She is on her third flower this minute and she is not slowing down. Her wings catch the light as she moves, that deep smoky black flashing an unexpected blue iridescence that makes you stop and look twice, and then look again, because you were not expecting that from something so dark. She is not here for your admiration. She is here for the nectar and she is here to hunt, and she is doing both simultaneously with the focused efficiency of someone who has a great deal to accomplish before summer ends.
The Great Black Wasp
Her scientific name is Sphex pensylvanicus. Her common name is the great black wasp, which is perfectly accurate and also, as you may agree, an extraordinary waste of a naming opportunity for one of the most striking insects in the native garden. Somebody looked at those iridescent blue wings and that glossy matte black body and that impossibly narrow thread waist and wrote down great black wasp and called it a day. We can do better. We did.
The great black wasp is a solitary native pollinator found across most of North America, active from July through September in meadows, prairies, and gardens wherever native wildflowers are blooming. Unlike the social wasps that make summer picnics complicated, she lives entirely alone, builds her own underground burrow, and has absolutely no colony to defend and no reason to bother you. She is not aggressive. She is busy.
Her body is covered in fine hairs that collect pollen as she moves from flower to flower drinking nectar, making her an efficient cross-pollinator of many native summer wildflowers including mountain mint, goldenrod, and milkweed. But nectar is only half of what she is after. The female great black wasp is also an extraordinary hunter, pursuing grasshoppers, katydids, and crickets with her powerful mandibles and precise sting. She does not kill her prey. She paralyzes it with a perfectly placed sting and carries it back to her underground burrow, where she lays a single egg on the immobilized insect and seals the chamber. When the larva hatches it will have everything it needs. Fresh, living, nutritious prey waiting right there. The great black wasp has thought of everything.
She pollinates your wildflowers. She controls the grasshoppers eating your garden plants. She asks for nothing in return except the chance to keep working. She deserves considerably better than the name she was given.
The Piece
Her name is Liora, from the Hebrew word for light, because something that carries that much hidden blue fire inside it deserves a name that says so.
Liora rests at the center of a mountain mint flower head in full bloom, that complex cluster of tiny florets built up from sterling silver in careful layers, each individual floret open and textured the way mountain mint actually looks in late summer when it is hosting every pollinator in the garden. Her body is deeply oxidized to that satiny matte black, her thread waist impossibly narrow, her large compound eyes and folded wings rendered with the kind of detail that makes you want to look closer. Two real leaves spread outward on either side of her, their veins pressed permanently into the silver, the whole composition wide and horizontal the way a wasp landing on a flower actually looks, wings folded back, body leaning forward, completely absorbed in what she is doing.
The pendant hangs on a hand formed sterling silver loop chain approximately 19 inches long with a hook clasp that allows you to wear it shorter if you prefer.
The Craftsmanship
- Pendant: sterling silver, oxidized, with real leaf impressions
- Material: sterling silver throughout, oxidized
- Chain: approximately 19 inches, hand formed sterling silver loop chain
- Clasp: hook clasp, adjustable length
- Edition: one of a kind
One of a Kind
There is only one Liora. This flower, these leaves, this particular wasp pausing mid-errand on this particular mountain mint: they exist once. When Liora finds her person she will never be made again exactly like this.
A Note from Tamara
I have wanted to make a great black wasp piece for years because I find them genuinely thrilling and I am tired of people being afraid of them. Every summer I watch them work my mountain mint and I think about how much that garden owes them and how little credit they get. I named her Liora because those wings carry a light inside them that you only see when the angle is exactly right, and I think that is true of a lot of things that are too easily dismissed. I hope whoever wears her stops to look twice the next time a great black wasp lands nearby. She is not a threat. She is doing something extraordinary. She always has been.
Shipping
Your Liora is finished, packaged safely, and will be on her way to you within 3 to 5 business days.