Eastern Black Swallowtail

A late summer garden favorite. Look for Eastern Black Swallowtails (Papilio polyxenes), in your home garden in late summer through early fall, especially if you have planted herbs!

Black Swallowtails lay eggs on parsley, fennel, dill, rue, carrot tops and Queen Anne's lace. Their eggs are tiny cream globes that will be glued onto the newest of the new growth. Check the extreme ends of your dill and fennel and look on the undersides of tiny, new parsley leaves.

The larvae have beautiful stripes and are lovely caterpillars but once they are established in your garden, don't expect to harvest any more of these herbs for a while. The caterpillars are voracious eaters and can strip their host plants bare which isn't always a bad thing. The larger larvae will eat even the older leaves that are less desirable and the plant will sprout new growth all over to make up for the consumed foliage. Check out this post on Black Swallowtails for more photos of the caterpillars, a chrysalis and displayed butterfly.

Rose Glory Bower

The scent of this plant makes it one of the most frequently asked about plants in the outside gardens. Rose Glory Bower (Clerondendrum bungei) is a heavily fragrant nectar plant also known as Mexicali Rose. The scent of the flowers is sweet and fruity. It actually smells a great deal like the breakfast cereal Fruit Loops!

Considered a weedy invasive species, this plant in the gardens predates my tenure at MOSI and has proved itself quite hearty. Through weeding we have managed to keep it to just one bed in the back butterfly garden. However, if you plant this species plan on it spreading rapidly. It may be lovely and smell great, but you will very soon have lots of plants!

Banded Sphinx Moth

Volunteer Jill S. and I trekked up to the top of the IMAX dome last week to see what moths were hanging about by day. While there we found this gorgeous Banded Sphinx Moth (Eumorpha fasciatus) and brought it back down to the butterfly garden for a photo.

With a wingspan of 3 7/16 to 3 13/16 inches, these moths are pretty large. The larvae host on primrose willow and other plants in the evening primrose family. Although I was unable to get a good photo, the hindwings of these moths have a bright patch of startling pink coloration!

I just love the triangular shape of sphinx moths which seem to be designed for speed and stealth. Watching them feed at night is also pretty fantastic because they move a lot like a hummingbird, hanging in the air in front of flowers while they nectar. Further proving that some moths are just awesome!

Alligator Flag

Alligator Flag (Thalia geniculata) is a common plant to Florida's waterways and wetlands. This water loving plant has broad lance shaped simple leaves that grow on tall stalks, from which the common name of 'flag' derives. The orchid-like purple flowers bloom on stalks up to ten feet in height.

Closely related to Canna Lily, Alligator Flag is also a host plant of the Brazilian Skipper (Calpodes ethlius). These larvae are leaf rollers so spotting a Thalia leaf with a caterpillar is a easy task. Look for leaf shelters along the edges of the leaves secured with bits of silk. If you have a persistent wet area or pond, try out one of these lovely flags in your butterfly garden.

Come in to my parlor...

...said the spider to the butterfly.

I found this Golden Silk Orbweaver (Nephila clavipes) female relaxing on a cloudy morning with the remains of her breakfast: a well packaged Gulf Fritillary butterfly (Agraulis vanillae). The webs of these spiders can be up to a meter in size and are often characterized by obvious zig-zag weavings of silk and silk that appears yellow in the sunlight. Females of this species are striking and very large in size compared to their male counterparts.

The life of a butterfly seems to be pretty much at the center of the proverbial food web. This clever spider has spun her glorious web in the center of a large stand of White Fountain Grass (Pennisetum villosum). At night and in cloudy weather butterflies tend to roost in protective locations like inside large shrubs or stands of tall grasses where they have less chance of being spotted by predators. Unfortunately, sometimes the predators can come right to the safe havens. I am happy to report that this particular stand of grass still had about 30 or so non-packaged butterflies that were just waiting for the sun to peek out so they could go about the butterfly business of feeding and mating and laying eggs.

Fiery Skipper

This diminutive little Fiery Skipper (Hylephila phyleus) was kind enough to stay very still on the Mexican Bush Sage (Salvia leucantha) so I could get this wonderful close-up picture.

