Hello Listener,
We love some fun facts and lists so in this episode we will talk about some of intriguing animal mating and courtship habits, to celebrate the month of Valentine’s. We cannot cover them all but we picked some of our favorites including honeybee, horseshoe crabs, daddy long legs, slugs, and dragonflies.
We also have our:
We currently have an open survey for ALL listeners; whether you’ve listened to all of our episodes, or this is your first time. We developed an evaluation to find out if the information we share on the podcast has made a difference in your practices at home. We promise that it is a short, easy 5 min survey, and we even have exclusive podcast stickers to give to those who participate. We are so thankful for the feedback, and we appreciate you tuning in for the podcast!
If you have any garden-related questions, please email us at UMEGardenPodcast@gmail.com or look us up on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/GardenThymePodcas. For more information about UME and these topics, please check out the UME Home and Garden Information Center and Maryland Grows Blog at https://marylandgrows.umd.edu/.
The Garden Thyme Podcast is brought to you by the University of Maryland Extension. Hosts are Mikaela Boley- Senior Agent Associate (Talbot County) for Horticulture, Rachel Rhodes- Agent Associate for Horticulture (Queen Anne's County), and Emily Zobel-Senior Agent Associate for Agriculture (Dorchester County).
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University programs, activities, and facilities are available to all without regard to race, color, sex, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, marital status, age, national origin, political affiliation, physical or mental disability, religion, protected veteran status, genetic information, personal appearance, or any other legally protected class.
Hello Listener,
We love some fun facts and lists so in this episode we will talk about some of intriguing animal mating and courtship habits, to celebrate the month of Valentine’s. We cannot cover them all but we picked some of our favorites including honeybee, horseshoe crabs, daddy long legs, slugs, and dragonflies.
We also have our:
We currently have an open survey for ALL listeners; whether you’ve listened to all of our episodes, or this is your first time. We developed an evaluation to find out if the information we share on the podcast has made a difference in your practices at home. We promise that it is a short, easy 5 min survey, and we even have exclusive podcast stickers to give to those who participate. We are so thankful for the feedback, and we appreciate you tuning in for the podcast!
If you have any garden-related questions, please email us at UMEGardenPodcast@gmail.com or look us up on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/GardenThymePodcas. For more information about UME and these topics, please check out the UME Home and Garden Information Center and Maryland Grows Blog at https://marylandgrows.umd.edu/.
The Garden Thyme Podcast is brought to you by the University of Maryland Extension. Hosts are Mikaela Boley- Senior Agent Associate (Talbot County) for Horticulture, Rachel Rhodes- Agent Associate for Horticulture (Queen Anne's County), and Emily Zobel-Senior Agent Associate for Agriculture (Dorchester County).
Theme Song: By Jason Inc
University programs, activities, and facilities are available to all without regard to race, color, sex, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, marital status, age, national origin, political affiliation, physical or mental disability, religion, protected veteran status, genetic information, personal appearance, or any other legally protected class.
Episode: S04:E01 Intriguing Animal Mating and Courtship Habits
Note: The Garden Thyme Podcast is produced for the ear and is designed to be heard. If you are able, we strongly encourage you to listen to the audio, which includes emotion and emphasis that's not on the page. Transcripts are generated using a combination of speech recognition software and human transcribers, and may contain errors.
: Up beat music:
Mikeala
Hello, listener. Welcome to the University of Maryland Extension Presents, the Garden Thyme Podcast, where we talk about getting down and dirty in your garden. We're your host. I'm Mikeala.
Rachel
I'm Rachel.
Emily
And I'm Emily.
Mikeala
And in this month's episode, we're talking about intriguing animal mating and courtship habits just in time to celebrate the month of Valentine.
