I have host plant seeds!!!!!! smooth blue aster:for pearl crescent blue vervain:common buckeye hairy beardtongue:baltimore checkerspot rue:giant swallow tails dutchmans pipe vine: pipevine swallowtail butterfly i have a few requests for trade: cuphea bee balm cleome violet queen blanketflower rattlebox let me know if you'd like to trade. Thanks! stazia

Hello, I would love of yours-;; the honeysuckle passiflora inncense cuttings I first smelled honey suckle at my brothers in cali. and my passiflora did not come up, don't know why, this is only my second year gardening, I have;;;; gaillardia-pulchella purple cone flower little joe pye weed clarkia elegance malva zebrina helenium moerheim beauty yellow moon bean coreopsis allium christophii caryopteris bush- blue beard maltese cross-red redbeckia- green eyes email me if you would like to trade, I love vines we have a bare deck,ha. pumkingal-Lisa

"About passionvine...do you know if it spreads so easily like that up north?" Most varieties of passionvine do go crazy, but the cats make quick work of it once the gulf frits find it! Last year, I had dozens of cats at any one time, and most of the summer, they'd eaten every tiny speck green from the vine (they'd sort of crawl around pathetically looking for food... I gave a couple hundred cats over a period of a few months to a friend who grows a ton of passionvine so she could feed them). My vine has recovered and is growing wonderfully right now, nice and lush, but I've seen frits in my yard already, so it's just a matter of time before they devour it again. So, in short, if you're growing passionvine for butterfly gardening, you can never have enough, and I consider it a plus that it grows so well. The first butterflies I ever raised (I'm in Houston, too) were swallowtails--I went to harvest some parsley one day, and discovered cats on it (that's how I got into butterfly gardening, actually--it was a happy accident). Now I grow a bunch of fennel for them, which they prefer over the parsley (they won't touch the parsley until the fennel is gone), and the fennel grows really well in our area and is very easy to find at all the garden centers, so try that, too. I'm also growing frog fruit and blue pea vines this year, and both of those host plants are growing very nicely right now, but no cats yet on either. And, of course, milkweed, but no matter how much I have it's never enough. Good luck!

You seem to be a victim of success. The question is do you want pretty plants or happy caterpillars. I don't think you can have both. I agree that the cats can kill a plant by eating all it's leaves. Passionflower seems to adapt pretty well by underground roots and having baby vines springing up all over the place. I also grow a couple different dutchman's pipes and the fimbriata is especially prone to being killed off by cats. Hard to replace it without going to a special nursery hours away and spending boocoo $'s. I do it when I feel like it. Perhaps you should grow bigger plants that can't be killed off. Senna's come in tree form and the sulfurs are beautiful to watch around them all day. Giant swallowtail like citrus as well as Hercules club and prickly ash. I grow all of these and they are never decimated. I also have passionflowers and milkweed eaten to nothing regularly and just bought some more milkweed from a native nursery. It's my small price for butterflies around all day. Whoops gotta go. Giant ST just buzzed by. Denise