Beautiful photo, Sherry. I know you've been concerned about not seeing them this season ... very happy for you that this lovely young lady has paid a visit.

Is that a bloom on one of your new butterfly bushes? Very nice color.

Mary

She's beautiful! The butterfly bush is an amazing color..do you happen to know the name of it? Thanks.
Rhonda

It's Ellen's Blue, and of all the butterfly bushes I've had, it's my favorite. The initial blooms in spring have long panicles, the later ones, like these, are shorter, but I love the color. It's a great size, only growing to about ?6' max. I've had it about ?4 or 5 years, and it's still going strong!

Here are some other pictures of butterflies on this bush -

Red admiral -

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American lady -

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Male spicebush swallowtail -

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Sherry

Wonderful wonderful photos Sherry. Good luck on finding the Palamedes cats!! Please post pics when you find them.
Angie

Beautiful!!

I found a little red bay coming up near my best red bay earlier this spring, so I dug and potted it up. After the female palamedes visited, I put it on a bench in my garden to make sure she could find it. I was rewarded today -

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She laid her egg on some new growth at the top of the plant. I'm planning on keeping this one in a pot for as long as I can. I know I'll have to keep potting it up to bigger pots, but having one that's easily accessible would be so good! Most of the other red bays on the property are tall, with the lowest branches too high up to reach. Even the good red bay has gotten so tall, I'll need the big ladder to reach the lowest limbs. I went to the garage to get the big ladder, which is hung sideways on nails, and found a Carolina wren tending her nest in it! Hopefully, my short ladder will be tall enough I can reach the leaves of the good red bay. Most of them on the property look terrible, with those awful galls all over. I looked for more eggs and couldn't find any, but she may have put some on the good red bay - I don't blame her for shunning the bad ones here. I'll pot up all the seedlings that come up around the good one and plant them out eventually. Red bay/Persea has SO many problems!

Here's a full picture of the one in the container - the 'good red bay' may actually be P. palustris/swamp bay and the ones full of galls may be P. borbonia/red bay, I don't know.

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If I can get time, I think I'll check out the many red bays/swamp bays that grow along the main road here. They look better than the ones on my property, at least when I'm driving by. They may or may not look so good close up, and they may have some cats on them I can raise.

Another thing I've considered doing, if I can find a lot of cats to raise, is raise some on sassafras. I once had palamedes and spicebush swallowtail cats together in the same big cage. The palamedes swallowtails would occasionally eat some of the sassafras leaves meant for the spicebush swallowtails. They developed fine, with no difference from those who didn't eat any sassafras. Since sassafras doesn't have the blight and the galls that red bay gets, if palamedes swallowtails would start laying eggs on it, I think they'd do fine. Maybe if I could raise a female on sassafras, she'd lay her eggs on it? Hmmmmm.........I don't know, but if I get enough to raise, which I doubt, it's worth a try.

Sherry

Yay!!! Wonderful find. It sure was a reward. I know what you mean about the accessibility factor. I was at my parents house today, and Daddy (80yrs old) told me that he had potted up 3 little Redbud trees for me from his yard. When I went to look at them, they were Tulip Poplars and not Redbuds. Daddy normally knows his trees and I don't know why he wanted them to be Redbuds! Having little Tulip Poplars in pots works fine for me!!!
Angie

Yes, indeed, Angie - you might get some tiger swallowtail eggs on those tulip poplars! Tell your Daddy thanks!

Sherry

Excited for you, Sherry! Look forward to pictures of this caterpillar as this is one we don't get here.

We had a lot of Tiger Swallowtails through last week when the Buttonbush was blooming. I kept looking for eggs on my little Sweetbay, but found nothing. There are other trees where eggs could have been laid, just too tall for me to check. Planted a Tulip Poplar and a Sweetbay out at Butterfly Acres. Hope in the future to see more ETBs.

Sandy

Spotted one of these this morning and saw a couple of black? Swallowtails. Counted 20 eggs on the Passion Vines yesterday evening. We may recover afterall.

Congrats on the gulf frit eggs, Rick!

The lep in the picture must be related to Psychomorpha epimenis or grapevine epimenis. This moth is supposed to be replaced by the Florida epimenis/P. epimenis euryrhoda, according to Wagner, but I can't find a picture of that one. It sure is beautiful - I've never seen one here.

Sandy, palamedes swallowtail cats look almost identical to spicebush swallowtail cats, but they don't have the big yellow 'eyes' and their undersides are darker, nearly burgundy, also they get bigger.
The reason I mentioned them using sassafras instead of red bay, is that these two plants are closely related, as are the two butterflies. Some say that the two will even flirt with each other! I've never heard of a hybrid, though.

Sherry

Beautiful moth...
I miss some of the diurnal moths of the South...

Well that shows what I know, I thought it was a butterfly.