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DeCicco & Sons Adding Upscale Floral Stations To Stores
Independent grocer forms partnership with Damselfly Flowers
A phased rollout of Damselfly Flowers products began last month at DeCicco & Sons' Eastchester, N.Y., store, with additional shops opening soon within the northeastern independent grocer's other locations.
Thanks to a new partnership with Damselfly Flowers, northeastern independent grocer DeCicco & Sons will offer at all of its locations the high-end floral boutique chain's signature collections. The phased rollout began on Sept. 27 at DeCicco & Sons' Eastchester, N.Y., store, with additional shops opening soon within the Pelham, Brewster and Somers, N.Y., locations. The remaining DeCicco & Sons locations are slated to open Damselfly shops next year.
"At DeCicco & Sons, we are dedicated to enhancing our customers' shopping experience with unique, high-quality offerings," noted Chris DeCicco, co-owner and chief marketing officer of DeCicco & Sons. "Our partnership with Damselfly Flowers allows us to bring an elevated floral experience to our stores, complementing the premium products we already provide."
[RELATED: Kroger Debuts Vanderpump Blooms x Bloom Haus Floral Collection]
"Partnering with DeCicco & Sons is such a natural fit for us," added Damselfly Flowers Founder and Managing Partner Brenda LaManna. "They have built their reputation on the same core values that we live by — putting quality first, engaging with the community and caring about every detail of the customer experience. We're excited to launch this partnership and offer something truly special to DeCicco's customers."
Damselfly Flowers started in Wilton, Conn., before expanding into New York City. The company now operates locations in some of New York City's most iconic venues, among them Chelsea Market, Grand Central Terminal, Moynihan Train Hall, The Oculus and soon Penn Station.
Pelham, N.Y.-based DeCicco & Sons currently operates markets in Ardsley, Armonk, Bedford, Brewster, Eastchester, Harrison, Larchmont, Millwood, Pelham, and Somers, N.Y. With Sleepy Hollow, N.Y., and Greenwich, Conn., set to open soon. As well as offering an extensive beer selection, prepared gourmet foods and specialty items, the grocer's DeCicco & Sons Events and Catering division provides event planning, custom cakes and gourmet fare for events of all sizes, and DeCicco & Sons Naturally is the company's private line of antibiotic- and hormone-free meat that's humanely raised on family farms.
10 Most Beautiful Insects In The World
It's true that most people do not put the words "beautiful" and "insect" together unless they're thinking of butterflies. But there are beautiful insects out there that are not butterflies.
As with butterflies, these beautiful bugs have not evolved their colorful looks for humans to admire, but to camouflage themselves, to warn predators that they taste bad, or to attract mates.
Read on to learn more about 10 of the world's most beautiful insects.
#10. Velvet Ant The velvet ant may be pretty, but it packs a punch.©Tarsal Claw/Shutterstock.Com
That the velvet ant can deliver a hellacious sting does not make it any less beautiful to behold. Also, they're not ants at all but wingless wasps. The fact that they can sting makes them female, as a sting is a modified ovipositor.
A velvet ant's defensive sting is actually delivered through a stinger that is up to half of the length of it's body. This ant is often nicknamed the, "cow killer" due to its sting. On the Schmidt's sting pain index this insect ranks 3 out of 4 (4 being most painful). Additionally, they can inflict an excruciating sting if stung.
However, these colorful, beautiful bugs are covered with plush fur that gives them their name, and the fur is often red, gold, black, silver, or orange and prettily patterned. Males have wings, and they sometimes pick the females up and take them away to mate.
Velvet ants are found in the United States.
#9. Fireflies A sight to behold in the spring and summer, fireflies are a welcome and beautiful sight.©Fer Gregory/Shutterstock.Com
By themselves, fireflies are not bad-looking insects. The common eastern firefly of eastern North America has a rose-colored thorax with a black spot, and its elytra are black and edged with yellow. What makes fireflies beautiful insects is the light they produce on warm spring and summer evenings. This light can be green, yellow, or even a faint red or blue. It is the result of a chemical reaction and produces no heat. Even firefly larvae glow. As a matter of fact, the larvae of all insects in the Lampyridae family glow even if the adults do not.
