Congrats, Mary and those are some great pictures! I knew you should be seeing ALs - the range map says so! :) The white dot in the orange field also positively IDs it as an AL. If she's a female, you'll be getting cats all over your cudweed. I brought in a lot more to raise myself this afternoon - I lost count, but I'm probably up to about 10 or 12 cats. Congrats again, they're one of my favorite butterflies! Hmmm....I'm raising two types of vanessa cats now, v. atalanta/red admirals and v. virginensis/American ladies - YAY! MissSherry

Tom, probably the best host plant for central Florida would be rabbit's tobacco, which likes well drained soil and can survive heat. I've never found a place to buy the plants, but you could probably order seeds or maybe find some plants growing roadside that you could dig up and take home. Here's a good link to what the plant looks like - Rabbit's Tobacco They've changed the scientific name to Pseudo something or other. You probably wouldn't find it looking like that, since it usually has American lady nests on it. It doesn't bloom until fall, at least here it doesn't, and I rarely ever see any blooms, because the caterpillars keep eating it down. It looks exactly like pearly everlasting, a plant that grows in cooler climates, which I've planted, but didn't return, couldn't take the heat, I guess. Sherry

I do love them so. Incidentally, crawling and crouching around, watching and snapping pictures is a great way for me to just be in the moment-something I struggle with!-I was especially needing this at the time and love that this Lady was so accomodating.

Murray, I have trouble cultivating these silver-foliage plants like the helichrysum, Pearly Everlasting, pussytoes, etc. I have found there is a very fine line between overwatering and underwatering. The PE I planted year before last died because that was the summer of the deluge. So, this year, I planted it in a pot. Mind you, this is supposed to be hardy to like zone 4 or something. Still, it died back. My pussytoes also died back to the ground. Both from underwatering I assume. I was afraid to water them too much because I did not want to "kill them with kindness" as so many of us gardeners are wont to do. In withholding my generous intentions, though, the pendulum swung to the opposite side entirely and they apparently died from underwatering. Woe is me! The cudweed I planted accidentally 2 years ago and that finally came up this summer did very well until it began to get hot here and then it died completely back without blooming. I think it is an annual, so obviously there was no regrowth in the fall, and I fear it is gone and I'll need to toss some more seed this winter. I grew the helichrysum that is commonly referred to as curry plant. It made it thru the winter in a pot, but died when summer's heat came on. It did, however, bloom, and I let the seeds fall around in the pot and on the ground. I cross my fingers that I may get some babies next spring. Same happened with the PE. It DID bloom b4 it died back, so maybe I'll get some seedlings from it as well. All in all, my experience with these plants has been touch and go. They do not like wet feet at all, but they apparently don't like to be dry as a bone either. I need to read something like the "psychology of plants" to find out what the nurturing nature of these plants may be. LOL! Anyone else experienced problems with the APL host plants? Susan