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Butterfly Garden

Buckeye cats!!!!

linda_centralokzn6

16 years ago

Found several Buckeye cats on my Plantan. Woo! Hoo! They were on the small seedlings, and not on the larger plants.

Happy Days!!! :)

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Comments (10)

MissSherry
16 years ago
Congrats, Linda! I'm glad to hear that you found them on your plantain - I planted some as an alternate host plant for them to use besides agalinis.
I released the first of my 3 buckeyes this morning - it was darling!
Congrats, again!
MissSherry
susanlynne48
16 years ago
Heehee, Linda - so you went back to using plantain? I have yours waiting and some small ones from Cathy that are growing like crazy. Hers are the larger leaved plantain. I will be checking mine now to see if I get some. I also have the dischoriste (twinflower, I think?), snapdragons, and a couple of other plants that are host to the Buckeyes. Hope I see them soon.

I keep finding more QMs around the yard on the Elm. None on the Hops for now.

I would like to bring in the Silvery Checkerspots but everytime I touch the leaf one drops off into the grass, so I'm afraid to move them. Guess I will bring a shoebox with me to the plants and catch the divers.

Right now I have so many Cabbage Whites eating up the cleome it's not funny! They sure are happy little boys and girls, though.

I also found out I have some Bidens growing in the yard, which is the host for the Dainty Sulpurs. I will see lots of them in late summer-early fall, so there will be food for them.

Congrats on your Buckeyes!

Susan
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Agalinis is a plant that's either parasitic or semi-parasitic on the roots of wild grasses - I'm sure there were plenty of weedy grasses growing by the soccer field you mentioned. I didn't have any growing in the grasses up by the main road (that area had become wooded before the power company cut it back right after we bought the property) so I gathered the mature seeds in late fall from agalinis growing in the long open field - from Texas to Florida - of the pipeline close to my house. I scattered agalinis seeds every year for two or three years, until there were enough plants to reseed themselves, which they're now doing. Ever since the agalinis got fairly thick up there, I've gotten buckeye caterpillars. I've released 9 adults so far from this group, with several chrysalides left, and I didn't bring in nearly all of the cats. We mow that grassy area in late fall, after all the wildflowers' seeds have matured and dropped, and all the buckeye chrysalides up there have likely emerged - it appears that buckeyes overwinter as adults, probably moving southward towards Florida, before coming back in spring. I think the large numbers of buckeyes I get every year in September and October are likely individuals that are moving southward from further north, but this is just my supposition. There's no way transplanting agalinis/wild foxglove/pink foxglove will work. When you dig it up, you cut it off from the grass it lives off of. If you have a wild, grassy area on or near your property, you could gather and then scatter seeds like I did, and you'll eventually have agalinis. I've planted several members of the snapdragon family that grow in gardens - they're apparently non-parasitic - but have never gotten any buckeye eggs/cats on them. That reminds me - I need to check out the diascia that Susan mentioned. That might work in my garden. Sherry
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caterwallin
16 years ago
Linda, Congrats on your lucky find! I sure wish I could get those someday, as I think they are so pretty.

Susan, So are there big and little narrow-leaved plantain? There's so much to learn about these things. I just thought that there was broadleaf and narrow-leaved. We have both in our yard and I know that the narrow is host to several cats, but I don't think the broad one is, is it? Also, I didn't know that Cleome is host to the cabbage whites. I just planted some of that the other day. I have almost everything planted, but I have to do my Rue bed yet, and I hope I can get the ornamental grass planted around the house before our first frost around the beginning of October! Ha.
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susanlynne48
16 years ago
Cathy, yours appears to be Plantago major, which has wider, more spoon-like foliage on it, and Linda's is Plantago lanceolata, I believe. The lanceolata foliage is, as the species name suggests, thinner, more lance-like foliage. Does this help? Both are food for the Buckeyes. I think actually that all plantain is a food source for them.

There are several plantain species, including one that has woolly foliage, too.

Susan
caterwallin
16 years ago
Susan,

Well, darn, here I was telling people that I had Plantago lanceolate because I thought mine looked like the picture I saw of it online. So then Plantago is different than broafleaf plantain, right? I do have another type of plantain in the yard which is bigger than the plants that I sent you and I assume it's broadleaf...I guess. It doesn't have the ribs in it like what you have.
Cathy
susanlynne48
16 years ago
Both of them are ribbed. I think the lanceolata is as heavily ribbed as the major.

My cleomes are almost eaten to the ground, and there are so many cabbage whites, it's like big snowflakes in the garden.

Right now, the Sleepy Oranges are laying eggs again. There were several in the yard this morning and I kept seeing females going to the Senna bicapsularis to lay more eggs. Laying TONS of eggs! Now these plants are not very big yet (about 1' tall), but they keep using them, and laying a very few on the S. hebecarpa, and none on the Partridge Pea yet. I think they must prefer the Xmas Cassia.

I brought my little checkerspots in today since I keep seeing wasps hovering around the stand of sunflowers. I just KNOW they're trying to get a good meal. Very difficult to handle because with the slightest motion, they fall (a defensive mechanism). So, I used a shirt box and held it under the leaves I was removing. The sunflower leaves are holding up VERY well in water so far. The ones that fell off the plant have now climbed back up onto the leaves. Silly little buggers.

I can't decide if they are silvery checkerspots or Bordered Patches. For awhile they turned completely black, but they have molted again, and now look like that have a reddish dotted line right down the middle of their backs. This may indicate Bordered Patches. Ah, well....the saga continues.

Susan
emmayct
16 years ago
Either way Susan, you're a lucky girl! I hope they're bordered patches so you can post some more pictures of them

Maryann
MissSherry
16 years ago
Sounds like those cats are doing good, Susan! It's good to hear that the sunflowers are holding up in water - keep us posted!
MissSherry
bernergrrl
16 years ago
I read somewhere that buckeyes like snapdragons. Is this true?

Thanks!
susanlynne48
16 years ago
I have heard that they like the shorter ones. Before I found that out, I bought some tall ones-of course, no sign of Buckeyes yet.

They use a number of host plants, Bernergirl. Snapdragons, ruellia (wild petunia), dischoriste (twinflower), plantain, linaria, Monkey flower (mimulus)and even green shrimp plant. Possibly more.

Susan

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