Butterfly, Insect and Garden Blogs

Here at BioWorks, we like to read anything that will stand still long enough to be read. Here are a few of the butterfly, insect, botany and garden blogs from around the world that we enjoy and we think you might enjoy them as well.

• Ben the Butterfly Guy is written by Benny Bolet and covers the butterflies of the Amazon.
• My Florida Backyard is written by MOSI’s own Jill Staake who turned her tiny suburban 1/10th acre lot into a wildlife oasis.
• Butterflies of Singapore is the blog of Butterfly Circle, a group of butterfly enthusiasts located mostly in Singapore and Malaysia
• Bug Eric is a professional writer and entomologist, principal author of the Kaufman Field Guide to Insects of North America. Eric has built a loyal following as a volunteer for AllExperts.com, Bugguide.net, and WhatsThatBug.com.
• What’s That Bug? is written by Daniel Marlos who has been identifying insects for homeowners and gardeners since 1998.
• Milkweed Gardens is written by a Central Florida mom and Master Gardener named Eileen who writes about her backyard gardening adventures.
• Living with Insects is written by Jonathan Neal, an Associate Professor of Entomology at Purdue University and author of the textbook, Living With Insects (2010).
• Botany Professor is a rather new blog blog that comes to us from an unnamed USF botany professor but we look forward to seeing what he has to say.
• Eat the Weeds is written by a gardener in Maitland Florida who keeps over 12 dozen sorts of edible plants in his own yard.
• Florida Native Plant Society blog gives us lots of information about preserving and restoring the native plant communities in Florida.
• Hawthorne Hill Wildflowers is written by Craig Huegel who is a wealth of knowledge when it comes to Florida native wildflowers.
• Beetles in the Bush is written  by Missouri entomologist Ted MacRae is is packed full of deliciously buggy information.
• The Medieval Garden enclosed is one of my personal favorite blogs on the internet. Written by the intrepid gardening staff at the Cloisters Museum in New York, these gardeners write extensively about their plants and how they were used in times long ago.

If we missed a blog you think we should know about, please drop us a line! We always need more to read so that we can keep our already swollen book purchasing budgets in check.

An Autumn Walk in the Backwoods

Temperatures are down in the Backwoods here at MOSI, but the mosquitoes are just as active as ever! Fully covered in bug spray, we set off to see what was going on in the Backwoods on a recent still and humid morning, and found lots of fall wildflowers in bloom. Some we know, like the Narrowleaf Silkgrass (Pityopsis graminifolia), Hammock Snakeroot (Ageratina jucunda), and Paintedleaf (Euphorbia cyathophora). Others we’re still working to identify. Click through the albums below, and if you can offer us an ID on any of the pictures, please let us know!

Jill’s Album:

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Kristen’s Album:

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An Autumn Walk in the Historic Tree Grove

Though we don’t get fantastic leaf colors here like they do up north, our seasons definitely do change in Florida. Many of the trees in MOSI’s Historic Tree Grove are deciduous, which means they lose their leaves each winter. The George Washington Carver Persimmon is nearly always the first to go, with the Chickasaw Plum, Clara Barton Redbud, and various Sycamores soon to follow. But while some trees are losing their leaves, shrubs and flowers nearby are putting on their best displays of the year, like the Winter Cassia’s bright yellow blooms. Our seasonal changes are perhaps more subtle and gradual than those up north, but they still bring plenty to look forward to (without the threat of months of snow!), as you can see by clicking through our albums below.

Jill’s Album:

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Kristen’s Album:

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An Autumn Walk in the Butterfly Garden

Fall is a busy time in the garden. When temperatures drop, spending time outside gets a lot more bearable. And that’s a good thing, because fall is major cleanup time in the garden. We spend days on end pulling large stands of dead beach sunflower, Spanish Needle past its prime, and much more. It’s nice to be able to take a break and appreciate the beauty that’s still left in the garden, including the special blooms of autumn like asters, cassia, and goldenrod. Click through our albums below to see what’s going on in the Butterfly Garden, and drop by next week for our albums featuring the Historic Tree Grove and the Backwoods.

Jill’s Album:

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Kristen’s Album:

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Lantana – Love It or Leave It?

One of the most popular nectar plants in the Flight Enclosure and throughout the gardens is lantana. The tiny clustered flowers on lantana are great nectar producers, and it’s both easy to grow and drought-tolerant. It comes in a variety of colors and growth habits, and is widely available at nurseries throughout Florida and beyond.

