Life Begins

Monarch Caterpillar

Gulf Fritillary Caterpillar

With the arrival of Spring, there are signs of life in my new landscape. There is still far too little of it, but the signs of hope are surfacing as each day passes. For one, I have butterflies laying eggs on the host plants that I have planted. Over the past months, I have added five different species of milkweeds (Asclepias spp.) - four natives and one that isn't. As I was sitting in my new backyard two weeks ago, a monarch appeared out of nowhere. It seemed especially drawn to the large number of blooms open on a non-native shrub that I have left intact - a yesterday, today & tomorrow. Named for its flowers that open as a deep purple and fade daily to a light lavender and then white, it has a noticeable fragrance and a deep tube that must hold enough nectar to be rewarding. Over the weeks since it burst into bloom, it has drawn the attention of a variety of pollinators besides the monarch and it is one of the very few plants right now with enough flowers to do so. Lone honeybees and a few native bees that I cannot yet identify have used it. The monarch stuck around for several days and must have thought enough of my new landscape to lay eggs.

The monarch chose one of the three swamp pink milkweeds (A. incarnata) that I had recently planted in my backyard wetland. I noticed the tiny caterpillar several days later and it has been chewing up the leaves of this plant ever since. To date, it has not used the swamp white milkweed (A. perennis) that is planted next to it or the whorled and butterfly milkweeds (A. verticillata and A. tuberosa) that are in my developing wildflower garden out front. This doesn't surprise me as they have never been the draw that the two wetland milkweeds were in my former home. 

I've also been growing some non-native tropical milkweed (A. curassavica) in pots from seed I collected several months ago. I know this to be a good larval plant as well, but perhaps the small size of these plants at this time has made them unattractive.  There is a good bit of controversy surrounding this non-native milkweed as a larval plant in Florida, but it would seem that the consensus is that it is not a problem at the latitude I live in. I intend to keep a few in pots and prevent them from going to seed.

I've also been routinely visited by Gulf fritillaries. A few days ago, I finally discovered one of their caterpillars on my corky-stemmed passionvine (Passiflora suberosa). This variable species is in the process of getting a name change, but I'll use the Latin here that is currently in use by most taxonomists.  I did not have to plant this cryptic native as it occurs in many places within my front and backyard. All I really had to do was not mow it in the areas where I wanted it to expand. 

Each day, I see more signs of life, but they are still fleeting. I have seen a white peacock, but they have not yet laid their eggs on the water hyssop (Bacopa monnieri) that I added to my wetland. A solitary giant swallowtail did not stop to lay on my key lime and what might have been an eastern black swallowtail has not yet decided to use my parsley or my native mock bishop's weed (Ptillimnium capillaceum) or my water dropwort (Tiedemannia filiformis). 

It takes time for a desert like mine to bloom. There has been very little for so long in my neighborhood.  All I can do is plant what I know they need and wait. Each day, I tend my plants and do that.