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e_moon60

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80 acres: Two new species IDs [Jun. 12th, 2008|11:49 am]
e_moon60
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[Current Mood |awake]

One of the native grasses we haven't been able to ID now has a probable, thanks to another landowner's help: Sporobolus compositus var. drummondii ,  certainly identified on his land, looks--in the photos he sent me--like one of our "mystery grasses."  It's now the dominant grass in The Bowl, the area that was, originally bare ground under broomweed.  Sedges moved in first, then the grass, which is now the overstory over the sedges.  (This is a seepy area whenever we get rain.)   We had not been able to ID it because we haven't found it in flower.

A bug photographed two years ago on prickly pear--whose image I'd misplaced and so did not get to BugGuide for ID until this week--turned out to be another leaf-footed bug, this time in the genus Narnia.  There's something truly weird about having a cactus bug named Narnia-something.

                                                                       

To my knowledge, it's not a Talking bug.
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Comments:
[User Picture]From: cdozo
2008-06-12 08:32 pm (UTC)

Did You Try To Talk To It?

I wonder if those nymphs I photographed on my prickly pear are baby Narnians.
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[User Picture]From: e_moon60
2008-06-12 08:38 pm (UTC)

Re: Did You Try To Talk To It?

I often talk to the bugs I'm trying to photograph, but maybe not in ways that a Narnian Talking Bug would answer..."Come on, *don't* go down there behind that...come on out...hold STILL..."

But this was taken in March 2006, so I don't know what I said beyond the first "Whoa! What the heck is that and what's it doing?"

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[User Picture]From: jowake
2008-06-13 12:04 pm (UTC)

Re: Did You Try To Talk To It?

Do we automatically assume Narnians talk in English. I know the Pevensie children were all from England, but maybe Aslan gave them the power to speak Narnian when they ended up there. If that is so, then presumably the bug wouldn't understand you anyway.
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[User Picture]From: e_moon60
2008-06-13 12:33 pm (UTC)

Re: Did You Try To Talk To It?

I don't know enough about entomology to know whether the genus name _Narnia_ was assigned before or after C.S. Lewis wrote the Narnia books (and thus whether it was a reference to those books or to something else.) Anyone who wants to look up the etymology of entomology in this instance is welcome to do so (I have another bad headache, grump, grump.)
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[User Picture]From: e_moon60
2008-06-13 04:27 pm (UTC)

Re: Did You Try To Talk To It?

The headache let up enough that I started hunting down the etymology.

My guess is that Lewis got the name Narnia from a town in Umbria, that took the name Narnia when it became a Roman colony, sometime before 299 B.C.E. The name is said to derive from the name of the river Nar. With his education, this is the kind of thing he'd be aware of.

One biology site said the etymology of the genus name _Narnia_ was from "yellow jacket" (and would thus refer to the fact that for some species in the genus, the front of the pronotum is tan or yellow.)

I haven't found anything *directly* linking "yellow jacket" to the town in Umbria, or to an older word that means "yellow jacket"...hmmm. Maybe the town's militia wore yellow jackets at some point?





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[User Picture]From: e_moon60
2008-06-13 04:38 pm (UTC)

Re: Did You Try To Talk To It?

And for those who'd like to know more about Narnia-the-Umbrian-town-now-called-Narni...

http://www.italianvisits.com/umbria/narni/index.htm
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