Butterfly Gardening Part II

Butterfly Bush

Courtesy of Butteflysite.com

One way I search for caterpillars on larval food plants is to follow the trails of damaged leaves.  While some leaves look normal, others are missing, half eaten and visibly damaged.    Usually within a minute of inspecting the leaves and branches, I find the caterpillars hiding in the branches near the stalk.  In these unique environs also lies butterfly egg deposits on nearby leaves.  These caterpillars are awaiting hatching and will begin the larval stage, which will last two to four weeks.

I feel like a plant detective while observing their paths during this process.  For the last three days, I was able to capture caterpillars moving into the pupa stage.  This is the last stage before metamorphosis.   The pupa stage can take anywhere from two weeks to several months.   Today when I went out with my camera, the pupas were gone.  I can only assume birds found them earlier this morning.   For now, I’ll start the discovery process over and hope that the next group will make it through to metamorphosis.

Texas Laurel Bush
Bev's Backyard Spring 2011

I mentioned in my last post that the Southwest Desert is home to over 250 species of butterflies, which are divided into six families.  This week I’ll finish the list by naming these butterfly families as follows:

Blues, Hairstreaks and Metalmarks, Lycaenidae, also called gossamer-winged butterflies are small with wingspans of one inch.   Bright and glossy that often resemble metallic tones.

Brushfoots, Nymphalidae are medium to large in size with wingspans from one to four inches.  Colors range within a combination of brown, tan orange and black.

Skippers, Hesperiidae are small to medium size with wingspans ranging from one to three inches.   This family is moth like and are brown, black, white or orange.

Snouts, Libytheidae are brown, orange and white with wingspans of one and a half inches.  Their elongated mouthparts give the appearance of a snout, and are often disguised as dead leaves while hanging upside down.

Swallowtails, Papilionidae, are large and extremely colorful butterflies with black and yellow hind wings.   Three to five inch wingspans with tails that fork.

Whites and Sulfurs, Pieridae range from small to large with one to four inches of wingspans.  Mainly these butterflies are white, yellow or orange with/without black spots.

Since the remaining nectar and food larval plants list won’t be posted until next week’s blog, I added a few below.

Butterfly Mist, Ageratum corymbosum attracts butterflies of all kinds for a nectar source during summer and fall.  The alkaloid in the blue flowers attracts male Queens and after ingestion releases an aphrodisiac to attract females.

Fern Acacia, Acacia angustissima is not only an attractive plant, but will attract the creamy yellow Mexican Sulphur as a larval food plant.

Happy desert gardening,

Bev