Cooling and Curious
Last weekend was the Hardy Plant Society of Oregon’s Study Weekend. The Study Weekend event—a long weekend filled with lectures, a plant sale and garden tours—rotates between Portland, Victoria BC, Seattle/Bellevue WA, and Vancouver BC. The last time we all gathered in Portland was 2019.
I don’t know how much gardening I would get done when I could just chill and watch the river pass on by.
On Sunday things were warmer, 90 was the high (Monday was even warmer at 94, a bit too warm to comfortably tour gardens), but my friends and I saved the Quirk and Neill garden—with it’s meandering creek—for last that day.
A beautiful setting to stop for a moment and relax, after all the excitement the weekend had to offer.
That is until one in our group spotted something odd in the water. What the heck?
Most of the pebbly tubes were in the creek, but there were a few on the rocks where we were sitting.
Cropped close-ups…
So what are they? The larvae cases of the caddisfly; caddisflies (order Trichoptera) are a group of insects with aquatic larvae and terrestrial adults. “As larvae, caddisflies live underwater. Caddisfly larvae can be divided into two groups: cased and caseless. Cased caddis larvae use a silk secretion to build a portable structure around themselves, made of materials such as sand, shells, stones and leaves.” (source)
In this horrible photo you can (kind of) see their black legs, but wait, it gets better!
Cooling and Curious Read More »
