Try growing some native Mouse Melon in with your Passion Vine. Female Longwings are the only butterflies able to digest pollen and they prefer Cucurbits. Another favorite of female Longwings are male Papaya trees. Try planting a Cassia tree somewhere sunny and you'll get Cloudless Sulfurs and Sleepy Oranges. Plant Aristolochia and you'll attract Polydamas and/or Pipevine Swallowtails. Wild Lime will attract Giant Swallowtails. Fennel and Dill attract Black Swallowtails. Breynia and Oleander will bring in diurnal moths. If you're near the coast, plant Coontie and there's a chance you could see an Atala. Try planting Bacopa or Lippia for the White Peacock. And for nectar... Pentas, Porterweed, Cestrum Diurnum, Jatropha, Tithonia, Russelia, Clerodendron and Lantana.

"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

You are lucky to have zebra longwings. I have only seen one pass through my yard many years ago. He must have wandered way off course, but he found the yellow perennial lantana that was right outside my kitchen window. I was washing dishes and looked out and saw him there. That was the summer that a lot of southern BFs seemed to come north. It was a glorious BF summer. It's great that all your ZLWs hatched and were perfect specimens. What a thrill to see 17 take flight! Did you get a picture? OKSandy

DD and Sherry, Hope you get more visits from the Zebra longwings....they and the Gulf frits are the most frequent visitors in my yard. Make sure that you have passion vine for both. Rhonda