This is a picture of the leaves of passiflora amythistina Minas Gerais. It is the first time that I grow any amystina. In the past I have had long tailed skippers host on the leaves if clitoria tenuta vines. This is the first time that I have seen any butterfly outside of the fritillary group use passiflora leaves as host plants in my yard here in southeast Louisiana.
Long tailed skipper is actually as assumption on my part. Are there any others that cut the leaves like this to shade their caterpillars?
long tailed skipper
We wait.
Do you actually see a caterpillar somewhere? are we just looking at the cut out part of the leaf? I have leaf cutter wasps that do that. I'm still waiting to see my first LTS!
Yes, there is a tiny caterpillar under the folded leaf. I looked up the long tailed skipper cat and this does look like it. The cat comes out at night to eat. Now there are bite marks and another folded section on the same leaf.
Under that tiny little circular cut out? Really? That's pretty interesting. Take a pic of the cat sometime. I didn't know that anything else used the p.v. either. I would be happy to have LTS here too!
