Haha...Sherry: it IS you! I just messaged you, asking if you were the same Sherry as on the GW Butterfly Gardens forum. And then I saw your zinnia pic. :)

Yes, it's me, I answered your message. I didn't know who javiwa was!

Sherry

Thanks so much! Some of the leaves on mine are starting to look scraggly, too, Iris. But the flowers in the picture are all from the same plant, which was the fastest, most vigorous, and, it appears, the healthiest and longest lasting of the group. I've already saved some seeds from it, plan to save more.

Sherry

Sherry, when I returned from my travels of 2.5 weeks the passiflora incarnata "maypop" vines were full, flowering, producing maypops. There were no Gulf Frit cats or eggs on any of the 3 vines. (I've raised 226 Gulf Frits this summer by just bringing in a third of the cats I've found.) There weren't any eggs or cats on the P. incense or P. suberosa (corkystem) vines either BUT there were milkweed assassin bugs galore!!! Last Sunday,I had to follow a Gulf Frit fly for a couple of hours in order to collect her eggs before the milkweed assassin bugs slurped them up!! 2.5 weeks without smushing milkweed assassin bugs basically shut down Gulf Frit production in my yard.

If you have any left over Zowie Flame Zinnia seeds, I would love to get some and try them here.

Anna

Anna, glad you managed to get some GF eggs before the assassin bugs got them! I was going to quit raising gulf frits, but I found about a first instar cat in the mouth of an assassin bug, so I started bringing them in again. I haven't counted them, but their numbers would have to be huge - my P. incarnata is huge and spreading everywhere!

Two of my red-spotted purples have pupated, two more are pretty big, and the others are still very small. One very small cat has even made itself a half-baked hibernaculum - it puts its head in, but its rear is showing! I can't ever recall RSPs growing at such varying rates.

I made this picture several days ago of the giant swallowtails eating rue. Now, two have purged, one of these is in the "C", and the other one is wandering around the cage looking for a place to pupate. One of the GSTs eating wafer ash has purged, soon to pupate.

I'll be happy to send you some Zowie Yellow Flame seeds in the near future.

Sherry

Those are beautiful Giants, Sherry!

anna: Our neighbor's P. incense crept under the fence and it has found a home in our yard. I was excited that I had a host plant for the GFs, but they're completely ignoring it, preferring to lay eggs on the P. caerulea. I've been putting a bunch into a small, netted enclosure -- saving them from the lizards and wasps on the prowl. I've been placing P. incense cuttings into the enclosure, and the cats gobble them up. Had really hoped the frits would help prune down my P. incense, though.

ETA: My current frit station:

Yesterday, second consecutive morning of finding the zinnia patch dug up, I decided that all other zinnias will be container dwellers. At first I blamed the wreckoons, then realized that it was the work of the harmadillos.

Brief pause while I go out to see.... Yes, today again. So, I will transplant the patch zinnias into containers.

I grew some zowie flame Zinnias this year, and also a bunch of other Zinnia 'cultivars'. Now there are so many different Zinnias I don't know which are the flames. I didn't have any Zinnias last year and I missed all the butterflies they drew, so had to have lots this year. They are a lady favorite. I have a few new native pasture thistle plants for the ladies too.

All sorts of stuff. Zinnias, Cosmos, Gomphrenas, Verbenas, prairie dropped, ect.
I have a bunch if new native milkweeds. Different species native to Illinois. There are about 20 Asclepias species native to Illinois. I lost a lot of seedlings because of the crazy weather, and a few were just recently eaten down to sticks, but I'm hoping most will recover come spring.
The ladies are back!
I planted 2 rue plants last year for the black swallowtails. Still no black swallowtail cats, but I was amazed to find giant cats on my rue, all the way up here in Illinois. I'm trying to get wafer and prickly ash trees going for the giants and tigers. This giant cat was so long, that at 1st, I thought it was 2 cats back to back. There are lots of Monarch cats here again like last year. I made sure to have enough food this time. This is a crysalis on Amorpha fruticosa, false indigo. I thought how amazing the way its shape and color blend in with the plant. I was lucky to catch this.
These swan milkweeds can feed a lot of cats. The orange oleander aphids were starting to get bad when the lady beetles moved in and cleaned them all up. The aphids always attack the A. incarnata the worst.This is a new vine. Cynanchum laeve, honeyvine. It will be able to feed an army of Monarch cats!A beautiful sulphur on Liatris aspera.
A Monarch on Coreopsis tripteris.

I grew 2 kinds of Tweedia this year. The blue and the pink. I had heard that Monarchs won't lay eggs on the blue Tweedia,(Oxypetalum), but they did lay eggs on the pink flowered species and the cats ate it, and were healthy. The pink one is now called Oxypetalum solanoides. I grow these tropical milkweeds in pots.

Your flowers are beautiful, Jay, and so are your caterpillars and butterflies! That's great that you have new types of native milkweed. I've grown Cynanchum laeve, it's a good plant, but it doesn't support as many monarchs as I thought it would, because it takes so many more leaves of it to get them through their caterpillar life. Maybe because it doesn't have the milk?

I found some giant swallowtail eggs and cats on my satsuma this morning on old growth! There's been no new growth since spring, maybe because I left three satsumas on the little, newly planted bush. This has never happened, they've only laid eggs on new growth of any citrus tree/bush I had. 'May have to switch them to rue.

Sherry

Thanks Sherry. I was just trying up some Zinnias that had flopped. They say honeyvines are very aggressive and sucker a lot. If that's they case I'm hoping the Monarch cats keep it under control. It's a shame that they don't eat trumpet vines lol. I know it sounds weird, but after being a helicopter parent to a bunch of milkweed seedlings and tropical vines I'm sort of looking forward to having a milkweed that I have to do battle with. There are the common milkweeds tho. They don't need any help spreading either.

Hello Miss Sherry. We have never spoken but I read your post all the time. They are very informative. My friend's wife has many butterflies visiting her yard now and we would like to know if you could identify these butterflies for us?. We are located on the southern border of Virginia. Thank you in advance.

They are Gulf Fritillary!