: Smooth Jazz Muisc :
Emily
So I don't think it's a surprise to any of our long term listeners that we here at the Garden Thyme Podcast love some fun facts and list. So this episode we're going to talk about some fun facts that we looked up about intriguing animal meeting and courtship habits that would take place here in the Mid-Atlantic region. Now, this episode might be a bit more mature, but we are going to try to keep it PG. If you are listening with someone who might be sensitive to this, though, we recommend pre listening to this episode and or skipping ahead to our native plant of the month, bug of the month, and tips of the month. Who wants to talk about some fun animal facts? I mean, there are so many cool ones we could have picked from, whether it's dance exactly or cannibalism.
Mikeala
But I have two words to you this episode exploding genitalia.
Emily
Okay, I think we got to figure that one out first. That's a good place to start. So, Mikeala, why don't you tell us a little bit about exploding genitalia in the animal kingdom?
Mikeala
Emily is also very well versed in this kind of courtship behavior, but this one actually belongs to the honeybee, which has a nuptial flight. So in social insect orders, there's something called the virgin queen. She needs to go mate in order to come back to the colony and lay her eggs so they can't mate inside the hive. So they have to make what's called a nuptial flight. So they leave in order to mate with the male bees, which are also called drones. So the virgin queen must leave the hive to mate with male drones from a different colony. But this flight is anything but monogamous. A queen might meet up to 15 different drones and mate with them. And while this information by itself is interesting, the mating flight gets a little bit more dramatic. After a mid air population, the drone's appendage explodes and is torn off, and then he dies before he even hits the ground. Who said romance isn't dead? I'm sorry, that was too cheesy.
Emily
No, this whole episode is going to be filled with though.
Mikeala
Oh, yeah. So as we know, the queen then comes back or creates her own colony, and after her nuptial flight, she will never leave again. Her sole purpose in life will be to lay those eggs and the females in the colony, their purpose is to help tend the eggs, raise the young, and go out in forage. But the male drones, these bees, their sole purpose in life is to mate and then die. So it's definitely a great one to lead this conversation with because that's got to be one of the most interesting mating habits that we've seen in nature.
Emily
If you want to know more about native bee mating habits, we recommend checking out our June episode of 2022 where we interviewed Dr. Sam Drogi. Okay, Rachel, do you want to share our next fun, interesting, intriguing animal meeting or courtship?
Rachel
All right. So for me I think it's a really cool thing to go to a nice calm beach in mid spring when we have a full moon to watch horseshoe crab spawning season.
Emily
Actually, you're scandalous.
Rachel
I know. It's one of the things that my parents would always take us to go to as a family activity.
Emily
It's a circle of life and it's a beautiful thing. I too have gone to witness. I did it in grad school.
Rachel
Yeah, well, we were so close to Delaware beaches when I was growing up so it was like my dad would just pull this all on the vehicle and be like, we're just going to go watch this tonight. Okay, that sounds like fun. Dad.
Emily
Awesome.
Rachel
Okay, so horseshoe crab spawning season varies greatly according to latitude, but it generally peaks in May to June with peak spawning occurring on evenings with high tides. During a full or new moon, the adult will seek beaches that are primarily protected from surf. So those nice, calm, soft beaches within basic coves along our coastal watershed. So when they head for sure, the males patrol along the foot of the beach awaiting for females and the females give off a chemical attractant called pheromone, which the males detect. And although they may have other means by identification, these attractants and the directional movement and the number of males involved, sometimes it's several males to one female reduce the likelihood of reaching the beach unattended. So the males are actively hunting for the females and patrolling. And by the time she gets to the beach, she's surrounded male where she crabs are about 20% smaller than females and they use their specially developed appendages to clasp themselves onto the back of the female. And during peak spawning times horseshoes will form huddles along the edge of the water with five or six males grouped around one female. So it's just a big what can I say it?
Rachel
How can I say it? I can't say it.
Mikeala
You can't say it.
Rachel
It's a puddle of love.
Emily
That's an extended Congo line of mating. You'll have the female and then you'll have like two or three males on top of each other, like waiting their turn.
Rachel
Exactly. By the beginning of the spawning season, each female will have developed about 80,000 eggs which are located in dense masses near the front of her shell and she will return to the beach on successive ties laying about four to five clutches of eggs with each tide. And each cluster contains around 4000 eggs and the female will lay around 20 egg clusters each year.
