Hummingbird and Butterfly Gardening: Interesting butterfly behavior, 1 by beckygardener

beckygardener wrote:
I was outside before sunset and noticed that the Eastern Black Swallowtail cats are all over my dill. And ironically, one is chrysalizing right on the dill trunk. Odd. I also observed one of the other cats actually eating the dill seeds. I didn't think they would eat the hard seeds. But then again, the Monarch cats eat the milkweed seed pods. Go figure! It's probably pretty tasty and full of nutrients.

And I have quite a few GF cats all over my maypop vines. I haven't seen any GF or BST butterflies at all, but there are sure lots of the cats on my plants. Looks like I will be seeing more of the butterflies in a few weeks after they emerge from their chyrsalis. I can't imagine all these cats/butterflies this late in the season. I guess the season is different in central/south Florida. It really surprises me. I've never seen this many cats/butterflies in the Spring. Fall/Winter seems to be the time when they come here.

It was really funny today .... I walked out in the backyard where most of my milkweed is. It almost looked like snow floating around. It was actually milkweed seeds floating around in the air. About 20-25 seed pods around the yard burst open and out came the fluffy white floaters with seeds! Looked like an explosion of fluff! Everywhere! I collected as many open pods as possible, but most exploded and floated away before I could collect them.