally with out more research.
Native to east Africa.
More information:
Candle Bush at Dave’s Garden
“We show that exposing tomato plants to some level of caterpillar herbivory will increase resistance for future plants—it’s sort of like a plant vaccine,” says Sergio Rasmann, a biologist at the University of Lausanne in Switzerland.
Rasmann isn’t the only one seeing this effect. In a similar study, Ann Slaughter of the Universite de Neuchatel in Switzerland infected Arabidopsis thaliana plants with a benign strain of the bacteria Pseudomonas syringae (PstavrRpt2). The offspring were more resistant to disease than control groups, which were not infected in the first generation.
How does pest resistance get inherited? Researchers point to epigenetic mechanisms, which regulate gene expression and can be passed from one generation to the next without any changes to DNA sequences. The studies suggest known epigenetic factors like DNA methylation and histone modification mediate these effects, and are among the first to demonstrate siRNAs act as an epigenetic mechanism in plant defense responses.
Papers
Descendants of Primed Arabidopsis Plants Exhibit Resistance to Biotic Stress
Herbivory in the Previous Generation Primes Plants for Enhanced Insect Resistance
Herself's Plants 
You must be logged in to post a comment.