Emily
Oh, my gosh.
Rachel
That's a lot of eggs. Yeah, she does. Who thought raising one for nine months was hard?
Emily
I don't think they don't do parental care, though. Right. She just releases eggs into the surf. Okay.
Rachel
No. No parental care or forethought.
Emily
There you go. Be free, my many children.
Rachel
Yes. Live your life.
Emily
Awesome.
Rachel
That's a really fun love puddle.
Emily
It is something that I have to say if you live on the Eastern Shore or visiting the Eastern Shore at the right time for it, it's a really kind of fun thing to go and see and witness.
Rachel
It is.
Mikeala
Yeah. Very unique.
Emily
I love horseshoe crabs. They're so cool and yet ancient looking. They're very neat. Okay.
Mikeala
Yeah.
Rachel
Emily, it's your turn.
Mikeala
All right, Emily, what's your pick?
Emily
The next group that we're going to talk about is the order opilines. These are also known as harvest men, or commonly known as Daddy Long legs. These are arachnids that look really similar to spiders, but are not, in fact, spiders because they only have one body segment, but they still have all the legs. They have some very unique mating habits that can vary not only species to species, but in geographical ranges. So there have been studies that have found that this species in this area will have this mating behavior versus the same species in a different area could engage in a completely different mating habit. So that's kind of really fascinating. You do also have individual species that will also engage in parthenogenics, which means that the female can produce offsprings without mating and without males. So she can give birth to other daughters, basically.
Mikeala
That's crazy.
Emily
Yeah. And this is common in a few different groups of insects. We commonly talk about it in aphids more than anything else, but you can find it in other insects. And there are certain species of lizards and frogs, I think, that will also engage in this behavior as well. So the reproductive organs and structures and the behavioral can vary, but tend to mate directly. So unlike spiders and some other arachnids or arthropods that will talk about where it's more than male presenting a packet of his sperm to the female that she either accepts or doesn't, in this case, it's direct kind of insertion and fertilization. Some males, depending on the species, will have penises that are actually, in fact, longer than their bodies. And some species of females will, in return, have heavily fortified pregnancy barrier plates. So because there is this direct insertion, you'll have modifications both in the male's inserting organ or his penis and then the female's ability to protect herself from not wanting to mate if she chooses not to.
Rachel
That's pretty awesome.
Emily
I know. When I started grad school, one of the PhD students literally wrote her entire thesis on harvest men mating habits and ended up dissecting tons of species to look at the male genitalia, and you can find her papers online. Her name would have been Mercedes Burns at the time. I know since then she's gotten married. Needless to say, most of these mating habits typically start with the individuals kind of running into each other. The thought is that they find each other through pheromones, much like Rachel had talked about with the horseshoe crabs. But scientists haven't necessarily guaranteed or identified the pheromones that would be releasing shortly after sort of identifying like, hey, you're the same species of me. Males will attempt to engage the female in what's called a mating embrace. So he'll sort of entice her to try to do this mating embrace. And during this, he'll hook his petty pallets, which are an appendage that are near his mouth. He'll hook those behind her sensory legs. And her sensory legs tend to be the second pair of legs, which are the really long ones. But it can vary a little bit from species.
Emily
They'll kind of do a push and pull back and forth to decide whether or not they want to mate or not. So this is him kind of trying to convince they're like, hey, let's mate. Or her being like, no, I don't.
Rachel
Want to do that.
Mikeala
No, sorry.
Emily
They'll do the little back and forth flirtation if they decide to mate. Mating can vary in lengths depending on the species. So it could go anywhere from 15 seconds to three or 4 hours, back and forth.
Mikeala
What is an advanced species?
Emily
I know there can be some aggressive behavior during this time period with biting taking place or even potentially males losing legs. Several species will engage in what we call a nuptial gift, which is when the male presents the female with some sort of food source. We see this a lot of times in animals that do cannibalism because the idea is, if she's eating this, she's not going to eat me. But in this case, cannibalism isn't really common in this group of arthropods. So this is more thought to be like, okay, if she's going to mate with me, I'm going to give her this extra protein source so that she can better survive and our eggs will likely better survive.
