Such a fun discussion! Thanks for all of the input, pics and comments. Love it. I agree about passion vines and pipe vines really attracting caterpillars/butterflies, plus those bird poop swallowtails too. I leave them alone on my bigger citrus, but on ultra dwarf or young citrus I move them to a new larger plant. Any milkweed will really help you attract monarch butterflies too. I do get the most bang for my buck with passion flowers. Each summer my little garden is dancing with those fun orange naughty butterflies, LOL. Thanks for the ID on that butterfly bush, Jon! I've been in love with mine for a few years and just couldn't find any id on it. I remember buying it at Boyce Thompson so now I can put a good label on it, (Buddleja officinalis 'Boyce Thompson'), thanks! Keep the pics and posts coming all, Grant

"Funny Sherry I was wondering the same thing about inbreeding, never have seen any mention of it when reading about captive breeding." When I showed up here almost 7 years ago, I took some people to task about the way they were releasing large numbers of inbred giant silk moths. That went over like a lead weight so I have pretty much kept my mouth shut since then. Ladobe criticized one of our members about it last year but no one followed up on it. The quote was "Besides weakening the gene pool, forced inbreeding produces low egg viability, high malformation risk and so therefore high mortality. Not a good practice." One consequence of moth inbreeding helped cause a shift in USDA policy last month. The USDA no longer regulates interstate shipments of Bombyx mori. Those moths are so inbred they can no longer survive in the wild. I raise relatively large numbers (up to 400 of one type) of Saturniidae every year. I go to great lengths to try to make sure the wild males that my girls mate with are not the brothers or the male first cousins that I released. I also try to make sure my released males and females do not mate with each other. I do this by doing releases at least 10 miles (usually more) from my house and releasing the females and males at least 10 miles (usually more) away from each other. I used to mark my males to make sure they were not finding their way home but quit being that paranoid after years of never getting one back. I release at least 10 miles away because 7 miles seems to be the generally accepted maximum distance that a male Saturniidae can follow a female's pheromones. That said, I have seen a claim that male giant silk moths can follow female pheromones for "nearly 30" miles. YMMV I preface my next statement by saying I have no clue how this guy operates. There is a guy in Ohio that raises 3k-4k cecropias each year. I read that he has been raising them since '86. Something wiped out his cats in 2008 and he had to start over in 2009. I'm real curious if inbreeding affected his setup and I'd like to know what happens to all the moths he doesn't sell (IOW, do they get let go). As for inbreeding butterflies and affecting the gene pool, there is a lot of info/controversy on the net about it because of people raising butterflies for mass release at weddings. One related article I have posted before is linked at the end of this post. Last thought: I know of one inbred butterfly that has been studied a lot: monarchs on Hawaii. I believe around 20% of them are white now. My guess is they do alright because the favorable weather conditions don't put a lot of stress on them. They would probably have trouble with migrating to Mexico and surviving the winters there. Anyway, there is a lot of research out there about them. KC Here is a link that might be useful: All Aflutter

If you can find some Asclepias curassavica (an annual for me and you), it is the favored milkweed host for the Monarchs. Sometimes you can find seed, and now would be a good time to start them. I'm not sure how the Monarchs do with the milkweed cultivars like you mentioned. Anyone else know? Native milkweeds are good, and probably work the best. These include the species A. syriaca (common milkweed), A. incarnata (swamp milkweed), A. viridiflora (green milkweed; probably starts growing earlier than most); A. purpurescens (purple milkweed), and A. verticillata (whorled milkweed, but has very fine, feathery foliage, not very substantial for feeding purposes). You can get seeds from a lot of native plant seed sources, like Prairie Moon, but it sometimes is difficult to find the plants, unless you know someone who has some to share. They are difficult to "dig up" (tap rooted) and you probably should not remove any from their native habitat anyway, at least not without permission. I winter sowed a bunch of seed I purchased from various seed sources this last winter. Aristolochia macrophylla is another good pipevine that is a native in most zone 6 areas. Are you in New England, Missouri, elsewhere? You can do a search to find out what is native to your region. Hope this helps! Welcome to the forum! Susan

TomatoWorm59, I am in Parker County & in 7B zone...we are about 10 degrees cooler than the DFW area. mechelle_m is offering seeds & I have more plants that might have seeds still. I have only seen 1 male PVST lately hanging around so all my pipevines are doing well & should still produce seeds if I don't end up with hungry cats that like to eat them! Mary, I usually make sure I keep a covering of leaves over my fimbriata plants. Last winter, it was the coldest it had been in 20 years here & got down as low as 6 degrees & 10 degrees F. All of my fimbriatas came back from root that were lightly protected with leaves. What are the coldest temps in your area? A lot of sites say A.fimbriata is only hardy to zone 8 but it has done great here for me with the help from my native Cedar Elm leaves. I have oaks too but they are mostly in the front yard.