Plant It and They Will Come #7 Eggs and Cats Oh My

Some quick thoughts here.

Not all lantana now available in the trade is equal. Most of the scent and bee appeal has been bred out to leave pretty flowers. If you see ones for sale that are attracting pollinators get those!
I fI remember correctly lantana is mostly an 'annual' here but can be over wintered in a semi dormant state like other tender tropicals. Lantana definitely likes it sunny, hot and dry.

Sally and Catmint, now would be a goos time to take some Tropical MW cuttings to overwinter (4 - 6 inch) They will root in water or potting mix. If you keep them in sunny window they might even bloom indoors. I keep mine on my unheated enclosed porch. Growing cuttings gives one a head start on next year's plants as all MW is late to emerge and tropical seeds must be started in Feb to reach blooming size same year. Tropical MW is not reliably hardy in ground here and 'may' self sow,

I plan to order a flat of plugs from North Creek for March/April delivery. As Sallyg says, Tropical is my workhorse. Monarchs last year and this seem to continue egg laying activity almost to end of Sept. Other milkweeds are gone or in sharp decline as a food source for the last generation which will migrate along with those that are just eggs now or will be bred and
deposited by those that are eclosing now. And even if no more eggs are laid, the nectar rich flowers of the Tropical MW are good for migrators passing through to fatten up for the flight and next seven months.

Yes Catmint TropMW will continue to flower and form seed pods even if many leaves have been harvested.

Tues was my "J Day" with 38 transitioning to chrysilids! Quite as exciting as eclosure to me.
Wayne and I picked almost 7 pounds of Common Milkweed leaves to grow that brood. Learned that they eat day and night.

Am taking some 3rd and 4th instars to friends at Farmers Market as they have some harvestable MW on their farms, Then to find floriferous friends and customers who want to watch a chrysillis or two eclose this week. That leaves about 20 younins and 18 new eggs to fuss over!

Monarch numbers are up over much of breeding territory and predictions are for a full house down in the fir forests of Mexico. Migration on!

So, double your egg spotting efforts and hand rear indoors as many of this migratory generation as possible. And make sure your fall blooming nectar plants are looking good and abundant. Now through October really counts for the Monarch and their return next year.

Auntie J

Auntie J

I just want to say that you are the most knowledgeable DG here--and an endless
source of information and encouragement to us all.

While i will never actually raise any cats--I have learned a lot about them from you.

Cat and Muddy--I appreciate all your knowledge as well.

One of you should write a children's book on the life of a Butterfly.

March on! Gita

oops--duplicate posting...

This message was edited Sep 5, 2015 9:56 AM

wow, Coleup--what a huge number of babies you have to take care of. 7 *lbs* of milkweed! :-o

I think a flat of tropical would be great--but we would need to be 100% sure about the pesticide issue. :-/ I did order a plug of tropical this spring before I knew mine was going to reseed so much, and then I didn't use any of its leaves because I wasn't certain about the pesticide issue. :-(

What if I harvest some of the pods just as they're opening? Would the seed keep indoors for the winter? I'm notoriously bad at cuttings.

Yes, Coleup is our Monarch leader, no doubt about it!! :-)

Monarch #1 eclosed this morning. yay! I knew she was about to emerge so I was keeping a close eye on things, and I actually saw her emerging!! First time for a Monarch.

Cat, is your spicebush male or female?

Seq that is a good question! It has tiny little flowers in the spring. What does that mean?

Females are supposed to have tinier flowers than the males. Both are sort of on the tiny side though. I just planted mine this year post flowering. They may not have even flowered though since they are pretty young. I haven't been able to fun them anywhere already sexed so I bought five in hopes I'd get a combo of both male and female. If I had my computer I'd look up both and post them up. I'm in it for the berries, the butterfly host is a bonus.

I'll have to keep a closer watch on its blooms next spring to see if I can identify the gender!

Sounds good. Maybe you can get a few more to try and get a mating partner.

Yes if I know the gender then it will be very tempting to get another and have berries! Do you know what yours are Seq?

Thanks for the reminder about the Lantana, coleup! I know what you mean about the scent; come to think of it the last Lantanas I bought, which was several years ago, didn't have much scent.

Congratulations, CatMint and coleup! I hope some of those Monarchs or their offspring land in my garden next year.

I know that my Spicebush is female, but I haven't decided whether to get a male next spring or not.

Do you have a source for sexed spicebushes?

No, but I'm pretty sure I would be able to tell the sex by looking at the flowers with a magnifying glass.

Muddy, I should invite you over with your magnifying glass next spring when mine is blooming! :-)

Yes but if the plant is too young to flower then I don't think it's possible to tell the sex.