Mikeala
Oh, my gosh.
Emily
Unlike other nuptial gifts where it's, hey, I caught this juicy caterpillar for you. The nuptial gifts for harvest men is a protein source that he generates from his mouth. So think of him presenting you with, like, a regurgitated heavy protein citywide. So then she'll consume this. Some of them will separate right after the mating has taken place. In other species, the male will continue to guard her until she's laid her eggs. And in some cases, she will continue to protect her eggs, and in other cases, he'll protect the eggs. So there is a group down that are found in the tropics where what happens is the male builds a mud nest and females wander in mate with him lay their eggs and then they leave and he stays there to guard all of the eggs from predators and from fungal inspections. And he'll have multiple different egg masses from different females that are in different developmental stages. So if you think the dad bod is the way to go, daddy long legs may be your ideal nature mating habits.
Mikeala
I love it. At first I was going to say, like, oh, that's nice. Presenting her with a gift is something to eat, but when you said it was regurgitated yeah, maybe not.
Emily
I don't know. It's not so much that it's regurgitated as, like, it's a protein that he generates, but it's basically coming out of his mouth. They give it as more like a protein spit wad. Yeah, of course.
Mikeala
Then again, honeybees, that's where honey comes from.
Emily
Yeah, they chewed up that pollen and regurgitated that nectar and mixed it with their spit. And you love smearing it on your.
Mikeala
Toast every day, man.
Emily
Better not to know.
Mikeala
Exactly. Oh, my gosh. That was a really good family.
Emily
Yeah. Such a unique animal that we find in our garden, but we don't always think about because we don't always consider them as beneficial as, like, some of the insects or spiders that are there. They're one of my favorite groups of arthropod, so I was super excited to get to share their unique mating habits with you guys.
Rachel
Awesome.
Mikeala
Emily that's hard to follow. Now I got to come up with something. Mine are definitely not mate either, but it's still interesting. So I'll scrape the surface and hopefully that will involve someone wanting to go down the rabbit hole. But I'm actually going to talk about dragonflies. Some female dragonflies will go through great lengths to avoid mating, even to the point of faking their own deaths. And this behavior actually has its own phrase. It's called sexual death fainting, which helps protect the females from aggressive males and to avoid injury from those aggressive males. But should the male not buy it, he's not fallen for it. Females will also employ aerial tactics to wrestle away from the grasping male in mid air. So this involves flying backwards or this is the cool one I thought was dive bombing into water in order to physically dislodge the mail, because it kind of disorients him and I guess it takes him longer time to recover from getting out of the water. And frankly, that's just a really cool fact. I just think that's really funny, you.
Emily
Know, I kind of think female dragonflies are more badass. Yeah.
Mikeala
Not only are they great flyers, but they will fake their own deaths to avoid meetings.
Emily
And if you think about it from like, an evolutionary perspective, like, you want to meet with the biggest and the strongest and the most ideal male, and if that's not the one that's pursuing you, then you got to shake them. Right.
Mikeala
So when dragonflies are ready to mate, the right female has met the right male, they will actually bend their abdomens in a way that forms like a circular or. Some people have called it a heart shaped formation. And this is very unique in nature because they have those long abdomens, the shape usually isn't reached by any other creature. So either way, it's safe to say that dragonfly habits are anything but typical when it comes to mating.
Emily
I love that one. That one's one of my favorites.
Mikeala
Yeah, that's a really good one. And they are really strong flyers. So I will have to pay more attention and see if I can capture a female trying to outmaneuver a male in the air. But, yeah, that was a really good one. And I'm sure there's a lot more information out there, but that's the interesting fact.
Rachel
If you need us, mikael and I will be sitting beside ponds in June.
Mikeala
I know I'm going to be, like, parked outside. I'm telling you, all these habits I didn't know about, and now I'm going to have to pay more attention. All right, Rachel, I know you got a really good one coming up, so.
