Curlycup Gumweed
My weird COVID19 dreams are back. Last night's dream while weird was kind of nice as I dreamed I saw a slime mold. In fact, I several different types of molds all, now that I think of it, were indoors which is not a great place for mold to be. Of course I ran and got my camera and uploaded the mold photos to iNaturalist.
Perhaps I dreamed this in part because I have been busy adding observations to iNaturalist lately. I mentioned a few weeks ago the need to take a meandering nature walk where I look at things just to see what's there and take pictures if the thing I'm looking at will allow it. In the last ten days I've taken three such meanders (not much walking involved) in Badlands National Park, Indian Cave State Park in Nebraska, and the road ditch near my house.
The road ditch near my house yielded the most interesting observations of the three. I meandered out there to check on a rubber rabbitbrush that in years past has often had multiple butterflies and bees swarming about it. This particular rabbitbrush was still not at the point of budburst but I did see the darting movements of small insects. What brought them there?
To my surprise, it was the curlycup gumweed. Confession time. I have not paid much attention to curlycup gumweed because I always considered it an invasive pest that basically went unused by both people and critters. I never saw any insects on it (and by insects I mean the larger, more charismatic butterflies and bees) and I never saw any evidence that it was browsed by wildlife. To top it all off when I consulted the Plants of the Black Hills and Bear Lodge Mountains it said
Curlycup gumweed is an undesirable weed of pastures and rangeland. The sticky resin and associated aroma make the plant unpalatable.
Well. Always keep in mind who writes your guidebooks because while the plant may be undesirable for cattle and large game (that is money makers) not all species nor even all people find the curlycup gumweed so undesirable. I'd forgotten that the guidebook also said
The plant had a variety of medicinal uses among Indian tribes. Flower heads and leaves were boiled and used to treat skin diseases and sores by the Cheyenne. The Lakota made a tea in combination with fetid marigold ((Dyssodia papposa) for the spitting of blood. A tea of the plant was variously used for stomachache (in children), coughs, bronchitis, pneumonia, asthma, and for kidney trouble. European settlers used gumweed tea to treat coughing, and the resin was rubbed on poison ivy rash to ease itching.
Furthermore, I found five different species of insect on the gumweed yesterday. I know that even in the insect kingdom use doesn't mean preference. I sometimes eat fast food because it's what's there rather than what I like and the same goes for insects. On this supposedly unpalatable gumweed I found three different kinds of sweat bees, the katydid that blended so well with the leaves I almost missed it, and a caterpillar species TBD. The sweat bees were multiple in number so that tells me while it may not be their preferred food they don't find it that unpalatable.
In many ways, the gumweed meander is my favorite kind of meander as it draws back the curtain on activity that is happening right outside my door, far from "pristine, untrammeled wilderness" which was never that untrammeled to begin with. I love that nature is right there, available for anyone to observe when you slow down and look.
