The Caterpillar Guy

My family visits the Winter Park Farmer's Market often and we regularly find ourselves in front of the "Caterpillar Guy"(as my daughter calls him). The "Caterpillar Guy" is Lorenzo Zayas, owner of Nature's Way Butterfly Gardens and he graciously agreed to meet with us on a recent Saturday morning at the market. Lorenzo has been a vendor at the Winter Park Farmer's Market since May, 1993. He has a wonderful display of many different caterpillars and their host plants. On this visit, we saw Spicebush Swallowtails, Polydamas Swallowtails and  Zebra Longwings (Lorenzo's personal favorite).

Nature's Way Butterfly Gardens is located next to the entrance of the old
 train  depot at the Winter Park Farmer's Market.

Lorenzo sharing butterfly knowledge with customers.

Look at the chrysalis! You can purchase a Desk Pet (left of chrysalis box) or Caterpillar Inn (above chrysalis box) and raise your own caterpillar at home. 

Lorenzo gave my daughter a Buckeye butterfly to hold.

Visit the Winter Park Farmer's Market and check out Nature's Way Butterfly Gardens! 

Florida Wildflower Foundation's 2010 Wildflower Symposium and Plant Sale

The Florida Wildflower Foundation is  having their annual symposium on September 25, 2010 in Winter Park, Florida. This is a great opportunity to learn about (and buy!) native butterfly plants. In addition, the author of one of my favorite butterfly  books, Jaret Daniels (see reading list), is giving a presentation entitled, "Pollinators and Wildflowers." Hope to see you there! You can register here.

Tickseed or Coreopsis is Florida's state wildflower and a great nectar plant.

Success!

Remember the Butterfly Container I planted for my presentation at the Maitland Public Library last month? Look what happened...

I found eight Monarch caterpillars crawling around earlier this week.

This is one of my favorite photos.

We found this chrysalis hanging off the side of the pot this morning. 

And this little guy was just hanging out on the Milkweed.

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!