Rachel
I chose our next intriguing mating habit because of a book that Emily introduced me to, like, two years ago. It's one of my favorite children's February books to bring out. It's called Slugs and Love by Susan Pierce. Here's a short synopsis of the book. This is how much I love it. Mary Lou loves everything about herby. How his slime trail glistens in the dark, and how he can stretch himself thin and squeeze inside things, and how he finds the juiciest tomatoes. But Mary Lou is a sly shug. How can she get herbie to notice her? It's the best children's book. Yes. So my fun one is going to be slugs. There are many types of slugs in Maryland. We have about four different kinds. We have the gray garden slug, the tawny garden slug, the spotted garden slug, and you might even find brown garden snails in some areas. The majority of our land slugs are simultaneous hermaphrodites, meaning they possess both male and female reproductive organs that are functional at the same time. And some species can actually self fertilize. But when it comes to mating behavior, simultaneous hermaphrodites, such as our land slugs, there is a question of which role role or roles an individual will adopt in their mating encounter.
Rachel
So they can kind of decide, hey, I'm going to play the male role today, or I'm going to play the female role today.
Mikeala
Respectfully.
Rachel
As land gastropods, such as land snails, they have no sense of hearing, they have very limited vision, and they rely heavily on chemo receptors. So their sense of smell and then tactile perception plugs can raise their head at the detection of pheromones in the air. So this is when you see them stick their little horn is it horn? Stick their little things out and they're like hey, what's going on? They're sensing pheromones in the air, and they will then crawl toward the perceived source. Many slugs also exhibit some degree of mucus trail following in order to locate a mate. Trail following can be an alternative or a complementary strategy to the airborne queues. So the slimy or the trail, the better the slog or snail.
Emily
Yeah, it's like a calling card, man.
Rachel
Okay. Once a mate is found, they undergo a prolonged courtship phase prior to population. So a courtship can last for several hours. Just like our daddy.
Emily
Long legs, some stamina.
Rachel
I know. The two position themselves along an imaginary circle with their head toward the other's tail, and they circle one another, and they can do this for hours. Just circling, the slugs crawl clockwise. So it's that scientific that they go clockwise, like, no counterclockwise here. And once they're done, their genital pores continue to face one another, and the circling serves to assess whether the other is ready to mate. And the speed of circling can decrease as courtship progresses. So they just get slower and slower. I mean, slugs are already slow as it is. How slow can it go?
Emily
I've seen some slugs bucket, man, faster than you think.
Mikeala
That's the thing. I'll see one out on the deck and I'll be like, all right, I'm coming to get you. And then I come back, it's absolutely gone.
Emily
That is true.
Rachel
Where did this thing go? All right, so as they get ready to mate, each protrudes its genital pour and its highly maneuverable penal structure, which strokes its mate.
Mikeala
Makes sense.
Rachel
Yeah. And the final part is the fun part, the loved art.
Emily
Is this like Cupid's arrow?
Rachel
Kind of. It kind of looks like Cupid's arrow if you Google the images of slug loved arts. So in the final stages of courtship, the slug will shoot its love dart into each other's body. And only a subset of those species that mate face to face in a reciprocal manner bear the dart. So both slugs, in mating, shoot at each other, and being slugs, they can choose to have the dart or not have the dart. Wow. Yeah. But it's all about that love dart.
Mikeala
All right, so the last one we're going to talk about is a tiny little creature called a springtail, which is also called colombo. And these are one of Emily's favorites. In fact, I think it was bug of the month maybe the first year.
Emily
I think my first bug of the month was preamantis, but this was one. It has been a bug of the month because it's one of my favorite pre. They're not true insects. They're called like, hexapods. They're like precursors to insects because they lack, like, just enough essence to be an insect. It's weird, but I love these guys because they're so cute and they have, like, this best defense mechanism, which is like throwing themselves up in the air, and they have this little spring on the bottom. The global ones are just all pudgy and cute.
