Re: Butterfly population

I've been trying to actively keep or plant as many host plants as I can. Have hackberry trees in our woods and was delighted to see an American Snout last year - talk about cute. Am trying for as many different Swallowtail host plants as possible: Dutchman's pipe for the Pipevine Swallowtail, Pawpaw for the Zebra Swallowtail, and Spicebush and Sassafras for the Spicebush Swallowtail, and dill and parsley for the Black Swallowtail.
Cathy
On Sunday, June 27, 2004, at 08:22 PM, Donna wrote:

Butterflies are a species that needs certain plants and without them
they will not live to maturity.

If the plants in your area are either early or late rather than normal
growth times, the butterflies will also be.

Many are also host plant dominate. Monarch have to have some type of
butterfly weed.. they need the leaves while in the caterpillar stage and
the nectar when butterflies. I will not have any this year since none of
my leaves are damaged. Not sure what happened last fall, but obviously
something.

The Karner blue has to have a lupine plant. Three years ago (?) this
butterfly was down to 500. We started growing 5,000 lupines each year
and reintroducing them also the Indiana Dunes area as part of
restoration project along with the nature conservancy. Happy to report
that we now have thousands of the karners!. At one point they caught 50
of them and set up a tent inside the nature center ( with the correct
permit to do this!)Increased the population with no natural predators
there and then released them back into the wild... just gave old ma
nature a helping hand.

Donna 

---------------------------------------------------------------------
Support hort.net -- join the hort.net fund drive!
http://www.hort.net/funds/

Other Mailing lists | Author Index | Date Index | Subject Index | Thread Index