Lantana is an easy-to-grow nectar plant that butterflies love. So what’s the problem? It’s this: Lantana camara, the most commonly-available species, is not only non-native to
Florida, it’s invasive. It's listed as a Category I invasive exotic species by the Florida Exotic Pest Plant Council, meaning it's known to be "invading and disrupting native plant communities in Florida". (Click here to learn more about invasive species.) This species is native to the American tropics but has actually managed to spread nearly world-wide due to its popularity in the nursery trade. It's nearly impossible to eradicate in climates with minimal frost impacts (like Florida) - it thrives on fire and benefits from being cut back to the roots.

Florida does have some native Lantana species, including the pale yellow Pineland Lantana, Lantana depressa. And here’s where Lantana camara is causing problems: introduced lantana species have hybridized so extensively with the native species that some scientists theorize you can't really find pure L. depressa these days. The species shown below, which was being sold by a native plant nursery as L. depressa, is most likely actually a L. camara hybrid called 'Cream Carpet'.

Another Florida native lantana, Lantana involucrata, is also known as Button Sage. This lantana has a shrubby growth habit, with white flowers followed by purple berries, as shown to the right. This is available at some native plant nurseries, and is very easy to grow in almost any habitat.

One more non-native lantana you may come across commercially is Lantana montevidensis. This is often sold as “Trailing Lantana”, due to its growth habit, and generally has purple (shown below) or white flowers. When crushed, the leaves have a fairly unpleasant smell, unlike the sweeter citrus scent of crushed L. camara leaves. The good thing about L. montevidensis is that it is not considered invasive in Florida, so it’s a better choice in the butterfly garden.

With all these options, some good and some bad, what should a responsible Florida butterfly gardener do? Here are some suggestions:

• Familiarize yourself with lantana species by reviewing the guide found in the very informative article The Lantana Mess, by Roger L. Hammer.
• Many of the Lantana camara cultivars are so hybridized that they no longer produce viable seeds, and can be planted safely in a controlled environment. The "New Gold" lantana (shown to the right) is considered by many to be just such a species, making it a better choice in Florida gardens.  It doesn't hurt to ask nursery staff if they happen to know if the lantana they offer is sterile.
• The trailing lantana species (L. montevidensis) are not on the invasive species list, so look for low-growing plants with white or purple flowers and leaves that smell fairly unpleasant when crushed.
• If you already have L. camara plants in your garden, help control the spread of this invasive species by removing the berries before they can be carried off by birds and small mammals.  Dispose of these seeds in your regular trash, as opposed to what you put out for yard waste collection - yard waste is often recycled and used as mulch, so putting the berries into this collection will only spread them further. (Bear in mind that the berries are very toxic when unripe, and should be kept away from children and pets.)

Canna Skippers

Gardeners who grow Cannas are most likely familiar with their most common pest – the caterpillars of the Canna or Brazilian Skipper (Calpodes ethlius). These leaf-rolling larva do serious damage to the look of Canna foliage, although they rarely damage the plant so badly as to kill it.

Canna leaves are huge and don't give caterpillars much of a place to hide, so the caterpillars create their own shelters by cutting along the leaf in two places and then spinning silk threads from side to side. As the silk dries, it shrinks and pulls the leaf pieces together, creating a nice little hidy-hole for the caterpillar. The caterpillars nest in there during the day and emerge at night to feed. As they outgrow one nest, they create another.

Canna skipper caterpillars have an unusual characteristic – their bodies are transparent. The green you can see in the body of the caterpillar to the left is actually the leaf matter being digested in the caterpillar’s gut. The transparent body also makes it easy to see some other parts of the caterpillar’s anatomy, like the spiracles they use for breathing. (Click here to read more about caterpillar anatomy and to see a close-up picture of a canna skipper caterpillar showing off its spiracles.)

Perhaps the most beautiful part of the canna skipper life cycle is the chrysalis. The light green chrysalis is speckled with black spots, and seems waxy and delicate, although it does wiggle when you touch it.

Interestingly, the canna skipper chrysalis has a protruding tube where the butterfly’s proboscis forms. This is a more common characteristic of moths in cocoon (sphinx moths also do this), and rarely seen in butterflies. In the picture below, the small tube pointing to the left contains the developing proboscis of the canna skipper butterfly within.

 
After the interesting stages of caterpillar and chrysalis, the canna skipper butterfly is somewhat dull in comparison. It’s a small brown skipper (about 2 inches) with some white marking on the wings. Click here to see pictures of the adult butterfly.

If you grow Canna and find the caterpillars to be a pest, you can control them in several ways. Watch the leaves for eggs (they’re small and white) and scrape them off when you find them. Once the caterpillars appear, you can either pick them off and drop them in a bucket of soapy water, or spray them with insecticidal oil or a weak solution of dish soap and water. Be sure to coat the caterpillar directly and completely if you spray – the oils and soaps work by clogging the spiracles (breathing holes) of the caterpillars. If you don’t like the idea of killing the caterpillars, considering growing a canna or two in a patch by itself where you can move caterpillars when you find them on the rest of your canna.

