So I recently stumbled upon (and enjoyed!) this thread and felt inspired. I have yet to observe a lot of very large organisms, yet my time here on iNat has given me more of an appreciation for tiny things. Life is all around us, yet much of it is too small to appreciate at just a passing glance. Prior to the past couple of years I hardly noticed things like leafhoppers and golden flies, and even some small plants like Spring Beauties and Forget-Me-Nots had levels of detail beyond what I had initially recognized.
What are some of your favorite tiny things you’ve seen? :)
Of course my mind thinks of tiny wasps or hoppers but my heart leaps to this sweet little plant, Ayenia abutilifolia, that showed up in the garden. The blooms looked like delicate little squid swimming through the air, each maybe 5 mm long. I loved the plant so much though it did not remain long; it withered not long after blooming, as I recall.
I really love the tiny flowers of Mitella diphylla - like miniature snow flakes. Well worth carrying a hand lens on a wildflower hike. Not surprisingly, I have a lot of observations of it.
Dinothrombium (Giant Velvet Mites). Come on, what’s not cute about these guys? I mean, they’re tiny little stumbling, bumbling plushies that brighten up the bugscape. And the common name – ever wonder how many common names are oxymoronic? At a practical level, I guess that makes them pretty ugly. But as ‘mites’ go, these creatures are a little big.
Oh how I wish that they roamed as north as my area! You’d think that with all that ‘fur’ they’d be okay with more northern climes, but alas.
Here’s the tiniest little dude that i’ve found. In hindsight, I really wish I had thought to grab my macro filters for my camera to get a better picture, but I thought I’d lose track of him if I took the time to do it. (For scale reference, that’s the side of my cutting board. Dude was TEENY WEENY SO CUTE)
