Raising Bordered Patch butterflies

This is something I did this summer, but haven't gotten around to sorting thru my pics. (because I have the worst software and it tortures me) Some are good and some aren't, but they are at least informative.

A few years ago a little birdy brought me a present and it has reseeded every year. It's a large native sunflower that will grow about 8ft tall! It branches out and looks more like a bush and produces flowers on every branch. I have a ton come up from seed and have to pull them out early or the trunk becomes too large and it has to be cut. I left 2 this year on opposite ends of the yard.

Here is a pic of the one in my son's garden. And he did refer to it as HIS sunflower. :)

I noticed under one of the very large leaves that aphids had started to gather. blech! I was not thrilled until I noticed a gathering of ladybugs! They soon laid eggs and I had a cycle of larvae and adults for several weeks.

Stage one...

Stage 2...and these could easily be moved from the sunflower to milkweed! woohoo! Blurry pic but you get the idea...

I found these and originally thought that they were some sort of unwanted moth since they were gregarious, and there were so many! (there were several leaves of them)

These are the Bordered Patch cats in probably their 2nd instar:

And here is a close up so you can see how cute they are!

Here they are in the next instar, a little bigger, a little less hair and look like they have black dots on them.

They become less gregarious as they grow older. I believe this is the last instar. If not, it's the 4th and they don't change in appearance.

Paige - Good thread! Thanks for showing us the detailed photos and info!

So let me get this straight ..... the aphids came, the ladybugs laid eggs to eat them, and then the Bordered Patch cats showed up. This is all on the sunflower bush? If so, that is an amazing little habitat on just one single plant! WOW!

Is the plant the African Sunflower? Or another sunflower? (If it is different than the African (which I already have), I would love to get some seeds from you!

This message was edited Nov 24, 2006 11:19 AM

This is a not so great pic of the chrysalis next to a penny. The funny thing about these cats is that they would make their chrysalis, inside and outside, inside the curled parts of dying leaves. I worried at first until I saw them doing it outside also.

Sorry this is getting so long but I'm going to force you to look at all the pics since I sorted thru them!

Here is another chrysalis that was white on the top instead of white and brown.

And finally the result of all their hard work! Notice this leave was dried and curled up and the butterfly crawled out of it and over to the stem to hang. Smart fella!

Oh, what torture....all these pics lol......now you have to look at my museum shots, that will be Torture haha

They are cute! It's strange they pupate on the dying leaves, is that time short? I've had some Monarchs pupate on the mw leaves and the leaves seem to hang on a long time after they are shriveled and dried up.

Great pics!

There were SO many cats that I just couldn't bring them all inside and provide food for them so I only kept a few to pupate inside. My son got the pleasure of releasing about 15 of them.

Ya think he'll love to do it as much when he gets older?!

Ta da! (actually I think this is one of the mom's)

Yes Becky, that's how it seemed to work! And I was just leaving the sunflower because I loved it but now it has many reasons to love it. I see sun coming out so I am going out today to hunt around town for stray plants and try to collect some seeds. If I'm not able to, don't worry, I will have them come up in the spring and can send out seedlings.

Fly, These leaves dried quick but I think it only took about a week for these to eclose. I have glanced thru your thread but haven't had time to finish so I haven't posted. It's only fair now that I go thru each pic. :)

This is a pic of the sunflower that my son took

I especially like that last pic, pretty. Do you think they like all sunflowers or just particular ones?

I've grown that tall one, Mammoth, and don't remember any cats on it, plus the lower leaves always dried and fell off pretty quickly.

oh how lucky you are Paige. They are so beautiful. Is that sunflower Maxamillion?? a perennial

Paige, good job!! That was a great demonstration and those are beautiful butterflies, I beleive the sunflower you have is the Common Texas Sunflower, Hellianthus annus, those come up in my yard too, but I had never observed all that activity, I will be looking a lot closer this coming year.
Josephine.

