Green Treefrog

That is a Green Treefrog peering from an old chain-link fence post in our yard. The frog likes it because it holds water making a nice damp home.

We have four species of tree frogs on the farm. The Green Treefrog (Hyla cinerea) is the most common. The other three are Squirrel Treefrog (H. squirella) and two Gray Treefrogs (H. versicolor and H. chrysoscelis). These latter two can only be differentiated via chromosome typing. H. chrysoscelis is diploid and H. versicolor is tetraploid (which means it has twice the number of chromosomes).

Green Treefrogs, besides living in our yard and pastures, have colonized all three of our greenhouses. They rarely reproduce in the greenhouses, but routinely reproduce in any outdoor vat that doesn’t have fish in it. At any point in time we have at least a hundred tadpoles in our green-water culture vats. The tadpoles are relatively large with inch-long bodies and tails twice that long. The tadpoles are gray until they sprout legs and begin to absorb their tails at which time they turn green. To help them make the transition from water to land we float pieces of wood or Styrofoam for them climb out. The slippery sides of the vats can’t be climbed by the youngsters, which is surprising since the adults can climb glass.