I’m your thimbleberry: The life and times of Rubus parviflorus

“In the spring, she lays ’em,” he says of the female wasp. “They hatch within a week. And then they start eating and growing.” In the fall, they pupate, and that’s how they spend the winter, in the halfway stage between immature and adult. By the next spring, the pupae have become adults and chew their way out of the stalk. But they stick around on the plant, and eventually after poking about a bit the females put their ovipositors down into a new spot and start the whole process all over again.

And this is enough for Haggard. “We don’t have to like a plant,” he says. “Because we like it doesn’t put any more value on it. Our thing is preaching using native plants for wildlife. And bugs are wildlife, too.”

A yellow-faced bumblebee alights on a thimbleberry flower. A few inches above it, a pair of damselflies dances in the air.

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