Right now what I mostly have is stems and more cats than I've seen in a long time. Sort of hard on the vine but the butterflies will be fun.
Gonna have butterflies
They are pretty to see fluttering around!
I have a couple different looking butterflies here, one that loves the giant desert milkweed. Had a single monarch catty on it last year. Love the chrysalis they make!
Susie
I've seen a few different butterflies this year, other than the gulf frits. Not very many but always fun to see. No monarchs, though.
Do you know what kind of butterflies (or moths?) they'll be? I almost always just leave bugs alone, the plants seem to recover, and it's such fun to watch. I've had a walking stick and a praying mantis this week, and a few butterflies still wandering about. Two monarchs came through about a month ago, heading south I think. I can't seem to get the milkweeds going, still trying!
The caterpillars that decimated the passion vine are Gulf Fritillary butterflies. Some years there are more, some less. This is a good year - unless you're trying to get a vine started. They can be a bit hard on the very young plants, but these are older and many of them.
Will they winter over on the plant, or work their magic and turn into butterflies this fall?
I've found lots of chrysalises already hatched and lots of new butterflies. I think they just keep doing their thing until it gets too cold, then they probably just die. The eggs will likely live over and hatch when it's warm enough. They are warm-area butterflies so over-wintering is probably not something in their evolution. This is all guesswork, though. They've left nothing but stems on the one plant and pretty well de-nuded others. They're keeping at it.