Our Eastern Black Swallowtail Continued

Our Eastern Black Swallowtail Butterfly "hatched" at about 12:30p yesterday.   He hung for a couple of hours to allow his wings to dry.  Then he spread his wings out to let me snap these pictures of his vibrant colors. I moved his container outside later in the afternoon and he flew away!

What's up next? We found some tiny Monarch caterpillars on our milkweed yesterday!

Our Eastern Black Swallowtail

It looks like our Eastern Black Swallowtail Butterfly will emerge from his chrysalis today! His chrysalis has become more translucent and you can see his black wings with yellow and blue markings. My daughter has been anxiously awaiting his arrival. He has been in his chrysalis for about two weeks. She is excitedly contemplating a name now. Any suggestions? Stay tuned for more pictures!

My Little Caterpillars

Just returned from some sun and fun at the beach! We visited the Enviornmental Learning Center and snapped these cute pics of the kids as caterpillars!

Baby Caterpillar

Big Sister Caterpillar

Florida-Friendly Butterfly Container Gardening Follow-Up

We had a great turn out for my Butterfly Gardening presentation at the Maitland Public Library last Friday. Thank you to all of you who came to hear my talk and to the library for hosting me! There were a lot of questions and I wanted to follow up on one in particular. Someone asked if passion vine attracts one type of butterfly when planted in the shade and another type when planted in the sun. I recalled that this was true but could not remember at the time exactly which butterflies these are. I consulted my references and it is the Zebra Longwing (photo by justchaos) that prefers passion vine in the shade...

and the Gulf Fritillary that prefers it in the sun.

The Zebra Longwing is the state butterfly of Florida and there are several types of passion vine, such as the Maypop (N), that are native to Florida.

This is the container I planted for the presentation. That's Mexican Milkweed in the back. Second row has (L-R) parsley, Black-Eyed Susans (N), and Pentas. In front are Lantana and Indian Blanket (N).

My daughter brought along our Black Swallowtail caterpillar for everyone to see. His container is a recycled plastic cheese ball container!