EXCELLENT!!! That's a great BP story. They really do have very pretty little chrysalids :o) and yes, the cats are communal and quickly skeletonize the leaves...but they are soooooooooooo cute!!! I often see gobs of cats on sunflower leaves - I guess I take Border Patches for granted as we have so man of them here. Am usually trying to concentrate on raising the less common or rarer butterflies and large sphinx moths...but after seeing your photos and those gorgeous newly eclosed butterflies I find myself tempted to raise some too :o)

Fantastic work!!! Do hope you will add egg photos too...it always helps to see the complete life cycle.

Am curious...do you think they would feed on those GIANT sunflower plants - the ones with a dinner plate sized flower center? There's a field on the way to the ranch where they plant several acres worth of those giant ones each year. I've thought about getting a couple of those huge seed heads and tossing them out at the ranch.

~ Cat

This message was edited Nov 24, 2006 4:50 PM

Thank you both! Josephine's, I looked the sunflower up on your website first (www.texasstar.org) and saw that it was just a plain 'ole sunflower. I know you're excited to see a native plant being put to such good use! I don't know if these cats would eat any other kind. These don't have large flowers but they do have some big leaves.

I never noticed the activity on it before either but I wasn't expecting it to have butterfly cats on it so I doubt I looked. I probably just saw the leaves like that and thought some sort of pest had gotten ahold of it. I didn't get any pics of the eggs because when I found them they had already hatched. While I was tending to the first batch I missed a second batch hatching out too. Maybe next year.

I stopped and cut off some dead flower heads today so I will sort thru them and look for seeds. The seeds don't look like the ones with the giant heads, like the ones you eat.

Yes, the seeds are very small, and the birds love them too.
Josephine.

I had a lot of sparrows that loved them. I let them grow as long as I could, which was until most of it was going to seed. I tried to cut them down before they reseeded in the neighbors yard and all over mine. I got on the ladder and tried to cut all the seedheads off into a bucket but I think I knocked seeds all over while doing it! lol

Hey Paige! Aren't Chlosyne fun? The cats will also thrive on Verbesina encelioides, aka Yellow-top or Cow-pen Daisy. That is where I was first introduced to the cats, then discovered them later on sunflowers, too. In the past we have left the sunflowers standing in the garden during the winter months with their seed heads intact to watch the house finches come feed on them. Very entertaining.

Kenya

Paige - Great thread! Enjoyed the photo of your son with the butterfly on his arm. And I also loved his perspective in the photo he took. And of course, it goes without saying, that your pics were terrific! I'm telling ya - your children are going to be awesome gardeners when they grow up. They already are. And I think the love of nature is something that they will never part from. What a great mom you are! You are raising up the next generation to care about our environment and wildlife. I hope you can convince your son's school to do some garden beds. You are very good at explaining gardening, cats, and butterflies! Go for it, Paige!

Hi Kenya! I've wondered where you were! I remembered you helped me ID the cats. :) Good to hear from you!

Wow, thanks Becky! I sure hope I am making a difference with him! It will be so rewarding if I can get this project going at the school. It might be the only place that some of these kids will see plants, and be interested. Once they leave they're more likely to be exposed to video games and reality tv than anything in nature.

Speaking of my son, that reminds me that the fields of sunflowers around the corner from us were recently mowed down for construction to start. He was not happy about it and kept saying they were killing the caterpillars. I tried to convince him that their season was over and they had all turned into butterflies by that time.

Last week I found a Monarch on the brink of death and I carried it around for a while, sitting it in different places in the sun on a plant. He would pick it up if it fell and bring it to me then he finally said "let's just not think about it". I guess he could deal with it that way and not be sad. What was sad was that 2 days later it was still barely alive. It was becoming too painfully slow for me to see soooo.....I put it in the freezer. It was a much easier way for it to go than being eaten by ants.

oh how sad Paige.

I know. It is sad! This week we found 2 Monarch's. This one dying and the other one recently dead.

