tee-hee! I sure hope you have LOTS of Aristolochia to feed these munchers! They don't eat a lot at first but just you wait...EEEEEK!

Nice picture of a Battus philinor larva. Much lighter colored than the ones I've collected in SE AZ. FWIW: At the place I have collected them several times in SE AZ, the plants are also very hard to locate down in and under all the other weeds of the area, making it also very difficult to find the larva. This was partially due to the larva almost completely defoiliating them. I found it fairly common to find several earlier instar larva feeding on the same small plant at first and before they disperse on their own - probably because they had about devoured the current plant. But I learned a trick for finding the plant by finding the larva during two narrow windows of time daily. Easiest with 4th, 5th and 6th instar larva because of their greater size. At least at this location in AZ, during the last 1/2 to 3/4 hour of daylight the larva tend to move off the pipevine and to a higher elevation on whatever other plant happens to be close by (so they are 3'-6' above ground), spend the night there and then descend back to the pipevine the next morning right after dawn. Down in the weeds very close to where they are spending the night will be the pipevine they were feeding on. Anyway, I found that I could drive the roads in the evenings and just watch for larva up on other plants. Got to where I could see them even at 30-35 MPH.

I'd be interested in a trade. I have seeds harvested this spring and summer from tithonia, assorted poppies( one is an antique from Civil war era in a grapey color, another is a peony type; all are mixed to some extent), larkspur, cornflower, gaillardia, dill, catnip. Have older seed which has been stored in fridge --assorted flowers, vegetables and herbs. LMK if looking for something in particular. Please email directly: rositoes@txcyber.com.

Marti, thanks for telling me how you 'try' to manage your vitex trees. As for the turtles I have about 7 or 8 grown ones and who knows how many little ones that are seeding the neighborhood. The little ones can get through the fence, but the big ones, some hatched here, can't. Someone else must have had them for years around here as a couple of them turned up on my Mom's patio, looking to be fed apparently, and she gave them to me. Other neighbors find them in the street or their yards and have given me one or two. I keep the bowls of water around the garden and they love to lounge in them on a hot day. They are more agile than you'd think and get in and out by themselves. The pipevines are easily grown from fresh seeds. Let me know if you want some. Hopefully the cats won't eat them all as they seem to be trying to do here! Just now I found ten caterpillars hanging out on the undersides of this one Sago palm. Never seen them do this before. They still have plenty to eat in this spot. Maybe they are getting ready to molt? Lesli, sure glad you gave the best bulb of the two that you got at the church swap ... LOL