A male ebony jewelwing damselfly, perched and waiting to intercept passers-by. (Miri Talabac)

Q: I saw this insect flying butterfly-like near my garden, but when it landed I realized it definitely didn’t look like the butterflies I recognize. What is it?

A: I love these guys. This is a damselfly, an insect group closely related to dragonflies that have a dantier appearance. They have the same lifestyle as dragonflies – aquatic juveniles (called naiads) that have gills and which live in either still or running water, and a carnivorous diet. Both naiads and adults hunt other insects (plus tadpoles or even tiny fish for the naiads) and are welcome visitors to the garden. Dragonflies and damselflies don’t bother people, and while they don’t exclusively hunt pest insects like mosquitoes, horse flies, or wasps, they’re a good asset to have to keep pest numbers down.

This individual is an ebony jewelwing, a native species well-named for its dark wings and beautifully iridescent green-blue body. Their preferred habitat is in woods near streams, as these naiads live in moving water. Males have darker wings than females, though both have this cute, butterfly-like, floppy-winged flight which seems to bounce them over vegetation before deciding where to settle. They perch while waiting for potential mates, rivals, or prey to fly by.

The huge eyes on the heads of dragonflies and damselflies are a good indicator that these insects are very visually-oriented creatures, and it’s often hard to get near enough to observe them closely because they can be skittish. We have over a hundred and fifty species locally, in a wide array of colors; many groups also bear fun common names like dancers, sprites, forktails, dragonhunters, shadowdragons, spinylegs and meadowhawks. Males and females often differ in body or wing pattern, which can make ID a bit tricky, though I encourage everyone to experience the diversity of species you can find at just about any pond or creek on a summer’s day.

Dragonflies and damselflies are very adept aerial acrobats, capable of hovering and even flying backwards. These traits that let them steal prey right out of a spider’s web while not getting caught themselves. They can even catch and eat each other – demonstrating they’re really good at what they do if they can hunt equally-maneuverable species.

Q: I had a fall-blooming mum that I planted in the ground overwinter, resprout this year. I’ve heard I should pinch it back in summer. When and how do I do this? Or does it matter?

A: It doesn’t matter if you don’t mind a leggier plant or a bloom time in summer instead of autumn. If a leggy mum has tall neighbors to lean on (or a stake to support it), or low-growing companions to hide its bare “legs,” there’s no harm in experimenting to see if you like the look and combinations with other flowers.

Pinching accomplishes two goals – creating a denser, more compact plant, and delaying blooming. Fall-blooming plants rely on daylight cues to stimulate flowering; when the length of nighttime darkness reaches a certain threshold, they start to produce buds. With this type of mum, this threshold is reached before we prefer to have them bloom, so we pinch to delay that process by forcing the plant to regrow, setting-back bud development by a few weeks.

Plant growth hormones and sugars accumulate in shoot and branch tips, which triggers the growth of that end bud while buds lower on the stem remain in a sort of suspended animation. Pinching removes this dominance and stimulates growth of the buds below. Since those buds lying in wait are now receiving more growth hormones and sugars, they respond and develop, giving the plant a denser habit since several growth points have replaced the original one. This not only shortens the plant in the process, but also results in the production of more flowers since you now have more branch tips on the plant.

The chrysanthemums sold as annuals for fall color displays are technically tender perennials, meaning they have less reliable winter hardiness in our area. Those sold as perennial mums, which tend to be a different genus or species, don’t need this treatment, though they might flop a bit by the time they bloom.

Although mum pinching can begin in spring, you can still do a pinching now, around the window of time between the summer solstice and the fourth of July. Try not to pinch any later than mid-July or you risk the plant not having time to fully develop and open flowers as it regenerates.

The act of pinching is just what it sounds like — using your fingernails to snip off the branch tips, just above a node (the point where leaves attach to the stem). You can use garden snips or hand pruners instead if you prefer. As for how much growth to remove, you can remove just a few inches or up to half the plant’s current height.

Some of the recent mum cultivar introductions don’t need pinching to remain compact or to delay flowering until autumn.

University of Maryland Extension’s Home and Garden Information Center offers free gardening and pest information at extension.umd.edu/hgic. Click “Ask Extension” to send questions and photos.