DAILY BUTTERFLIES Page 21

Continued from: http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/t/776737/
Thank you pford for the amazing pictures at the end of the last thread, they are awesome...
Glad you joined us ViolaValley... please continue to post and make yourself at home!! Welcome!!!

What a summer we've had here in butterflyville here on DG!! I am so proud of all the new people who have taken up conservation of these wonderful little creatures! Some of you are already quite seasoned in just a few months. Congratulations to you! It is not so much an addiction, but more of a need we have risen to. We are no more obsessed than a new mother with their baby.

Thank you all so much for your pictures and input. Keep up the great work!! Raising butterflies is an extremely important occupation!

Hugs all!,
debnes

This pic was taken yesterday.. Queens and Monarchs all over the place.

The best part about what I do is we also save these plants from new development. These are homes for the monarchs but unfortunately due to developement many forget that mother natures babies have to have a place to live as well.

Many occassions we receive that call to the dig. Most of the Mills here hear of a new spot they will be logging out of for timber or a new developement replacing an auctioned farm and we are right out to the rescue. Alot of time goes into finding homes for all these plants but so unfortunate for those who at one time called it home

Love the photo. Simply breathtaking! ! ! !

Thanks Viola!
How do they know to call you? Are you on a list for this? How did that come about? I think its just wonderful! I would love to be on a list like that myself.

debnes

I use to be a digger for the wholesalers here in warren county until 5 years ago. I dug as a child with my dad. I learned as a little boy when he use to take me digging with him at a very young age. He worked nursery and digging himself. I followed in his footsteps but a step further. Since he passed last month I never really realized how much of an impact he had on me. I then started digging for myself and then contacted some locals. My cousin owns one mill and got the foot in the door. I love what I do certainly but savings these from destruction is even more important. The passion I have from going out there is unbelievable. I wish someday I could take some of my dedicated regular customers on a dig and they could see how it is. Some are skeptical at first buying from me but it takes some chatting for them to understand, this is different from the diggers that go out for only profit and tear up our woodlands. I wish they would give the loggers or the owners of the property a hard time that they give me some times. We are liscensed with the state as well as wildflower/fern diggers and have our dealers liscense as well. All our digging on a drop in basis is monitored. We have to keep the barn spotless, bug, pest free. All bareroots or bulbs can be inspected at any time. We dig daily and they ship out immediately to their new homes. Tennessee has done this for many years and being the nursery capital of the world as well makes it alot more enjoyable to offer a piece of tenn. to avid gardners like yourself.

Deb, you jinxed me by saying my bf season was just starting and that I was going to be covered in caterpillars! My Zebra STs are mostly in their chrysalis or close to it, but I do still have two little guys (one of whom crawled out of the cage - Mom recaptured him). I had previously mentioned gathering Gulf Frit eggs. Well, today I found more Gulf Frit eggs and one caterpillar. I knew he was there somewhere as I saw an empty egg case yesterday. Then, after checking my pipevine every day for like three weeks - I finally have some eggs! I think they're Polydamas from the color, but I haven't seen a Polydamas or a Pipevine ST here in about two weeks. I'll have to ask Mom what she's seen flying around lately.

Tomorrow Mom and I are going to the big fall plant festival at the USF gardens. They have their big festivals twice - once in spring, once in the fall (and smaller events each month). People bring wheelbarrows, wagons, and carts. I like to go to the booths run by clubs (like the Bromeliad Guild or the African Violet Society) as opposed to some of the commercial dealers. I told Mom she's gonna be my wingman and keep me out of trouble. At the butterfly festival I was trying to find passiflora incarnata because I prefer using native plants. There's one guy who comes to all these fests and 90% of what he sells is passiflora. So I ask him if he has it and he starts going on about how it's so invasive and it will take over your house and send out runners through your yard, etc. And a lady standing there says, "Oh, I wouldn't want that". And I'm thinking, "Ok, instead you're going to sell people red passifloras that will kill the caterpillars instead". And anyway, what if I had several acres of land and wanted something that would spread rapidly, huh? Then there was the time last year when I asked the Rare Fruit Council if they had any dragonfruit (I like the SoBe drink and got a dragonfruit at Lowe's and wanted to know more about it). And they give me this blank stare - "never heard of it". Then they were selling it at the next festival with big signs "Dragonfruit". I was so irritated.

