Penny,

The "rolled leaf" you refer to is called a hibernaculum and is formed usually at the terminal end of a leaf with the leaf vein as its support. Sometimes a side vein is used in a leaf. But either way it will look like a small cone with a mostly bare vein leading out to and a little past it. Think small, as they are not very big.

They are used by the larva at least for their first three instars and the larva will over winter inside the hibernaculum usually in it's 3rd instar if they've reached it before heavy frost (otherwise they may only be 2nd). In nature on warm days even in the dead of winter they may come out and wander around a little and even feed if they can, but will return to their home again.

Hibernaculum can be over-wintered in your refridgerator, but do require tending on a regular basis to keep the humidity right and guard against mold. Better choice is to make a wintering over cage for them and leave it out in the elements in the same condiditons it would have been in if left on the plant found on. My special cages spent the winters buried under 3-4' of snow and they survived very well.

As a side, my ex, son and I used to go out for hibernaculum hunts most years both in late fall and in early spring to better handle the cabin fever of long winters. Where we lived there were several species of Limenitidinae that made them, so it was a very productive place for them. Takes a trained eye and each year you'd have to get your eye "retrained" to see them on say a 30' tall Populus tremuloides (quaking aspen), or in a large stand of Salix exigua (sandbar willows) or 20' tall Populus fremontii (cottonwoods). Seems like once you found the first one though they became easy, but sometimes that first one would take an hour or two of steady looking. Between all species we probably over-winter up to 100 hibernaculum most years that we lived in the frozen north, and twice that once we moved to the desert hwere we could more easily get species we had to drive 300-500 miles for before.

Thanks for the information. This willow tree usually looses it's leaves but I will make a catch basin with the row cover and catch as many as I can. Otherwise they may end up in the worm beds.

Penny

You shouldn't have to. They silk the vein as well as the leaf so I really doubt they will fall off the tree. They don't in nature, not even in the deep snow country where I used to live. Once you see one you will understand.

Here's a little red-spotted purple/Limentis arthemis cat coming out of its hibernaculum in early spring, Penny -
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Sherry

Sherry,
Would you please post a picture for me of Neonympha mitchellii ova on Scirpus atrovirens that are starting to hatch.
Thanks,
Larry

Hehehe, Larry! I'm slap out of pictures of N. mitchellii ova on S. atrovirens starting to hatch.
Carolina satyrs/Hermeuptychia sosybius are EVERYWHERE around here, plus little wood satyrs/Megisto cymela show up in early spring, and I've never even seen a Carolina satyr caterpillar!
Good luck with those Neonympha mitchelliis!
Sherry

I liked that picture and it gives me an idea of what to look for. Penny

Thanks for the info and pics too. I will check my own potted willows this fall too. When I was a kid back east I used to go through the woods in back of our home looking for Promethea cocoons that way. What a rush it was when I found one and what a disappointment it was when a closer look revealed that it was just one of those things we called "stick moth" cocoons. From a distance it looked just like a Promethea moth cocoon. Do you guys know what the moth was that made that kind of cocoon? I haven't seen anything like it out here on the west coast. Murray