At the end of summer I saw what I thought was a Monarch butterfly laying lots of eggs on my passion fruit vine in San Pablo, Bay Area, California, 94806. The caterpillars have hatched and are eating away a lot of my vine! None of the picture I can find for Monarch caterpillars look like mine!
The catepillars have black spikes, two central orange lines, and and orange line on their side right above a white line. They are kind of blue-grey on colour. See attached picture
If you can help identify them, what other plants can I transfer them to.
CLOSED: Help identifying caterpillars in Bay area, California
This appears to be a larva of a Gulf fritillary - Agraulis vanillae - see http://www.passionflow.co.uk/eggact23.htm and http://davesgarden.com/guides/bf/go/9/
Passion vines are their only host plant. Perhaps someone in your area on DG can take them if they have a lot of PV. If not, take heart, they won't kill the vine just difoliate it.
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