So I'll try to stay out of trouble. On the positive side, I usually end up selling blanket flowers to strangers. They're so showy and I love to talk about them so when I see someone looking at them I just start touting their benefits. And now, I can add how the butterflies just love them! I need to start charging a commission fee, LOL. I'm also considering taking some kind of container in case someone lets me collect caterpillars from their plants. I'll let you know about all the fun I have tomorrow!

Melanie

Yes Melanie..
Let us know how it all goes. Your conversations at the festival sound like many of the ones I have in the marketplace. lol!
Yesterday I was shopping at Target in the bird seed section, and met a young mom looking for what to feed her collard doves. I pointed out the shelled sunflower seeds and peanuts, and happened to mention the butterflies. She was fascinated and wanted to know how I get the butterflies in my garden. I explained that planting their caterpillar host, and how the males come to wait for the females, and how the females deposit their eggs and the cats eat the plants and then morph. etc etc..Then I gave her a packet of MW curassavica. She just lit up!

As we were talking the librarian of our town libarary walked past us. I greeted her and introduced her to the young lady I had been talking to. She had overheard the whole thing. lol. The librarian told me how she had just visited my website the day before looking for what to feed a butterfly she rescued safely unwinding it from a spider web. I was so impressed that she was ale to catch the butterfly in time! Gave her a big high five on that!! "Way to go girl!!"
How fortunate for the butterfly that she knew what to do.. I was very touched.

I hear you Mel, about the folks representing and selling plants who say how invasive they are. Gheese!! We want them to grow like weeds.. The cats can eat so much. Some of these sellers can take us a few steps back to all the strides we make, and it ticks me a bit too! I hear ya!
_________________

Viola,
I think it's so amazing that you get to go digging to save native plants. We are so glad to have you here! I hope you will keep us apprised of what you find out there and how it all goes. I am looking forward to it!

debnes

Still more Monarchs in the works here>

This big guy hung out all day nectaring on the MW blooms and patrolling for females. He kept chasing all the Queens around between snacking.

Still getting lots of Sulphurs too. Several different ones visiting the deep throated flowers all day long.

The Flame Acanthus is blooming like crazy, they can't resist it.

Another one, a female. More pale in color..

Finally.. A cat my DD Valerie brought me from her garden. Turns out to be a Unicorn Prominent .. Very cool looking cat.. A skipper-like head and a horn halfway down it's back. Nice colors.
It was on her roses and she would have left it there, except the web worms attacked the rose bushes while she was at work yesterday. So guess who she brought him to... :- LOL!
Schizura unicornis, Unicorn Caterpillar Moth
Here is what this fella looks like as a moth>
http://bugguide.net/index.php?q=search&keys=Schizura+unicornis&search=Search

debnes

Lots and lots of Gulf Frits on this sunny day.

Little Yellow (Eurema lisa)

Fiery Skipper (Hylephila phyleus)

Cloudless Sulphur (Phoebis sennae)

Painted Lady (Vanessa cardui)

Neat pics and stories Debnes...spread that news and seeds for the bfs!! Wonderful cat with the "neck brace" LOL!!
Love your shots pf, thanks for sharing them.
I went to the Botanical Garden Sale today and to the Monarch tag and release. It wasn't real big, but I did enjoy it. I had 8 of my hand raised Monarch that were offered to them. Here were some of them the day they started to eclose.

Wow! These are ways too cool!!!, debnes I love that unicorn cat. Pf. those are wonderful pics. and Sheila, congrats!!! I can't wait until my Tersa ecloses....

Here is a few pics from the release today. There were a lot of kiddo's interested in the process.

The tags are recorded and applied. They take note of the date, sex, raised or wild also. Of course where they were released etc.

This is just before I released the one I was given #JJH321 a female!

Then I took pictures of those in the garden. I also chased a couple of Zebra Longwings, but they wouldn't stop for a picture!

Yeah, some of those butterflies need to stop and smell the flowers and get their photos taken! Speaking of that, one of my TSTs eclosed and I took the container outside to take a picture and release it. Well, it was determined to get away and live its life! Ha! I didn't get much of a photo, it lit out of there!

And here's one of my Long-tailed Skippers that eclosed and did pause long enough for me to get this shot before I released it. My bean vines have very little foliage left....what hasn't been eaten up yet is turning yellow and falling off. But that doesn't stop them...there's still a few eggs appearing on what leaves remain. The Purple Hyacinth Bean vines keep their foliage longer, so who knows when this will stop.

