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January 14, 2008
Mysterious Gift from the Garden
Master Gardener Column 1/12/08
As a naturalist for 30 years with the National Park Service in places like Yosemite and Sandy Hook, New Jersey, I have encountered some of nature’s most secretive fauna, including bighorn sheep at Lake Mead, mountain lions in Big Bend’s Chisos Mountains, and pink rattlesnakes inside the Grand Canyon. However, chance meetings with certain members of the spider clan are especially exciting and have not lessened since my move to Flagstaff 13 years ago.
Early in June, when I flipped on the light switch to my spare bedroom, a flicker of movement on the carpet caught my eye. As I tiptoed over, I realized that a small, tan multi-legged thing was sprinting along the baseboard, trying desperately to escape the light and me. Frightening in appearance with dark fangs and weird way of running, I was baffled at first but then remembered I had seen such a creature 25 years ago when I worked in Death Valley. What was one of these doing in Flagstaff? One of the natural world’s shyest creatures had stealthily made its way inside my house and had even evaded my two energetic, three year old cats.
After carefully capturing it and gently depositing it outside, I watched it dive for cover under a rock. Then I went to work to confirm my suspicions about its identity.
The strange visitor was a wind scorpion or sun spider of the arachnid order Solifugae, derived from Latin meaning “those that flee from the sun.” Wind scorpions are as beneficial to the garden as they are unattractive in appearance. They use their characteristic pedipalps, a 5th pair of long, slender legs equipped with tiny adhesive tips, to drink water, fight, and seize prey. The 4th pair of legs acts as feelers to detect their primary food of insects, especially pests in our gardens, such as darkling beetles, pill bugs, larvae, and termites. Larger species can run down and subdue mice and lizards.
Wind scorpions are not scorpions and are not poisonous. Generally nocturnal, they generally range in size from 5/8” to 2” and sometimes even 4” long. They are found worldwide, primarily in arid and semiarid climates. According to the National Geographic, they are called camel spiders in North Africa and the Middle East because of their humped profile. Some species inhabit grassland and forest environments. The Audubon Society’s Field Guide to North American Insects & Spiders mentions that one species, the Pale Windscorpion, “…ranges from Arizona to North Dakota and adjacent areas of Canada.”
Wind scorpions don’t run in a straight line, but weave with an odd gait, and yet they can tear after prey, “…like the wind.”
I was feeling good about escorting my bashful company outside, doing my part to protect wildlife in Northern Arizona, until I read that these reclusive animals hatch out in broods of 50. Indeed, during the next couple of weeks, I found two more alive inside, two or three which had met their fate with my cats, and one in the garden in August. Maybe it was the same one I had caught and released earlier in the summer. They may live from two months to a year.
If one of these amazing creatures happens by, don’t dispatch it. Instead, turn it loose in your garden, where, silently, it will conduct night-time missions to protect it from unwelcome insect pests.
Freddi Steele is a Master Gardener volunteer. Dana Prom Smith is a Master Gardener volunteer and the coordinating editor for the Master Gardener Column. He can be contacted at stpauls@npgcable.com. For more information about the Master Gardener Program, call Hattie Braun at 774-1868 ext.17 or visit our Web Site: highelevationgardening.arizona.edu.
Posted by maxmaddy at January 14, 2008 5:58 AM