The first Monarch I ever saw in my yard was a dying one! It came to my zinnias and could barely hold itself up, much like this last one. The first Mourning Cloak (and I've only seen 2) that I ever had came to my yard to die. It landed on my water fountain and just sat there.


But I felt oddly proud/happy that they found my garden to come to for their last days. Is that weird, or does anyone else think like that? You can tell me if "that makes me crazy". lol I just have this vision that they are weak and tired and then they see my garden and feel relieved and safe to sit down and rest.

I have started collecting the dead butterflies for a collection. I put them in a little box

I definitely will be getting some Helianthus.

It's always sad when I find bfs dying, I know it's the way of life but it's just sad. After they're gone I bury them, close to a plant so nothing can dig them up. Even in death they are so beautiful.

These photos are informative and beautiful. Thanks for sharing,

Chuck

Neat pictures Paige. Nice to see your son helping you and maybe one day carring on the tradition. I have had a large common sunflower or two pop up here and let them get pretty tall, but never noticed the activity before that you had. Need to watch this year for sure, that Patch is a pretty bf.

Today my husband was out bagging stuff to take to the compost center and at some time, somehow, he ended up with an earthworm in his shoe! He thought it was dead but Griffin insisted it was scared and that he had to get it out of the trash and put it in the dirt anyways. He was right, it was alive!

Super find paige!
The BP is beautiful! What an adventure for you and the little fella there! There's tons of that very Sunflower by the RR tracks a few blocks from here. I will check them tomorrow if they are still standing.

I've been reading thru "Butterfly Gardening for the South" and found this info on the Bordered Patch (Chlosyne lacinia):

Overwinters: Adult (third instar larva) Eggs: are laid in clusters of more than a hundred(!) on the underside of leaves.

Larva: Quite variable, ranging from an all orange to orange-red form, to an all black form with white stripes on the back, to a black form with an orange-red interrupted stripe (mine) down the center of the back.

Food Plants: Annual sunflower (Helianthus annuus) is the major food plant from spring until late summer, with Golden Crownbeard (Verbesina enceloides) becoming the major choice from late summer until the end of the breeding season in Nov. or Dec. Plants occassionally used include Brown-eyed Susan, Bush sunflower, Frostweed, Golden-eye, Hairy Wedelia and Weak-stem sunflower.

What I haven't read, but did learn from either DonnaB, Kenya, or Linda, is that they also use Zexmenia. I did have some cats on it also this year but it is much smaller than a sunflower. I do have some seeds for it but have never had it come up from seed so I don't really know how easy it would be to grow.

This message was edited Nov 25, 2006 10:50 PM

This message was edited Nov 25, 2006 10:51 PM sorry, been playing with the type

This message was edited Nov 25, 2006 10:55 PM

Paige, Zexminia hispida and Hairy Wedelia are one and the same plant, so they were both right.
This plant is supposed to be very easy to root from cuttings, although I have never done it, here is the link:
http://davesgarden.com/pf/go/57912
I hope that helps.

Thank you Josephine! Who would have ever known?!! (where in the world did they get those names?) I've hesitated to cut it back but my plant is looking a little on the tired side, and since it's supposed to freeze next week, I'll go out tomorrow and take some cuttings and try. I would love to have another one too.

I know those are really wierd names, one reason I am a little more familiar with the plant is because we use it a lot at the wildscape. I hope the temperature doesn't go as low as they have predicted, they said as low as the teens, I hate the cold, it killed my beautiful fig tree to the ground last year.

Oh no, I'm sorry to hear that! I'm fixing to force myself to bed so I can get out tomorrow and start preparing. I am going to take more cuttings, collect more seeds, mulch, and say goodbye to a few things for now. I need to water anyways so I'll get that done too before it hits. I have spring bulbs coming up too. I'm not sure what to do about them.

Is it late for our first freeze? When I was trying to put out my Christmas yard decorations today I was having a hard time because my plants were in the way!