Mikeala
They are kind of cool looking. It's misleading because some people call them snow fleas because of their jumping habits, but they are not a true flea. They're not even a true insect at all. So these are tiny little creatures you'll often see in the middle of winter. In fact, they'll hop around on the surface of fresh snow. If given the opportunity, I often will get calls or we will get calls about these in the middle of winter. They're really just attracted to moist and damp ground that has a lot of organic matter. They don't cause any harm. At worst, they're annoying. But even then, it's, like, not a huge deal. So they don't pose any threat or harm. But they do have sort of an interesting mating ritual. They actually have two different kind of mating types. They can what did you call it, Emily? Direct and indirectly mate.
Emily
Yeah.
Mikeala
So they will do both. But in indirect mating, the male will leave something called a spermatophore, which is basically a reproductive packet, including their genetic sperm or genetic material. And they'll lay it in a circle around a female. And then they will perform a dance.
Emily
Got a snow smooth?
Mikeala
Yes, a dance to entice her to cross the circle of spermatophores. And when she crosses the circle, the female picks up the spermatophore and it is deposited into her reproductive organs. So there's no direct mating involved. But it's still kind of cool because he has to do a dance. If he doesn't have the right moves, he can just forget it because she is not I don't know what she does then. I guess she will hop out of.
Emily
The circle to avoid maybe, or I think she could probably just walk through the circle without picking it up. That might be one of the things where she just doesn't pick it up. She's like, no, your moves aren't they aren't vibing. Not quite there yet. So, yeah, that's really cool. That's a fun one for such a small, amazingly interesting creature.
Mikeala
I know. It's pretty complex. And just like Emily mentioned before, a lot of these habits and behaviors, we don't really know why because there's not any money in researching it, but just how many behaviors are out there that we even don't know about and don't understand the complexities. So it's a really cool one. And springtails are fun just because they're kind of a winter creature. Anyways, that's all I have. I think that concludes the list. But it's a really good one.
Emily
It was a fun one to end with. Yeah. So that was our list and some fun facts about some animal mating habits that you might find in your garden or backyard or out and about.
Mikeala
It's. The native plant of the month with Michaela. Okay, so my native plant of the month for February is crane fly orchid. And this is tippularia discolor. So normally this is a plant you probably wouldn't pay much attention to, and even in the winter, you're not going to get a glimpse of this native orchid unless you take a walk in the woods. The foliage is really tight to the ground, but it's usually easily seen peeking out from underneath a layer of fallen leaves, so it still does stand out. They are evergreen, which is why you notice them in the winter. So you will be able to see the clusters of evergreen leaves and they continue to produce chlorophyll from fall through winter and into early spring. So this is while the forest canopy is open. That's why it's photosynthesizing during that time. So the most notable characteristic of this plant is actually the underside of the leaves, which are puckered, so they're almost like a seersucker kind of puckered. And the color is a deep velvety purple. And I swear to God, I'm going to copy this color and paint it in one of my bathrooms because it is beautiful.
Mikeala
It's just very rich, makes it feel royal. But even the top side of the leaves can have raised purple dots on top of the green part, so the leaves are pretty spectacular. But if you do catch the flowering stem, which isn't produced until July through September, these blooms are small, greenish brown kind of flowers. They look very orchidy, if you can say that. So it's very distinctive to that group. But if that's not cool enough for you, this orchid is pollinated. I'm setting you up. This orchid is pollinated by noctuid moths. So night feeding outlet and Miller moths. Is that right, Emily?
Emily
Yeah.
Mikeala
So the flowers are asymmetrical and they're twisted such that the pollen attaches to the eyes of the moths. Just like Emily said, plants are lazy, so the moths have to deposit the pollen on a different orchid for reproduction. So while this species is not considered rare in Maryland, crane fly orchids are an indicator species of quality habitat and should be regarded as kind of special. It just means you have kind of like a healthy woodland system. So this is just another great reason to get out in the woods this winter on a nice warmish kind of day and to try and spot this little treasure because it is very low to the ground, but the leaves are fairly sizable. They're not small leaves. I would guess they're probably like two to five inches in length.
Emily
Okay, I googled it.
