"About passionvine...do you know if it spreads so easily like that up north?" Most varieties of passionvine do go crazy, but the cats make quick work of it once the gulf frits find it! Last year, I had dozens of cats at any one time, and most of the summer, they'd eaten every tiny speck green from the vine (they'd sort of crawl around pathetically looking for food... I gave a couple hundred cats over a period of a few months to a friend who grows a ton of passionvine so she could feed them). My vine has recovered and is growing wonderfully right now, nice and lush, but I've seen frits in my yard already, so it's just a matter of time before they devour it again. So, in short, if you're growing passionvine for butterfly gardening, you can never have enough, and I consider it a plus that it grows so well. The first butterflies I ever raised (I'm in Houston, too) were swallowtails--I went to harvest some parsley one day, and discovered cats on it (that's how I got into butterfly gardening, actually--it was a happy accident). Now I grow a bunch of fennel for them, which they prefer over the parsley (they won't touch the parsley until the fennel is gone), and the fennel grows really well in our area and is very easy to find at all the garden centers, so try that, too. I'm also growing frog fruit and blue pea vines this year, and both of those host plants are growing very nicely right now, but no cats yet on either. And, of course, milkweed, but no matter how much I have it's never enough. Good luck!

Oh, thank you so much for this information. You saved me money and heartache. Red passion flower is now a no no for my garden. Mary

Thanks for the link! I've been butterfly gardening for several years now. The Rue does not bother me, but I know that others are sensitive to it. I found a black swallowtail making his way down a blade of my ornamental grass, which sits right next to the giant fennel, this evening. A big old fat, girl, I hope, who will lay eggs when she emerges. My luck, it'll be a boy. Yes, I have passiflora 'Incense' and am getting another one for the gulf fritilaries, which I now understand are not true frits, but members of the zebra longwing group. I also grow parsley, and have ordered a couple of different hardy aristolocheas for the pipevine swallowtail. I just need a sassafras tree now for the palamedes. Last year I had tons of the giant swallowtails on the rue, as well. They were fun to watch. I had tersa moth cats on my red pentas. They loved it, and they are really cute. It just breaks my heart that we don't have as many this year. And we had a pretty cool summer last year. I hope I get hawk moth cats on my datura this year. I only had one last year, and he was parasitized. Susan

Daniel, I'm going to put a link to your post on the main forum where there is more traffic. Hopefully, you'll get more replies. And congratulations on getting your butterfly garden going again ... :-)