Cleaning Up the Butterfly Garden

Neighbors gathered yesterday to weed and spruce up the butterfly garden. All sorts of plants are blooming in the garden this month: zexminia, lantana, prickly pear, antelope horns, rock rose and nightshade.

The monarch caterpillars - probably over 20 of them! - have completely devoured the two antelope horn milkweed plants.

Here's a chrysalis hanging on the cactus.

It's important to have pupating places and sunning places for butterflies in a butterfly garden. This is exactly why we put the cactus there!

An American lady sunning on the shrubby boneset.

What's Blooming Now

Mid-spring is a great time to be walking the Reach, which is full of blooming perennials. Almost every day, there is something new to see. Here are a few of the things you can see blooming right now:

Blue-eye Grass

Indian paintbrush (red) and pink evening primrose (pink)

Indian blanket

Rain lilly

Greenthread (Thelesperma filifolium)

Texas lantana (red and yellow) blooms among the sensitive briar (purple)

Sensitive briar

Engelmann's or cutleaf daisy

Leaves of the cutleaf daisy

Columbine

Pink variety of rain lilly

Pink evening primrose

Phlox

Bordered patch butterfly (Chlosyne lacinia) on the zexmenia (Wedelia texana) in the butterfly garden. This butterfly's larvae host on ragweed (of which we have plenty) and sunflowers (of which we just planted).

Cabbage Whites

Folks, the cabbage white butterflies (Pieris rapae) are all over the butterfly garden and the Reach today. Flitter flitter flitter.

This is an awful photo I took with an iPhone of one of them sipping nectar from our new Zexmenia flowers. Caterpillars of this species host on plants in the cabbage and mustard families.

The Butterfly Garden Comes Back

This fall, after 2 years of awful drought and lots of plant attrition in the FLWR Butterfly garden (a.k.a. Lepidoptera Lounge), the garden bounced back with an amazing amount of flowers. And with them, came the butterflies.

Anyone who walked by the butterfly garden toward the end of November likely saw swarms and swarms of butterflies getting nectar from the white mistflower, Gregg's mistflower, tropical milkweed and lantana (see photo above). All great natives for fall butterflies.

Here are some photos of a few of the butterfly species that so happily stopped by our lounge.

Queen (Danaus gilippus) - related to the monarch - on the mistflower. Larvae feed on milkweeds, and we got 'em.

A beautiful yellow skipper sips from the Gregg's mistflower. I'm pretty sure this is a Fiery Skipper (Hylephila phyleus) which is pretty common. It's larval hostplant is bermuda grass, which is also pretty darn common!

A Gray Hairstreak (Strymon melinus) on the white mistflower

A Variegated Fritillary (Euptoieta claudia) on the white mistflower

I think this pretty little thing is a Common Checkered-Skipper (Pyrgus communis), also on the Gregg's mistflower. Larval feed on mallows (like turk's cap).

This is the caterpillar of the Queen butterfly, feeding on the butterfly weed (Asclepius tuberosa).

If you know what any of these are better than I do, feel free to leave the names in the comments section of this post!