And a shot of ZLW cats...getting big! I was disappointed to find that I don't have Julia cats after all...yet, at least. Oh, BTW, I talked to a lady yesterday who saw a Janais Patch butterfly laying eggs on her Firespike blooms and is taking measures to protect and raise the cats. She posts on GW. I gave her a Flame Acanthus plant so she'd have another host plant. Guess I'll go out later and check all my remaining Flame Acanthus...just in case! My theory about these BFs coming up here is that the rainy Texas weather this summer led to lots of growth on host plants farther south and a population explosion for the BFs. And when the foliage was depleted in south Texas they headed north. I'm wondering how long my passies will keep feeding the numbers of cats I'm seeing on them. The ZLW cats seem more picky about the freshness and quality of their foliage than the GF are. Some that started on P. caerulea I'm switching to Maypop or Incense because the only fresh P. caerulea left seems to be high up in a tree.

This message was edited Oct 14, 2007 8:45 AM

Sheila, I just talked to my mother in Tenn and sherecently watched a bf tagging and release on TV. Said it was fasinating!
Linda, is the Flame Acanthus the same as Anisacanthus quadrifidus var. wrightii? http://davesgarden.com/guides/pf/go/60921/
Now my curiosity is up wondering if I have Janais Patch butterflies in my area. I'll have to go and look that one up on the Ga map.

Deborah

Nope, he's not listed. You Texas folk have all the fun. Guess my newly accquired Flame Acanthus bush won't be attracting any Janais Patches. sniff sniff

Yes, that's the Flame Acanthus I was talking about. I knew that Flame Acanthus was a host plant for the Janais Patch and I even got lucky and raised some one year on my plant foliage. But never thought about Firespike.

Deborah, what made the release so special was that I had some of my hand raised babies there. They didn't make a big show of it, I wish they had, but I think it was the first for them. Plus the Monarchs just haven't gotten into our area in abundance yet.

Just bought a Flame Acanthus from the Molly Hollar Wildscape sale, need to watch it next year.

Sheila_FW -- what you've done is raised awareness.
Planted a seed that will surely grow into something more that what appears now.
Everyone there will surely think of you when they see their next butterfly. :)

thanks for sharing the pics and story

I have a new dahlia I planted this year and one of my border collies, Lyn, has stomped it at least a half a dozen times. Sigh. Finally the poor thing got to bloom. The GFs are figthing over it. Pretty funny. Here's a slightly fuzzy picture of the battle.

And the victor. This butterfly sat there for a very long time, several minutes.

The favorite plant for the Sulfurs in my yard is the pineapple sage. I swear there at least 6 sulfurs in this picture... they are hard to photograph. I think they are the ones that look like shiny leaves. I counted about two dozen Sulfurs zipping around the yard today.

These are also new plants to my yard this year and they are very popular with the sulfurs, too. They are cuphea micropetala and melvillea (I think.) The micropetala wouldn't bloom all summer, too hot I guess. But, it had pretty foliage. Now that it's dropped below 85F it's blooming. Honest- there's about 6 Sulfurs in this picture, too. I swear they turn sidewise the minute I point the camera in their direction!

This is fun - it's like playing Where's Waldo? with butterflies!

Linda, do the ZLWs do ok on the P. caerulea? I have ZLWs flying around and I saw one a few months ago ovipositing on mine but the cats didn't live. That could have been entirely my fault, though. I just wanted to know that someone had success with it. I've since planted maypop and p. lutea so I have other choices to feed them. Well, once my vines get a little bigger anyway.

Melanie

Tandem Sulphers

Busy butterflies in Mississippi

Melanie, the ZLW cats do okay on P. caerulea. I did try to give them the fresh foliage, however. My ZLW cats are starting to pupate already...so far, two of them have.

LindaTX8, I was going to post for a confirmed ID on what I think is a long tailed skipper I've just been seeing on my Veronica and Pineapple Sage, and I saw your posting here, which pretty much does it! He has a beautiful teal colour when you look at him from the top, but I had a hard time getting a photo, he wouldn't sit still for long. He seems to like the Veronica a lot, he kept taking quick flights away but then would come right back.
And bordersandjacks, you talked about the sulphurs on your pineapple sage. Mine too, very popular with the little yellow guys!! I'd never grown it before, now I'll never be without it! The hummers loved it too but they seem to all have left as of this week.