Kaw Valley Almanac

Controlled summer burns are hotter and more effective in pushing back woody plants from prairie remnants.

Big bluestem has seeded out and is pollinating. Their seedheads can be taller than a person, and is also known by the name “turkey foot” due to the resemblance to the footprint of a turkey.

This adult cicada is emerging from its nymph exoskeleton shell, still upside down and its wings still curled up on its back. It will right itself and the wings will unfurl and dry, and the cicada will take on its familiar colors before flying off.

Believe it or not, these bugs are the same species: the two mating adult green stink bugs on the right looked like the round striped bug on the left when they were in the nymph stage.

Ironweed is blooming its beautiful purple blossoms across the state, with six species in Kansas that all attract a wide variety of bees, beetles, wasps, and in this case, a skipper butterfly.

This is National Moth Week, and people all over the world are leaving their porch lights on or draping sheets over a bush with a light underneath to photograph them.

Wasps have a practice of stinging and paralyzing caterpillars and insects to lay eggs into so their offspring will have something to eat. But most wasps, such as this Parazumia, live by eating flower nectar.

The bumblebee stashes the pollen in pollen sacks or corbicula, located on its legs, to take back home to feed the young bees and queen.

It’s been raining a lot in much of Kansas — not necessarily what wheat harvest and haying needs, but less than a quarter of the state is currently in some sort of drought, which is a considerable improvement overall.

With the Fourth of July still a week away, area prairies continue to shoot off their floral fireworks, like this sensitive brier. Bees collect the yellow pollen and quail like to eat the seeds.

Many in eastern Kansas are experiencing the annual explosion of hackberry butterflies, which typically perch with their wings folded together. Here they’re sunning themselves by opening their wings.

Many in eastern Kansas are experiencing the annual explosion of hackberry butterflies, which typically perch with their wings folded together. Here they’re sunning themselves by opening their wings.

Butterfly milkweed, shown here in red-orange, can be anywhere from dark red to yellow in its genetic variations. Enjoy these beauties for most of June, and count the butterflies, too!

Echinacea pallida, seen in eastern Kansas, is emerging at various rates: The pink-purple ray flowers begin by shooting straight up in a circle from the edge of the flower disk, then they flatten into a horizontal disk, then curve around and down.

The three-petaled triangular blue spiderwort blooms for a day, but there is another bud below it, ready to step up and open the next day. Butterflies and hummingbirds love this plant.