Rachel
You're right.
Emily
It's a very pretty purple.
Mikeala
It is so cool. I'm going to go find some paint chips and try and match it.
Rachel
That's a great idea. So are they dependent on the outlet moth for pollination?
Mikeala
Correct, yes.
Rachel
So they just have a reciprocal relationship coevolution.
Mikeala
There's just a lot of kind of cool things about it. And it's funny because I just spotted one the other day, which is why it's my native plant of the month.
Emily
Yeah, very cool. What BuzzFeed is the bug of the month of Emily? So our bug of the month is the genus of midges so flies for sipamaya, and these are small flies that are found within the family of Surrat upon the day, which is your biting midges. So these midges are also known as no, seams, nats, sandflies and pinkies. So they are commonly perceived as a pest because the females and a lot of them, will take a blood male before she lays her eggs on specifically warm bodied animals. So if you've ever encountered a large swarm of these and gotten bits, you despise them. But they do offer a lot of benefits from an environmental perspective in that they do a lot of pollination and they pollinate some of my personal favorite crops, which include rubber avocados, mangoes, celery, elderly berries and cocoa, which is what gives us chocolate. So biting midges in general are distributed worldwide and we have about 1037 species that are known. Another interesting thing about these is that some of them are actually ectoparasites on larger insects. So think of a mosquito that bites another insect. So I'm going to focus on the ones that pollinate chocolate.
Rachel
We love chocolate.
Emily
So these ones are going to be native to tropical rainforests because that's obviously where the cocoa trees live and they range in size from about one to 3 mm. So when I say it's a tiny insect, I mean it is a small insect. They are most active for pollination during dusk and dawn to sink with. When the native cocoa flowers are fully opened, the adult midges will spend most of their time in the shaded, damp spots amongst the forests and they will hang out and lay eggs in roots, logs, dumps and in the leaf debris, because, again, being part of the fly family, they want that moist, damp environment. Now, where this becomes a little tricky is that the cocoa flowers themselves are very unique and weird. They're very tiny, they're white, they dangle vertically from the trunks of the cocoa trees. They are fairly odorless with regards to, like, what humans can smell. Oftentimes they may or may not have nectar receptacles in them and then they have super complex reproductive structures. The trees will have both male and female flowers, but they cannot self fertilize, so they're entirely dependent upon these images and most of these flowers only last about a day or two.
Emily
So cocoa in general has a very low pollination rate because of this. It's estimated about one out of every 500 flowers actually will get fertilized to produce a fruit. And the trees themselves can produce anywhere from 50,000 to 100,000 flowers during its lifespan. So this sort of has added to a damper on the chocolate industry because traditionally, these trees are an understory tree. They like being in these damp kind of areas. And the midges were also living in the same environment, so they. Could readily kind of pollinate, and it already had, like, that low pollination because of the short lives of the flowers and the complication structures of the flowers. But then instead, when you move these trees out of that habitat where they're right with the flies and put them in more of grove like setting where you have multiple trees in a row, you're giving them full sun because you want them to grow big and strong. That's not an ideal habitat for these images. And then in addition to that, nobody working around these trees wants to get bit by these images. So then people were controlling for the midges, not realizing that they were what was pollinating the trees.
Emily
So you kind of have this back and forth of it. So chocolate has sort of this bitter sweetness with regards to how it's pollinated. Yeah. This whole episode is going to be nothing but like, dad puns. I'm here for it. I love that.
Rachel
That was a real yeah, that's my.
Emily
Bug of the month is these chocolate images.
Rachel
I love that. Get your tip of the month here with Rachel.
Emily
Rachel, do you have some garden tips of the month for us?
Rachel
I kind of feel like February is one of those months where we don't want to go outside at all because it's cold, the weather can be rainy, or we can get those weird snow days. So we're just kind of, like, bundled up inside, staring at the four walls of our homes. So how can we make that better? Well, as gardeners, we tend to either have those really good green thumbs with our house plants or those really bad black thumbs for our house plant. February is a perfect time to wipe off those dusty leaves, and you can just do it with, like, a water solution just to get some of that dust off your leaves. Rotating your house plants is also really good. We don't have the same light that we usually do, so we have low light situations in the winter. So make sure you're turning your plants so that they are not tilting to one side.