Fireflies are predators, and there's a genus of fireflies, Photuris, whose females produce light to attract unrelated fireflies. When the male comes close, the Photuris female kills and eats him.
#8. Broad-Winged Katydid An enchanting insect, the broad-winged katydid resembles a leaf.©Dave Hansche/Shutterstock.Com
This insect joins the list of beautiful bugs because of its color which is the fresh, bright green of a new leaf. Indeed, the shape and color of this katydid's body causes it to all but disappear as it rests on a leaf, and its favorite habitats are meadows and in the vegetation that grows alongside roads and railroad tracks. As a member of the Microcentrum genus, it has a compressed body and an angle to its wings that makes its shape especially pleasing. Like their distant relative the grasshopper, the katydid has long back legs that allow it to leap several times the length of its own body, but it can also fly. The broad-winged katydid is mostly found in the southern United States.
#7. Ladybug The vibrant red ladybug is actually classified as a beetle.©Marek Mierzejewski/Shutterstock.Com
Ladybugs or ladybird beetles are not only pretty but cute, with their round bodies and the black polka dots that cover their elytra, which are often cheerful red, orange, or yellow. Another thing that makes a ladybug a welcome sight, especially to gardeners, is that many species are voracious predators of "bad bugs" such as aphids, mites, scale insects, and others that infest garden plants.
Both larvae and adults eat these pests, and they can sometimes be seen eating them in tandem. If their regular prey is scarce, they'll eat other ladybugs, including their eggs and larvae. They'll also eat the eggs of moths and butterflies, but the ladybug's usefulness in getting rid of pests makes up for this.
#6. Dragonflies Dragonflies come in a multitude of vivid colors that shimmer as they take flight.©iStock.Com/H_Yasui
As ladybugs are efficient terrestrial predators, dragonflies are predators of the air. They can be easily identified by their long, spindle-like abdomens, huge eyes, and their agility while in flight,
Twelve-spotted skimmer. This dragonfly gets its name from the 12 spots on its wings. There are three on each forewing and three on each hindwing. Its beauty is due to its body, which appears to be made of polished gold. This dragonfly is found in North America.
Scarlet Dwarf. The body of this small, exotic Asian dragonfly is a rich scarlet. The color is found on its thorax, its abdomen, and even its eyes. The wings have an orange flush close to where they attach to the body.
Sapphire Flutterer. This is also a small dragonfly that's found in South Asia and Australia. Its long abdomen is cobalt blue, and its wings are glimmering purple.
Crimson Glider. This beautiful insect from Asia has a Day-Glo magenta abdomen and the veins in its wings are scarlet. Males can be told from females because their heads are reddish-brown. The female's head is brown and there are black and brown stripes on the thorax.
Phantom Flutterer. Depending on the light, this dragonfly found in Africa can be iridescent shades of blue, violet red, or purple, or sometimes all those colors at the same time. The hindwings have a large patch of glittering purple where they join the body.
Damselflies are closely related to dragonflies except they fold their wings when they rest. They're also smaller and thinner. One of the most beautiful is the large red damselfly found in Europe and North Africa. The abdomen of the male is scarlet and ringed with black and bronze. There are three color types of females, and they can be black or red with yellow bands on the abdomen.
Read about dragonflies here and the difference between dragonflies and damselflies here.
#5. Mourning Cloak Butterfly Mourning Cloak butterflies boast a stunning combination of colors and patterns.©iStock.Com/Anatoliy Berislavskiy
Since no list of the prettiest insects would be complete without butterflies and moths, the butterfly on this list is the mourning cloak. Found in North America and Eurasia, this gorgeous butterfly looks like no other. The top of its wings is a velvety dark maroon. The edges are ragged and edged with what looks like gold leaf. There are iridescent blue spots between the maroon and the gold. The underside of the wings is filled with striations of gray, and the golden edges of the wings are visible. Males and females are alike.
The mourning cloak is one of the longest-lived of the butterflies and can live as long as a year. One reason for this is that they hibernate in the winter, which gives them an advantage. Sometimes mourning cloaks emerge from hibernation even before all the snow has melted. They don't so much take nectar from flowers as they drink the sap, the liquid from rotting fruit, and honeydew from aphids.
