Seen The Beautiful Floating Flowers In The Garden?
"Butterflies are not insects,' Captain John Sterling said soberly. 'They are self-propelled flowers.” ― Robert A. Heinlein
Have you Seen The Beautiful Floating Flowers In The Garden? Also referred to as butterflies, they have found the butterfly bush and the butterfly weed, Asclepias tuberosa in the backyard. This 'Pearl Crescent' is a small brush-footed butterfly. This is the female. She looks so perfect on the yellow blossoms.
Another butterfly, the 'American Lady' (Vanessa virginiensis) caught my eye! I love the design on the underside of their wings! Doesn't it remind you of 'Steampunk'?
Beautifully colored, the American Lady has two large eye spots on her hind wings on the underside. The Painted Lady butterfly looks similar, but does not have the two eye spots! They fly close to the ground and it was difficult to capture pictures of this one because they fly so quickly.
Although these are common, I had never really noticed how beautiful they really are until this one caught my eye! It's amazing how a picture brings out even more details, which the naked eye totally misses! Of course, they don't sit still long enough to really see detail either!
This gorgeous butterfly is a (Great Spangled Fritillary (Speyeria cybele). Although it is orange and black, his body almost looked to be a rich camel color in the sun. This butterfly is a medium size.
I believe this one is the Tawny Emperor Butterfly, another small brush-footed butterfly. This majestic little fellow was sitting on the deck and the sun shone on him creating this perfect shadow. Although he has a muted coloring on his underside, what a lovely pattern there is!
Hoping to find a butterfly egg, I went to check the backside of the leaves of the butterfly weed. The little butterfly weed I planted last year is a full three feet wide now. There are a lot of leaves and I simply gave up looking for the butterfly eggs.
Instead, my attention was focused on these yellow things. As you can see, the yellow things, the oleander aphids, are back. Obviously, I am not going to spray this plant with chemicals! I want more Monarch butterflies!
So, yesterday I used a spray bottle with a strong stream of warm water and attempted to spray these off of the plant. I ended up smashing some of them with my fingers, too.
The thing that is interesting is that they can't fly or crawl to another plant. If they are knocked off the plant, they can't climb back on it. I wonder how they get on the plant in the beginning!
I doubt that I removed all of them, however, most of them were removed. In the information I read, a few on the plant is not a problem, but an infestation can be harmful to the plant.
The aphids are all female and don't lay eggs. They clone themselves! How strange is that? If you magnify these, you can see they have skinny black legs, which are visible in the picture.
When I took a picture last year, I thought these were eggs. (I was hoping they were butterfly eggs!) Blown up on the laptop, I saw legs. That began my search which revealed these were not something I wanted.
Looking back on that post, it also reminded me that I wanted to make a Ladybug house! The lady bugs eat these little pests. I totally forgot about making the house. It is now on my list of things to do before I forget again!
Have you really Seen The Beautiful Floating Flowers In The Garden this year?