Emily
Pretty much all my house plants are.
Rachel
Tilted to one side, like leaning for the light.
Emily
Oh, my God.
Rachel
Does she see what's going on over here? Probably not. Our home environments in the winter are pretty dry, and we have humidifiers in our bedrooms to keep the air nice and moist in our bedrooms at night while we're sleeping. But our plants do need humidifiers as well. They don't do well with that dry air either. So adding a humidifier to the area where your house plants are is a great little option to give them some moisture in the air that they need. Monitor your soil water levels more frequently because the dry air, our plants can dry out, and it's also a good time to repot or divide. If you have any plant babies or have any pots that your plants are just growing out of, and I like to do this in late February into early spring. You can also prune back any weak or legy growth or start any plant babies. Like, if you want to divide your Christmas cactus and do some propagation, february is a great time to start those things. So that's the House plants edition. All right, so if you want to learn more about house plants, you can check out our January 2022 episode, where we had University of Maryland Extension educator Jenny Rosencrantzel, and she is a wonderful educator, and she knows so much about house plants.
Rachel
She's great.
Emily
Yay, Jenny.
Rachel
We love her. All right, so the Maryland Fertilizer Law prohibits anyone from using fertilizer products to melt ice and snow on our steps, sidewalks, or driveways. So please don't do this. It can really hurt our waterways. And you want to avoid frozen turf because you can hurt the crown of your turf as well. So we're not walking on our grass if it's frozen, and you might fall as well. We don't want that to happen. If you haven't ordered any of your summer seeds for your vegetable garden, you want to go ahead and do that. You can buy fresh local seed, or you can order it from an online service. And you want to make sure that you're selecting cultivars that are resistant to diseases that may have been a problem in your environment. If you're starting your seeds indoors, you need to set up your grow lights and gather any of your other grow materials that you may need, like pots or trays. Soyuz mix your Heat Map february is the prime time to start your tomatoes and your pepper seeds, because they take a little bit longer to germinate than some of our easier things like squash and zucchini.
Rachel
Later in the month, you want to start seeds your beets, your turnips, your kale, and your other early season crop. And these will be ready to set out in your garden in about three to five weeks. So if you're starting them the second week of February, you're going to be ready to set those outside mid March. Or you can always direct seed those crops in your garden. Or you could build a cold frame and put them in a cold frame for mid March. And that's a great little place to keep some of our winter crops until you're ready to put them directly into your garden bed. Well, that's all we have for this episode, listener. We hope you enjoy it, and we'll tune in next month for more gardening tips. If you have any gardenrelated questions, please email us at, umegardenpodcast at gmailcom or look us up on Facebook at gardentimepodcast. That's garden thyme. For more information about the University of Maryland Extension and these topics, please check out the University of Maryland Extension Home and Garden Information Center website at go dot umd.edu back slash H-G-I-C thanks for listening and have fun getting down and dirty in your garden.
Emily
Goodbye.
Rachel
Just a reminder we currently have an open survey for all of our listeners. Whether you've listened to all of our episodes or this is your first time, we've developed an evaluation to find out if the information we share on the podcast has made a difference in your practices at home, that this is a short, easy, five minute survey, and we have an exclusive podcast sticker to give those who participate. We are so thankful for your feedback and we appreciate you tuning in for the podcast. You can take the survey at go dot umd.edu gardentime that's garden th Y-M-E. We'll include the link to the survey in our show notes as well and share it on our Facebook page.
Mikeala
The Garden Time Podcast is brought to you by the University of Maryland Extension. Mikayla Boli, Senior Agent Associate in Talbot County for Horticulture rachel Rhodes, Senior Agent Associate for Horticulture in Queen Anne's County and Emily Zobel, Senior Agent Associate for Agriculture in Dorchester County University.
Emily
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