Fascinated by all the small life forms you find in your garden? Perhaps not, but it is still valuable for gardeners to know about them. “Pacific Northwest Insects” by Merrill Peterson will help. This excellent new field guide provides incredible color photos of over 1,200 species native to our region. The scope is the phylum Arthropoda, so this includes all the true insects (bees, beetles, butterflies, flies, etc.) plus centipedes, sow bugs, spider mites, and even spiders and ticks (yikes!).
This wider scope means this book provides better coverage of the many “bugs” you’ll find in your garden. Peterson recognizes the importance of plants to the insect world and visa-versa. “Given the specialized associations between insects and plants, it is no wonder that many entomologists are skilled field botanists.” This book is the most comprehensive in the Miller Library collection for this region and our reference copy will help you with any identifying invertebrate visitors to your garden.
If you can get past the creepy factor, there’s also a lot of fascinating facts to discover. Did you know that moths are a significant food source for grizzly bears in the Rocky Mountains fattening up for their winter hibernation? Or that beetles are the most diverse and numerous order of multicellular animals in the world, making up 20% of all species? Many visitors think the Pacific Northwest has limited insect life. That’s not true – this book will help you identify over 3,000 species – but we lack many “huge or gaudily colored insects.”
Excerpted from the Spring 2019 Arboretum Bulletin.