Fiery Skippers have very short antenna and a scattering of spots on their underwings. Males have more orange on the upperwing and females are dark brown with an irregular orange band. In the family of grass skippers, Fiery Skippers are a common sight on lawns and gold courses.

Host plants: Bermuda grass (Cynodon dactylon), crabgrass (Digitaria), St. Augustine grass (Stenotaphrum secundatum), and other grasses. Larvae have a large, dark head that seems pinched off from the rest of the body. The caterpillars roll the leaves of their host grasses around them and secure the sides closed with strings of caterpillar silk.

Firecracker Plant

Firecracker Plant (Russelia equisetiformis) has striking sprays of tubular scarlet flowers that are attractive to bees, butterflies and hummingbirds. Flowers bloom on long rush-like stems and the leaves are undersized giving this plant the look of grass covered in flowers.


Native to tropical Americas and Mexico, Firecracker Plant is well suited to the Tampa Bay region of Florida. Except in the coldest portion of the year, this plant will bloom continuously throughout the year. Firecracker plant does best in full sun to partial shade and propagates easily from tip cuttings in the spring. A definite must have fur tropical butterfly gardens.

Salvia

Tropical Sage (Salvia coccinea) is a beautiful flowering annual. Cultivated as an ornamental, salvia is actually a Florida native. Drought tolerant salvias wilt a bit in the hottest and driest part of the year but just one good rain and the start blooming like crazy.

Event a small stand of salvia will seem to buzz with insects. The blooms in reds, whites and pinks seem to be irresistible for butterflies so plant just a few of these and pull up a chair and a camera to catch the show! The tubular flowers are also attractive to hummingbirds, especially when this plant is paired with Firebush and Coral Honeysuckle.

Although these flowers won't make it through a frost they do reseed readily and in the Spring will come back not only from root but also from scattered seeds. Salvias will start blooming early in the season and will keep blooming until a frost kills them to the ground. During the driest parts of the year when the leaves are wilting, a little water from your rain barrel will perk these plants up in a day or two.

Older plants can start to get leggy, so give the old flower tops a trim once they have bloomed to help control height and also to keep the plants dense with flowers. Here in the MOSI gardens I usually just let deadheaded flower spikes fall to the ground to encourage new plants to grow from seed rather than composting the cuttings.

Salvias provide a great burst of color in the middle of any flower bed!

Ceraunus Blue

A tiny little Ceraunus Blue (Hemiargus ceraunus) landed on some pine needles at my feet when I happened to have a camera. These diminutive butterflies different coloration for males and females. Males have a beautiful shimmery blue upper wing and a mottled brown under wing and females have a less flashy brown upper wing that has a dusting of blue at the wing bases. Species in Florida only have one large dot on the margin of their hind wing but western members of the species may have two tiny eyespots.

These equally tiny larvae of this butterfly can be found munching on woody members of the legume family such as partridge pea (Cassia brachiata), mesquite (Prosopis species), and rosary pea (Abrus precatorius).

Pineland lantana

Pineland Lantana (Lantana depressa) is a woody shrub native to the Florida pine rocklands. Low maintenance and drought hearty this species of lantana is slow growing and fairly mellow.

Most species sold currently are not pure Pineland lantana but rather hybrids. As more and more non-native forms of lantana pour into Florida, the gene pool for this species has become overwhelmed. Also, the pine rocklands to which this plant is endemic need to periodically renewed by fire which burns back old growth and clears invasive and plants that are not fire-hearty. Years of fire control and suppression currently threaten this and many other Florida native plant species and research is being conducted on how to best introduce controlled burns to the native habitats where a regular burn cycle is necessary.

Several varieties of lantana depressa can be found and flowers range in color from a creamy butter yellow to bright yellow. Various varieties can grow anywhere from 1 to five feet in height. The flowers on this particular lantana are a lovely buttery yellow and bloom in small clusters and the plants at MOSI are the more prostrate, creeping variety. This lantana is a nectar plant for many small and mid-sized butterflies and is especially beloved of skippers.