Top Photo: Purple coneflower in front of Picnic Dome at Museum of Life & Science. Purple coneflower is in full bloom. This flower attracts many insects. It’s a rewarding experience to visit a planting of coneflower. Lots of different butterfly species come to coneflower for its nectar, and goldfinches can’t resist the seeds. Coneflower likes sun, can handle the heat and will tolerate a forgetful gardener’s lack of watering, so you can’t lose by planting these 3 foot tall flowersRead more
Posts tagged: #lepidoptera
Pearly-Eyes, Beetles and Others
Top Photo: Northern pearly-eye. There are three butterflies in our region known as pearly-eyes, northern pearly-eye, southern pearly-eye, and creole pearly-eye. Though they all are reported from this area, the one that I come in contact most often is northern pearly-eye. They’re all medium sized butterflies and very similar in appearance. The northern pearly-eye, as does the others, has a row of eye-spots on the forewing. Northern and southern pearly-eyes have four eye-spots. Creole pearly-eye has five. In Northern pearly-eyeRead more
Questionmark Pears
There are more than a few Bradford pear trees on our 84 acre campus. One, a volunteer that sprouted next to our north parking lot has been dropping fruit. The rotting fruit is attracting flies, bees, and butterflies. One butterfly in particular is the question mark. It belongs to a group of butterflies known as anglewings, referring to the angular edges of the wings. Question marks are named for small whitish markings on the underwings, a “c” and a dot.Read more
A Passion For Flowers
Located around our campus there grows two different varieties of passionflower or passion vine, yellow (passiflora lutea) and purple (Passiflora incarnata). The yellow variety is a small, more delicate plant than the purple variety. Although the flower is structurally similar it is smaller and less ornate. The leaves are three lobed as in the purple passionflower vine but with little or no sinus separating the lobes. The flowers on the purple variety are about three inches across whereas the yellowRead more
Summer Sights
The butterfly in the top photo is an eastern tailed-blue. It belongs to a group of small butterflies known as blues. They are typically blue on the upper surface of the wings. They like open spaces and generally fly low to the ground. The eastern tailed-blue above is worn. Some of its markings are missing or obscured and one can barely make out a “tail” on the hind wing. Below is a more fresh individual, a male, displaying theRead more
Caterpillar Time
It’s that time of year again when caterpillars seem to be everywhere. Oh sure, caterpillars can be seen from spring till late fall, sometimes in huge numbers. How can you forget those cankerworms that dangled on silky threads from every tree branch by the thousands, no millions, last April. No, what I’m talking about is the huge variety of species that can be viewed at this time of year. Both moth and butterfly species have been busy all summer producing youngRead more
Lepidoptera, Mantodea, and Anseriformes
There are still a few monarchs hanging about. I saw two of them on Sunday (11/15/15) in the garden on either side of the steps leading to the Butterfly House here at the Museum. I also saw an American lady and a cabbage white butterfly. All were nectaring on the asters on the west side of the steps. Also in the garden was a Chinese mantid. It, was warming itself on a metal sculpture of the sun.Read more
Snowberry
I spotted a resting clearwing moth while I searched for caterpillars in the garden outside the Butterfly House here at the Museum. It was morning, and the day-flying moth probably spent the night where it perched, it was rapidly flapping its wings in shallow beats to warm itself for the first flight of the day. Snowberry clearwings visit flowers for nectar, often hovering above rather than perching on the flowers as they sip the sugary liquid. Both caterpillar andRead more
Monarch
While walking up the ramp leading away from the Butterfly House, I glanced over at the common milkweed that grows in the garden on either side of the ramp. It pays to keep an eye out while walking through this garden, many insects are attracted to milkweed, including monarch butterflies. Nearly everyone knows what a monarch is, if not their entire life cycle. The butterfly and its migrations are well known. But, in case you haven’t been paying attention, here’s aRead more