I don't know if it will grow fast enough for you or how it will work for the caterpillars, but you could try "Tiger Eyes" sumac. Its a variant of staghorn. They have both regular staghorn sumac and tiger eyes at the Children's Garden in Dayton (which I highly recommend). I put some in my yard after the gardeners there told me it doesn't go quite as crazy as normal staghorn. I put it in last fall so I cannot tell you what it's growth will be like established. It is a pretty, if a little garish, plant.

Hope that helps,
Elisabeth

Sweetgum grows like a weed down here - maybe you could plant some sweetgum of your own? I got sweetgum leaves for my lunas from small trees frequently, and they'd just grow more right back!
Maybe you could go to the woods, get lots of sweetgum leaves and refrigerate them to last a while. Winged sumac/r. copallina grows down here, but it doesn't grow any faster than sweetgum.
Sherry

bananas - I put two Tiger Eyes in last year. They are doing fine but don't have the growth rate I need. I planted them as an alternate food supply for down the road, before my sweetgum problems arose.

Sherry - I've had no luck growing them from seed. I think I'll try some cuttings. As for refrigerating them, I've never tried that with sweetgum. Might be good for a short term fix. I've gotten away from refrigerating caterpillar food because of the extra time involved with collecting it. If the foodplant isn't a short walk from my front door, I'm not raising the caterpillar. I just don't have time for hunting trips these days. I do make an exception if my kids bring home some monarchs :D

Don't know if this will be of any help.

Back when I raised these bugs (and other like feeding species) several times I lived in a place where they don't fly naturally, and their preferred larval food plants only occurred (if at all) as landscape ornamentals. Even with those the only real choices were Juglans (walnut/pecan) and the tree owners were not interested in having large amounts of foliage removed "just for bugs". The time frame was too long to establish my own large enough for larval food plant, so I found a better way. I had easy access to wild Rhus trilobata only a couple of miles from home. So I did establish them at my home easy enough from root cuttings, they grew very fast and they remained contained because I planted them with barriers so the rhizomes couldn't spread (important with Rhus if you don't want them to take over). So they stayed upright only growing to about 5'-6' high. They were very tolerant of excessive pruning (as in larval damage), and are drought tolerant so don't need much watering. You get bright yellow clusters of flowers and catkins, plenty of foliage to rear larva on that turns orange & red in the fall and red fruits that remain all fall/winter and are a great food for the other wild critters that visit your property. While this species of sumac does not grow in your area naturally and is frost tender, itÂs hardy to zone 3, and so probably could be grown there. Or maybe one of its close cousins that doesn't get rampant either.

BTW, until they got some size to them (about 2-3 years) I simple used fresh cuttings from wild plants that were washed well, and borrowed a few branches of Juglans now and then.

L.

Found out that a variation of Rhus trilobata used to be native to Ohio (looks like it was gone or close to gone by the early '80s). I'll look into getting some.

Thanks.

I think they will also use Rhus aromatica or fragrant sumac. It is not as invasive as other Rhus can be. There is also a cultivar known as 'Gro Low'. R. aromatica gets between 2' to 6' tall and as wide. I started one in my garden last year, and it is doing well in partial shade.

Susan

There is a nursery less than a mile from me that grows aromatica and the aromatica gro-low so they are easy for me to get. I've never seen either plant on lists as regal and/or luna food plants. Has anyone here used them as food plants for the regal or luna?

Referring back to ladobe's post, I've been able to find two nurseries that carry rhus trilobata and will ship it. I'm still a bit unsure of planting something called "skunkbush" and "stinking sumac" in my yard ;)

You are going to be fairly limited as a Lepidopterist if you let common names deter you. LOL

Like its namesake, the odor of Rhus is very sweet smelling when the leaves or twigs are crushed... too sweet for our noses and so considered stinky. Sounds much worse than it is and its nothing like, as potent or long lasting as its namesake.

I have a nice crop of stinging nettles up against my house - exhibit #1 of why common names don't deter me.

BUT, leaves have to come into my house. Stinging nettles don't annoy the noses of my family. Stinking sumac sounds like something that might get me in trouble. I once bought my wife a gas mask as a joke gift because she is extra sensitive to "objectionable" smells. Her computer desk is in the same room as my caterpillar aquariums so I gotta keep bad smells down to zero. Will caterpillars munching on these leaves release the too sweet smell?