Ellychnia megista

There is a subdued grandeur in a redwood forest. Animal sounds are often muffled and seemingly distant. The forest floor is covered with deep green ferns and other shade-loving plants. One doesn’t expect to see large numbers of insects, especially in the winter months. Of course, the California coast is not completely dormant this time of year and a patient observer will still discover a few creatures finding their way around. So it was that we came across this attractive firefly in the Forest of Nicene Marks State Park (in Santa Cruz County) a couple of weeks ago.

The Forest of Nicene Marks State Park is primarily a second-growth redwood forest. It was logged extensively last century but the owners decided to protect the area in subsequent years and gave the park to the State of California. It is a fairly large area (as state parks go) and there are a number of nice trails. During our visit, we discovered a side trail with few hikers along Aptos Creek where there were remains of old growth redwoods. It was cool but not cold and a few stoneflies could be seen flying above the water as they moved into illuminating pockets of sunbeams. I took a short detour to an area of old redwood stumps and was trying to get my mind around the age of the erstwhile giants, when this firelfly landed on one of the dead logs.

It is a species of Ellychnia (E. megista to be precise) that does not have lumenescent organs – a light-less firefly if you will. There are several species in the the US. The more commonly seen E. californica occurs throughout California. It has been known for over a hundred years. On the other hand, E. megista is restricted to the coastal area and was described fairly recently (in 1970) by Ken Fender. The Type locality is Santa Cruz County. Who knows, it may have lived in the same forest. It is most easily recognized by the parallel-sided black band running down the center of the pronotum.

Pleocoma tularensis

Well it finally happened. After three years of searching, I finally found a rain beetle. I’m guessing that it is Pleocoma tularensis, but with the superficial (shall we say “stormy”) nature of rain beetle taxonomy, it might end up being P. fimbriata. In A.C. Davis’s revision, the two species are very difficult to distinguish. Linsley’s key to species resorts to geography to tell them apart. To complicate things, I found this individual in Fresno County fairly close to the point where the distributions of the two species meet. When this group is better understood, I expect that P. tularensis will be a subspecies of P. fimbriata (as Davis originally proposed). For those of you new to rain beetles, they are fairly large scarab-like beetles (family Pleocomidae at the moment). This one is well over an inch (30 mm) long.

Rain has come quite late this season. We normally have a good storm in November (maybe earlier). And it is this first storm that brings out the beetles (at least in many of the species). The first storm this season came this last weekend (in the middle of January). It starting on Friday afternoon and so I hurried home from work the same day, grabbed a bite to eat and drove up to Bretz Mill Campground about an hour above Fresno. I chose the place because the area combines grassy areas with mixed forest and riparian habitats. And it is also between 3,000 and 4,000 feet – a good elevation for rain beetles.

I put up two lights in the rain and waited a couple of hours without success. Maybe I should have left the lights on longer. Not wanting the rain to ruin my lights, I put them away and crawled into the back of the truck to sleep. By 6:00 the next morning I was wide awake and decided to drive home. Fortunately, I passed by a small community along the way with lights on and stopped to see what I might find. I found this individual crawling along the ground below one of the lights. (Both pictures are staged.) It was 6:40 AM, not much above freezing, with small patches of snow about, and with not another insect in sight. What a great way to catch beetles – and such an impressive one at that.

Rhagium inquisitor

The ribbed pine borer Rhagium inquisitor (Linnaeus) is a longhorn beetle that occurs around the world in the Northern Hemisphere. The larvae usually live a couple of years under the bark of dead pines. After pupating in the summer, adults emerge in the fall and overwinter inside a frass wall beneath the bark.

These appropriately named beetles have interested insect physiologists for a number of years because of their ability to withstand harsh sub-zero winters above ground (albeit somehat protected inder an inch of bark). They have a combination of anti-freeze compounds in their blood that enables them to avoid ice crystal formation at temperatures below -16 degrees C. Here are a couple of the frass wall hybernacula that I found last week near Watsonville, California.

We were visiting the beach and I found a couple of the beetles on a dead Monterey pine (Pinus radiata) just a mile or so from the coast. It can be seen in the habitat shot off to the right.

The Middle Fork of the Tule River

The Middle Fork of the Tule River runs through Wishon Campground east of Porterville, California. It is a nice place to enjoy the Sierras in the winter. The campground’s elevation is just under 4,000 feet, which means that winter campers will often wake up with frost on the ground (as we did last month) although it will quickly disappear. The forest is quite diverse with valley (Quercus lobata) and canyon (Q. chrysolepis) oaks intermixed with California incense cedar (Calocedrus decurrens), white fir (Abies concolor) and ponderosa pine (Pinus ponderosa). There are also giant sequoias (Sequoiadendron giganteum) just up the trail in Mountain Home State Forest. The giant tree next to Spencer is the largest canyon oak I’ve ever seen. It’s near the bank of the Middle Fork of the Tule River maybe a mile above Wishon campground (you’ll come to a fork in the trail and will want to take the lower path leading down to the river). There’s a large hole at the base big enough for a grown man to sleep in and cook dinner on a stove.

But what surprised me most on our hike (along the trail just north of the campground) was the small groves of California nutmeg (Torreya californica) that grow like inconspicuous understory shrubs. In fact, at first, I passed several and wondered at their large flat needles, trying to figure out what sort of fir it could be. I didn’t realize that California nutmegs occurred so far south. As I was to learn later, this is probably the southern-most distribution of the species. Although I bet a few may creep over into Kern County if somebody were to make an effort to find them there.

This last picture is of a waterfall along the trail maybe two miles above the campground. It’s a nice place to relax and there’s a great swimming hole just below. I think I’ll be coming back for a swim when it’s warmer.

Polyphylla decemlineata

The ten-lined june beetle (Polyphylla decemlineata) is one of the most attractive pests in the Western US. It emerges towards the end of June / early July here in Fresno at which time it begins showing up at porch lights.

It's the unseen larvae (feeding as grubs on roots) that cause the damage, and they are known to feed on a variety of plants. In a suburban neighborhood (were I live) it isn't really possible to know who's yard they are coming from and so controlling them can be a challenge. If you have unhealthy grass (or grassy areas) you might want to treat it. The adults aren't a problem and birds love to eat them, and keep their numbers down for the most part. In rural areas they can be a problem in peak years.

Oncopeltus fasciatus

Oncopeltus fasciatus, the milkweed bug, is a wide-ranging lygaeid bug that feeds on several milkweed species (and dogbane) througout North America (although not commonly in the Rocky Mountains or the Pacific Northwest). It can be fairly abundant and chances are, you’ve seen one before. They share the same host plant as monarch butterfly larvae and milkweed beetles.

 In California, they can be found every month of the year. I found these individuals just south of King’s Canyon National Park in September this year (at about 3,500 feet).

The habitat was mixed pine / oak forest.

Ampedus occidentalis

Ampedus occidentalis is a medium-sized click beetle (about a centimeter long) that lives much of its life in the decaying wood of fallen pines. I found this one under the bark of a dead ponderosa pine several miles east of Jackson, California a couple of weeks ago.

There are several species of Ampedus that have this general color pattern - of the black body with pale (almost orange) wing covers. Many of the species have a black spot at the end of the body. In A. occidentalis, the black spots normally do not touch the sides of the wing covers.

The grove of trees where I found it was a mixed conifer forest of ponderosa pine, white fir and incense cedar (with the occasional oak as well) in El Dorado County at about 4,300’ elevation.