Tag Archives: Southwest Florida butterfly garden

The ‘it’ place

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My Bahama Cassia tree is the “it” place for chrysalis.

Today while searching the tree for caterpillars, I spotted yet another chrysalis, this time a gulf fritillary.  The foliage of the tree must be a great hiding place for them to safely emerge.

One of the gulf fritillary butterfly’s host plants is the maypop passionvine. This plant I stopped buying as it shoots up everywhere in the garden and has been quite invasive.

According to the Flordia Native Plant Society, it has a “stoloniferous rhizome
root system,” which allows new plants to grow from suckers all over the garden.

To be honest, I do not remember where the original plant was planted in the garden. Now I have it growing in probably more than a dozen places, all over my extensive garden space. It has grown through dense mulch I just put down, too.

For the most part, I have put up stakes where it is growing and just let it be, while in other places I pull the plant. It definitely provides an abundance of food for the gulf fritillary caterpillars.

Hidden well

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The polydamas swallowtail chrysalis, I think, is very unique. The color often times depends on where they create it, as they can either be green, or brown.

The first one is well hidden in my Bahama cassia tree, resembling the color of a leaf. The last few photos are residing  in my butterfly house and are brown, similar to the color of the branch.

It will be interesting to see how long before the butterflies emerge. The last batch overwintered, which was fascinating because I live in Southwest Florida where the temps usually do not turn too extreme.

The yellow beauty

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This morning I spent quite a few hours in the garden with the company of the orange barred sulphur butterfly.

I have made it to the far section of the garden where my candlestick cassia plant is located, a favorite of the sulphur, with my stone pathway.

She kept fluttering in, flying high and low, close and far away from me. I lost count of how many eggs this sulphur left behind on its host plant.

The plant is already loaded with caterpillars of every instar.

25 and counting

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A few weeks ago I began a new project garden, inspiration I saw from another garden. That project – identifying plants with garden metal labels.

I have done two different fonts and today completed all 25 labels I received using my cricut machine.

It has been a great project as it has given me the opportunity to take inventory of what I have. The great part, I still have more plants to identify.

I have tried to plant natives in the garden, as they can tolerate whatever weather Southwest Florida throws at them, and they multiple and fill in empty space quite nicely. A good example of this is the blanket flower and coreopsis, otherwise known as tickseed.

Here are a few of the flowers that have been identified so far.

Blue butterfly bush
Purpletop vervain
Goldenrod
Wild lime
Firebush
Starry rosinweed
Penta
Zinnia
Blanket flower
Fire spike
Spiderwort
Plumbago
Lantana
Almond bush and an atala butterfly.

A little stroll

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When walking the garden, I am constantly looking up, down and around in search for the incredible lifecycle. Today it was a little monarch caterpillar taking a stroll around the water fountain.