#4. Rosy Maple Moth Featuring bright yellow and pink, the rosy maple moth is one of the prettiest moths in the world.©Melinda Fawver/Shutterstock.Com
The rosy maple moth is a silk moth, a family that contains some of the most beautiful moths. It gets its name because its caterpillar mostly feeds on several species of maple trees, sometimes defoliating them in the process. Ironically, the adult doesn't eat.
The tiniest silk moth, the rosy maple only has a wingspan of 1.25 to 1.75 inches, with the females being a little larger than the males. Their wings are notably pink and yellow, and they have pink or rosy-colored legs and antennae. Their furry bodies are also yellow, and the male's antennae are fuzzier than the female's. Read more about moths.
#3. Picasso Bug The Picasso bug is nature's work of art.©Dave Montreuil/Shutterstock.Com
This exotic bug, whose scientific name is Sphaerocoris annulus, looks like a child picked up some paints and carefully painted all kinds of abstract designs on its back. Found in subSaharan Africa, the Picasso bug grows to only 1/3 of an inch long. Its ground color is green but it has eleven spots edged with red and black and a wavy band of red-bordered in yellow and black near the head. These colors warn predators that the insect is toxic, but if that doesn't work, the bug emits an off-putting smell.
#2. Orchid Mantis Bearing a striking resemblance to an orchid, the orchid mantis can easily camouflage itself amongst the flowers.©iStock.Com/phittavas
The astonishing orchid mantis is one of a group of mantids that mimic flowers. In this case, it mimics the sugar pink Phalaenopsis orchids found in the tropical rainforests of southeast Asia. It is nearly impossible to see this colorful insect when it rests among the petals of this orchid. Four of its six legs look like the orchid's petals, which leaves the other two to grab prey, which range from butterflies to moths to flies, bees, and beetles. The rest of the body is the pale green of the orchid's stems, though the mantis is able to change color. These beautiful insects will also eat each other. As with many other mantids, the female is much bigger than the male.
#1. Chrysina aurigansThis exotic jewel scarab is native to the rainforests of Costa Rica.
©Musée d'histoire naturelle de Lille, CC BY-SA 4.0 , via Wikimedia Commons – Original / License
One of the jewel scarabs, this exotic little beetle is not only the world's prettiest insect but is arguably its most beautiful animal.
The reason is simple. It looks like a drop of molten gold. Even though it has an exoskeleton made of chitin like the lowliest cockroach, the light plays upon it in ways that give it its shimmering look. Chrysina aurigans is native to the rainforests of Costa Rica.
Other golden beetles in its genus are C. Resplendens and C. Limbata. There's even a sister beetle that looks like a little nugget of polished silver. This beetle's name is C. Chrysargyrea.
Summary Of The 10 Most Beautiful Insects In The WorldRank
Insect Species
10.
Velvet Ant
9.
Fireflies
8.
Broad-Winged Katydid
7.
Ladybug
6.
Dragonflies
5.
Mourning Cloak Butterfly
4.
Rosy Maple Moth
3.
Picasso Bug
2.
Orchid Mantis
1.
Chrysina aurigans
The post 10 Most Beautiful Insects In The World appeared first on A-Z Animals.
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Science KS1 / KS2 The Dangerous Life Of The Damselfly (no Narration)
The damselfly leads a dangerous life, but what exactly are the challenges that it faces?
How does a Damselfly keep itself away from danger, how does it move and what happens when a predator tries to catch it?
This is from the series: Wonders of Nature
Teacher NotesThe clip could be used in the classroom or in an assembly as a way of starting a conversation or as inspiration for artwork, poems or stories.
Questions to ask could include: "What does the damselfly do when the frog tries to catch it?
What does the damselfly have that helps it to get away from danger? What is a danger to the damselfly?"
Curriculum NotesThis clip will be relevant for teaching Science and Geography. This topic appears in KS1 and KS2 in England, Wales and Northern Ireland and Early and First level and Second Level in Scotland.
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