Saltbush in bloom

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Saltbush (Baccharis halimifolia) is a woody shrub that grows throughout Florida and is often found on the edges of marshes, old fields and disturbed sites.

There are three similar varieties of Saltbush species that occur in Florida and each plant is either male or female. You can distinguish Saltwater False Willow (Baccharis angustifolia) with its needle-like leaves that attach directly to branches without a leaf stalk. Silverling (Baccharis glomerulifolia) has flowers that attach directly to branches without a flower stalk. Saltbush (Baccharis halimifolia) is most common in inland, disturbed sites. Flowers on female plants, like the one pictured, have hair-like bristles that extend beyond the leafy bracts and the end of the flowers which gives the plant a silver, cottony appearance. Male flowers are greenish and rounded.

The tiny flowers of Saltbush are wonderfully attractive to bees and small butterflies.

When in bloom, these shrubs hum with activity and seem to be covered in hundreds of busy bees and tiny butterflies like blues, hairstreaks and skippers. The flowers have a sweet, light fragrance that makes them appealing to gardeners as well.

Saltbush is a wonderful coastal and wetland plant that tolerates a high level of salts. The foliage of these species are toxic to foraging cattle and thus should be avoided in grazing areas.

Muhly Grass

If you're a fan of ornamental grasses, Muhly Grass (Muhlenbergia capillaris) is one you simply must have. A foolproof Florida native that is drought-tolerant and happy in full sun or part shade, Muhly Grass is green and full most of the year. For about six weeks each fall, though, Muhly Grass puts on an amazing display as it goes to seed.

This is a very overlooked Florida native that should be more readily available outside native plant nurseries. You'll find it planted in medians and even parking lot dividers at places like Lowe's, but the big box nurseries are more likely to offer fountain grass species (Pennisetum) instead, some of which are beginning to appear on the invasive plant lists. However, this time of year, it is sometimes available commercially. If you find it, we recommend you snap it up, because it’s a true bargain at any price.

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Muhly Grass is wonderful for wildlife. Planted in groupings, it creates shelter for small creatures including butterflies, who like to hang from grasses in a rainstorm or at night for protection. Songbirds love the seeds produced in the fall, and may even pluck dead stems to use in building their nests. Find Mulhly Grass at MOSI throughout the parking lot areas, where it’s an easy, no-fuss addition to a Florida-Friendly landscape.

What’s Flying? - November

The end of October brought some unexpected but welcome rain as the remnants of Hurricane Rina drifted over Florida and our first real cold fronts of the season arrived. The gardens are full of fall color, like Winter Cassia, Muhly Grass, Saltbush, and Beautyberry. Butterfly numbers remain high, although the variety of species has dwindled somewhat. As long as nectar plants are flowering, though, butterflies will be around, so November is still a great month for spotting them in the MOSI gardens. Here’s what we’ve been seeing recently:

Gulf Fritillary

Cloudless Sulphur

Orange Barred Sulphur

Sleepy Orange

Spicebush Swallowtail

Polydamas Swallowtail

Pipevine Swallowtail

Monarch

Duskywing

Tropical Checker Spot

Long Tailed Skipper

Blues

Fiery Skipper

White Peacock

Gray Hairstreak

Buckeye

Zebra Longwing

Barred Yellow

Tiger Swallowtail (Female)

Notes From the Field:

• We were quite startled to see a lone Buckeye (Junonia coenia) one afternoon, as this is a butterfly we usually associate with spring here in Central Florida. The colder weather up north must have driven this one down a little early this year.
• Skippers continue to be super-abundant, both in caterpillar and adult form. The Desmodium tortuosum is just about done for the season as a host plant, but the Creeping Beggarweed (Desmodium incanum) is still going strong.
• The Tiger Swallowtail we caught recently was easily identifiable as a female, since in Florida they generally appear in a black form that mimics the Pipevine Swallowtail. Tiger Swallowtails should become more common during the cooler months ahead.
• The amount of small butterflies of the Blue family has skyrocketed recently. They can often be seen in small “clouds” around plumbago, where they both nectar from the flowers and lay eggs for their caterpillars. Sulphurs are also very common, and as the cassia is now in bloom, their caterpillars have begun to turn a fun fluorescent yellow (as shown above).
• Our Imperial Moth eggs have hatched in the lab and the caterpillars are happily eating Longleaf Pine. At about .75 inches long, they are still quite a ways from being full size, but their branched setae are fascinating nonetheless.