Fragments From Floyd

I grabbed this picture one sunny morning last week when the newly-opened Mums at the top of the drive were buzzing with activity. Literally buzzing. And all coming from one species of visitor: the Virescent Green Metallic Bee--a sporty little job whose name and taxonomy have pollinated some word sleuthing here on a rainy morning before sunrise.

First, I confess I had to look up "virescent" and then was puzzled (learning it means green or becoming green) why someone would compound green on top of green when naming this insect. At any rate, I'll appropriate "virescent" into my working vocabulary, because as much as I wax wordy about the woods and such, surely this term will come in handy some day.

And I note the little green-green bee's family name: Halictidae. A halide is typically the salt of a compound like chlorine. Like for instance, sodium chloride. Which is like, table salt. Which is also exuded in our perspiration. Halictidae is the family of "sweat bees". But since I don't sweat, they've never bothered me particularly.

The genus and species of this busy-buzzy is AgaPOStemon virescens. There was probably a time I could have broken down the genus name to some of its derivative roots and figured out why the name came to be in the first place. Now, even with help from a Greek and Latin Roots cheat sheet, I can't get anywhere. But I do love the sound of Latin binomials. They so often make me imagine a druid incantation way better than hocus-pocus. Help in pronunciation: it is often the antepenULtimate syllable that gets the EMphasis. Though not with virEScens. Go figure.

Curious. Yesterday not a single green bee visited a single mum flower at any time I checked. The day was overcast, sometimes misty, coolish. But why no bees? My guess is that it has something to do with the biology of this flower--that perhaps under those conditions its flowers don't produce pollen or nectar, and so there's nothing worthy of a Virescent Green Metallic Bee's time.