Monthly Archives: May 2022

Deep in the leaves

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There were lots of half eaten Dutchman pipe leaves scattered along the pathway of my garden yesterday, which only meant one thing. I had some big polydamas caterpillars up above. Looking up I spotted seven polydamas swallowtail caterpillars hidden deep within the Dutchman pipe vines. I found the babies a few weeks ago and then they vanished. I was so happy to see that they are still there, much bigger. They look to be either in their last instar or very close. So, to enjoy the final stages, I cut some of the vine and put it in the butterfly house along with a handfull of the caterpillars.

This morning there were three of them clinging onto the same vine, while the other two found some big green leaves to munch. The caterpillar can grow up to 2.1″ in length before creating their girdle.

The link below will direct you to my page about the polydamas swallowtail butterfly for more information and photographs.

https://sweetbutterflybliss.com/polydamas-swallowtail-butterfly/?frame-nonce=21a5d73d0b

Activity all around

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Monarch caterpillars and butterflies, oh my.

Although we have butterflies year round in Southwest Florida, the abundance of caterpillars in our garden is truly incredible over the last month. Due to this, our butterfly house is very active with new butterflies emerging and caterpillars of various sizes.

For more information, photos, about monarch butterflies: visit my page: https://sweetbutterflybliss.com/monarch-butterfly/?frame-nonce=337ab32fc1

Stroll along the boardwalk

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After a good rain last night, I took a stroll along our boardwalk to see what kind of life was happening in our garden this morning. There’s something about rain that brings the garden to life in a way that watering with a hose never does.

The monarch caterpillars were plentiful, with many milkweeds chewed down to the stem.

The square garden bed close to a bench my husband made grabbed my attention, calling my name to sit down and watch probably 20 gulf fritillary caterpillars continue to devour our maypop passionvine. They are all various sizes, with many in their molting stages.

According to “Florida’s Fabulous Butterflies” the gulf fritillary is named after the orange-red fritillary flower. Gulf is in its name due to its common occurrence around the Gulf of Mexico. There is always an abundance of this beautiful orange butterfly in our gardens. One of my favorite characteristics are the silver spots, created when “light is refracted through prisms in the wing scales,” which are located across both wings on its underside.

Check out my Gulf Fritillary page for more information and photos from our garden: https://sweetbutterflybliss.com/gulf-fritillary/?frame-nonce=c33150980c

More success

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This morning as I was cleaning out our butterfly house and replacing some of the plants for the caterpillars within, I heard a small cracking noise and looked up to see a monarch butterfly slowly emerging from its chrysalis. It is such a spectacular sight to watch, especially knowing how the life of the butterfly began.

It emerges by splitting the now translucent chrysalis along the length of the proboscis near its head. The monarch then slowly moves its legs out, holding on while removing the rest of its body. The body is swollen with fluid when it first emerges. The monarch will begin pumping fluid from its body to the veins of its extremely soft wings. According to “Florida’s Fabulous Butterflies” the wings expand by the pressure of the fluids moving through the veins on its wings. Once completed, the body shrinks to a normal size. The monarch then hangs upside down, we have seen for more than two hours at times, drying, hardening, its wings before it’s ready to take its first flight.

Today we had six successful hatches in our butterfly house, all of which emerged before 10 a.m. Once they began flying around the butterfly house we released them into our butterfly garden. Some flew to the branches of trees, while others flew to areas where they could sit longer.

For more information about monarch butterflies: visit my page: https://sweetbutterflybliss.com/monarch-butterfly/?frame-nonce=337ab32fc1