Traditional Tales

Dragonflies have been wrongly accused of sewing children’s eyes close, striking livestock. They have been called the devil’s darning needles, water witches and snake doctors.

Unless you’re a small flying insect, there is nothing scary about dragonflies. They are actually our backyard friends and help out in making a garden wonderful.

They actually help out around the garden by gobbling up mosquitoes, flies, and gnats. Their larvae cleanses the pond scum and devour immature mosquitoes, diving beetles, and other water bugs.

Dragonflies are an indicator species, having them around the garden means that the ecosystem is healthy. This is specially true in their aquatic stage and when they are on the prowl of freshwater ponds and streams.

To keep them feeding and flying around our gardens and ponds, add water lilies. A dragonfly can lay several thousand eggs a day in water or several hundred in the stems of floating-leaf plants. Before long you will have dragonfly nymphs swimming about in the pond.

During mating, the male dragonfly clasps the female. She bends to pick up the sperm at the front of his abdomen. Dragonflies lay their eggs in the water or in water plants.

After the eggs have been laid, the nymphs will start feeding, using their specialized hinged lower lip to catch pray. The skin of a grown nymph splits open and an adult dragonfly emerges, that is the life cycle of a dragonfly. (more…)