Wildflower Surprises

Several years ago, we planted a lot of wildflower seeds but not much grew. (It could have been that our yard guys were pulling everything up!) So, we were surprised a few weeks ago when we went to this part of the yard (which is usually hidden) and we found a lot of yellow wildflowers! I took some photos and am only just getting around to blogging about them. (Because Alex has some friends over and I've already cleaned the house so I have some 'spare' time!)

There are 2 different kinds of yellow flowers in our new "wildflower garden." One type, above, I've identified as Plains Coreopsis. I think the easiest way to identify these wildflowers is by the edge (margin?) of each petal.

I believe this other type of flower is a Black-eyed Susan. The center is kind of purple and the "eye" is raised quite a bit. Even though I took these photos a few weeks ago, I just looked at them today and was surprised to see...

three inchworms!!! (One is in the center.) I'm going to have to go check tonight and see if I can find more of these. I love inchworms! I've posted about them before, but thought I'd go ahead and repost what I learned about them last April.

Inchworms are a specific type of caterpillar. Like most caterpillars, inchworms have 3 pairs of true legs in the front of their body, but usually only 2 pairs of false legs in back where most caterpillars have 5 pair. They move by drawing their back legs towards their front and then stretching out their body.

Inchworms are also called measuring worms, spanworms, cankerworms, and loopers. They are usually about 1 inch long. They belong to a family called Geometridae or the Geometer moths - "earth measuring." You're probably familiar with the Inchworm song that teaches arithmetic. (See video at the bottom of the page.) We actually sing this song pretty often - sometimes during math.

Update: I went outside and found at least a DOZEN inchworms! We might have to try to raise some. :-)