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DAILY BUTTERFLIES Page 7
Pur-dy! I'm so jealous...but come fall and winter we Floridians are gonna rock this thread! I can't complain though because that Gulf Frit I saw this weekend apparently laid eggs on my passion vine! I found one egg yesterday and I was showing Mom today and we saw another one. Woo hoo! And when I was standing there looking at it, a zebra longwing flew by me.
The duskywings maintained their dominance over the blanket flowers. And I saw what I believe is a Black Swallowtail and it once again flew to my neighbors' yards. I chased it around and thought it might settle on my bougainvillea, but I lost it. It's too hot to chase anything these days.
I was watching a BS lay eggs on my parlsey today. First time i ever noticed them doing that (1st time I realized what they were doing) After she left I closely inspected the plant and sure enough there were little tiny eggs all over it. That was really neat to see her do that.
Here is my newly emerged Orange-barred Sulphur Butterfly. It flew right to the flowers to nectar. Must of been pretty hungry after a day hanging in the cage drying it's wings and resting. It couldn't wait to get out of the cage to fly! :-)
This message was edited Jul 6, 2007 11:06 PM
Oh! How cool Pdoyle! Looks like you're gonna be a "grandma" soon! :-)
Here's the other photo I got today. I am seeing more and more of the White Peacock Butterflies. I have host and nectar plants in my yard for them. I have Bacopa in my water garden and that is one of their host plants.
This message was edited Jul 6, 2007 11:10 PM
Oooh, that is so pretty. I hope to learn more abou which plants are best for attracting butterflies.
Pdoyle, Here's a great list of Butterflies and their host plants DonnaB put together for us. If for some reason it doesn't work, got to the top of this forum and click on the sticky thread.
http://davesgarden.com/forums/p.php?pid=3701847
Has anyone put together a list of favorite nectar plants by BF species? There's probably to many to list, huh? Well, how about the top 25 best nectar plants that should be in every garden?.
I started a thread for Butterfly Nectar Plants:
http://davesgarden.com/forums/t/745182/
And I also started a thread for recommended Butterfly topic books:
http://davesgarden.com/forums/t/744904/
I'd appreciate if everyone would take a moment or two to contribute to these threads. I intend to post their links in the sticky thread for reference. Thanks so very much!!!
Thanks Cordeldawg & Beckygardner. Gonna check those threads out!
Starting to see a few more BF's here. Maybe cause we are north of you southern Floridians?
I now have 5-6 Monarch cats, but 3 are already chrysalis'.
I have seen a couple of sulfas, and one GST has laid eggs on my orange tree. Funny, she looked at my key lime and then ignored it.
Have not yet had any GF's. Have lots of tiny cerius blues.
Still waiting the two tomato hornworms to eclose.
And would LOVE a few greek oregano seeds if possible.
Am totally enjoying this thread.
I have tried all sorts of bribery known to man to get this guy to come to my yard. Everything from butterfly bush to lantana, yet this one will not do without his coneflower. I do have coneflower, but he seems to prefer my neighbor's yard. I do think these are my favorites. :)
I am still waiting for my coneflower to produce some flowers. Any suggestions on how to get them to bloom? I believe I have 2 different cultivar of Coneflower. One is pink and one the purple. But don't know for sure until they actually bloom!
hmmm, I don't know. Are they planted in full sun? How old are they?
They are new, planted in late Spring (March/April). They get sun pretty much all day. How long does it take for them before they bloom when grown from seed?
Becky, I planted 5 seeds in Jan, I think it was.... They are just now getting their first flower stalk and bud. I'm excited. : )
~Lucy
I've got about 10 Moonflower vines total growing in 2 different areas of my yard. They germinated from seeds and just took off in about a week after planting them. I got one bloom on one of the first vines. It showed up at the very bottom of the vine, but none since. Maybe the Bloom Booster fertilizer will force some blooms! I hope so. The one area of vines is covering the fence panel already. It's growing in with purple hyacinth bean, cardinal flower, and cypress vine. One lone flower was all it produced so far. And that was over a month ago.
This message was edited Jul 8, 2007 6:03 PM
Gulf Fritillary from this morning.
Becky-- It's a very pretty picture, even without the blooms you are looking for. Are those zinnias and marigolds in the foreground?
Thanks, Sue. Yes - those are zinnias and marigolds. All of the plants in that bed came from planting seeds in the bed this past Spring. Amazing what you can grow from seeds! LOL! I never cease to be amazed!
I saw 2 Sulphur Butterflies today. But they weren't slowing down enough for me to get a photo. They have found the Cassia in the bush bed and I believe come visit every day now. Probably laying eggs or perhaps a male waiting for a mate to come along. I found a baby cat on one of the leaves, so put it in a small container.
I also observed a Monarch today. It looked like she was looking at my milkweed to lay eggs on. I shall be checking in a couple of days to see if there is any action. Nice to see a Monarch! Haven't seen one in about a month or so. I suspect she was hand raised because she wasn't afraid of me. Just kind of glided right by me! No photo though. She wouldn't stay still long enough to get a decent photo. So it looks like the butterfly action is picking up a bit. At least I hope so!
I was leaving this morning to go shopping, and I as I drive by the front of my street, I always slow down and look at the flower beds on both sides since I take care of them. I saw a Gulf Frit on my passion vine, so I did the only natural thing a butterfly lover would do - pulled the car over, put on the flashers and grabbed my camera (the neighbors can drive around)! I already had some eggs on it and I was hoping this bf was leaving me more. It kept doing this weird upside down thing you see in the photo. It would land on the end of a tendril and hang upside down. What's that about?
As exciting as that was, this evening I saw that I have my first caterpillar! It was very tiny, and I didn't have my camera with me. Hopefully, I'll get a shot of him tomorrow. Even Dad was impressed. We were outside admiring the very nice three-sectioned compost bin Dad built me (he's into woodworking). Isn't it great when your hobbies intertwine? I also use his wood shavings in the compost. My family's really cool about supporting my hobbies. I even have Dad taking pictures of palnts and stuff when he's out hunting! Now, I just have to start teaching him butterfly IDs....
mellielong-
Your picture made me laugh. I got this mental picture of the butterfly yelling, "Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeee!" Maybe this is like bungee jumping. ;)
Jenny
ROTFLOL! It does look that way doesn't it?
Melanie
Welcome back Millie! Glad to see you have frits now!! Yaaaaaaaaay! Yep the GFs like to hang upsidedown.. There are several BFs that do that, but the frits are more profound at it because they like to lay the eggs on the tendrils and it naturally causes them to go upsidedown because of gravity, all their weight shifts.
Congrats Karen! on all your Monarchs and everything your getting now.. Nice to be back in the swing of things.
That's a beautiful arrangement Becky!! My Moonvines haven't bloomed yet either. I had a rough start this year because of the weird weather. I could usually set my calender by them to begin blooming by the first of July.
Thanks to all of you for your posts, HUGS, WAVES, and HELLOS to everyone. (Lily, Deborah, glad you joined us Jenny!, Snuzer, Peggy, Melody, Lucy, Adrienne, Ginni, Carla, Karen, Millie, Becky & Josephine!!You guys will be glad to hear I have a regular hummingbird visitor finally. And a few other new faces in my garden also. I will try to post some pics if my computer holds out for me. Last time I tried top post I wrote a whole post kindof like this one, and while I was uploading the pic to go with the post, the computer crashed...
:-)Deb
Time to start a new thread... Keep up the good postings and pics!!!
http://davesgarden.com/forums/t/745775/
:-Deb