Woo hoo Bea! That's awesome.

I've had several monarchs all year but now have tons that should stay here until some migrate north in the spring.

Rhonda

My milkweed & passionvine plants are also recuperating, have over two dozen of chrysalises (monarch & zebra long wing)

Glov I plan to plant a passion vine next spring for the zebras which we have in abandance here but in case they eat it down to nubs I looked for alternate food sources and found out they also eat viola species. I have lots of wild violets. Have yours eaten those?

I guess we'll be making a second b cage to lower over and around the pile where the passion vine will grow. Last thing I want is squirrels and anoles eating my cats.

From my experience, Bea, the cats do well on the vines without protection. The vines grow fairly quickly and won't like a cage. I don't think the squirrels eat the cats, but they will dig up pots. Plants in the ground don't seem as appealing to the squirrels. When you discover cats you can put them in a cage with lots of leaves to feed them.

Tom that's probably what we'll do. Our butterfly cage is 4x4x4 so large enough and that's what we do with the monarchs. I have 4 milkweed plants planted in my bed where the eggs are laid. When the eggs hatch we place them on a potted milkweed plant in the cage. I keep 16 potted milkweeds and rotate them in the cage as they're eaten up.

We also have gobs of monarchs and other butterflies this year. The milkweeds are stripped bare and they pretty much killed several of the fancier varieties of passiflora that I had like Sunburst, Nigradenia, and Ruby glow. Like, they actually died lol, from being leafless so long!

Next time I get P.Sunburst, I am putting IT in a cage and the butterfly cats aren't getting it! That's their favorite and they eat it to the ground even the stems, I saw them do it lol. My Lavender Lady is still doing okay even without any leaves but not really blooming grr.

I will just replace, of course, but I do need to get more native ones going and some that are aggressive and can take frost because maybe if I get more common types, it might take the pressure off my "good"varieties".

They killed P Caerulea too before I could get enough cuttings going. I like to use this one because it is a good pollinator fir almost all other passiflora. I am going to get more going in the greenhouse this winter.

P Suberosa is barely hanging on. I bought one in a pot and it got monsterous and they ate it to the ground! I took the pot and hid it so they couldn't finish killing it before it could recover. When it gets some legth I will be taking cuttings so hopefully this doesn't happen next year.

What do you guys do to keep them from totally decimating your passionflowers?

~Sjn

*hmm not sure why my text is showing up italicized lol..stupid phone