Right--if it's not flowering then no way to tell. :-/

Hey, I am very new at this Monarch raising, only my third year! If I am 'expert at any part of yhis it is in finding eggs and then having the courage to hand raise them to do my part to keep their migration going for the next generations, like my grandkids and Joyana and JR and Jan's tribe!

Gita, if it turns out that there is a chrysilis or two by swap time you are first pn my list to take
it under your wings and witness the transformation of emergence as a butterfly!

Egg laying had hiy a five day lull but just yesterday a new female mama appeared and spent the entire afternoon laying eggs on whatever milkweed still looked good. Slim pickings on the Swamp MW as it has some sort of mildew/fungus crud. She did find the one still looking green and great Common MW and many of the leaves have two eggs each...about forty total.

Interesting thing, as I tried to get a photo of her she closed her wings and lo and behold she was tagged! That means someone else along the way or in the area had raised and released her. Hope she returns today and I can read that tag # and report it and find out where she came from and the person who tagged her can see where she went!

Reminder, order tags asap from Monarch Watch.

Wayne thinks I could catch her in my butterfly net! I think I will stick with my cell phone camera. Would lone to go up to Cape May NJ and see their tagging.

Very cool about the tagging, Coleup!
40 more eggs oh my!!

Yes, I'm going to be tapping everyone who helped out last year to lend a hand again in raising and releasing them (those that have a 'supply' of Milkweed) or just releasing them in an area with fall blooming nectar plants.

These are the Migrating Monarchs so we can give them our best Mid Atlantic send off!.

Getting the details together to post on our Swap thread as I will be out of town for a week just after swap and all cays and chrsalides will need to be cat sat !

I still have swamp milkweed left and could probably raise a few more on that...

very cool about seeing the tag

last cat is now a chrysalis
here are some of them

Cat--that looks like people put in pods for a trip into outer space....(Space Odyssey)..

Judy--
Please do not give me the chrysalis---I have seen many pictures now
what it looks like eclosing. Thanks for your kind thoughts.

Mt Swamp MW still has a good amount of leaves on it. They just now have the red margins.
If you think it would be OK to pick them off--I will be glad to bring a baggie-full to the swap.

G.

That's cool Cat. They really do look like little green lanterns.

Thanks, Seq! :-)

I have lots of healthy milkweed and will be happy to raise some Monarchs!

Funny thing today...I finally decided to dig up one of my parsley plants growing in the back yard, pot it and put it in the front yard by the butterfly bushes. Just as I was pulling the clump out of the dirt, a black Swallowtail (NOID) came up and deposited 3 eggs on the dill growing right by it...as if to say I can find host plants by myself, silly : - )

I thought I took a good look at the flower heads she chose, but after going inside to get a container I had a hard time finding them, even with a magnifying glass. I finally found one, and it is now in a container! I think I finally found the other 2, but insects were already on top of them.
I finally gave up because I had to pot that parsley plant, which is currently so wilted that no Swallowtail mama in her right mind would lay eggs on it.

So, for my one egg: what's the ideal container? I have lots of critter keepers of various types; right now it's in a tupperware container with the lid ajar. There has to be some ventilation and the paper towel needs to stay moist, right?

Muddy, with BST s and parsley or dill I'd try to keep the stems in a little vase of water to keep them fresh. The BST cats when tiny and little pretty much stay put (unlike Monarch cats). Just cover over the vase top so no drownings. I rotated small parsley plants in and out of a large storage container 18x18x30 with a window screen over the top and an old aquarium. Be sure to secure the container if you leave it outside (I raised my BSTs outside so they would 'get' whatever changing seasons signals they needed to pupate for the winter rather than reproduce.) as racoons will go for fat cats! Good luck.

Catmint, how did you do yours?

Tagged Mama returned today. Three attempts to photo tag for ID but none turned out. She deposited anothe 40 eggs! She nectars on the blooming Tropical and then flies over to the Swamp to lay. Wish my Swamp wasn't so messed up. Thanks to you Godmothers offering to help, they shall be well fed and well raised!

Sally, what's happening with yours? Any eclosures yet from your pods? Still finding eggs?

Muddy, good for you for rescuing the egg!! Those first few days when they are eggs are the most challenging, I think. Because the part of the leaf they're on tends to crinkle, with my Monarch eggs, I put fresh leaves *under* the part of the leaf with the egg, so when the egg hatches there's fresh food available. I always wash the leaves before putting them in the container, and this provides moisture.

I have never raised a BST from an egg--I always find them when they are cats. For BSTs, I put them in a jar with paper towel rubber banded over the top, then frequently replenish sprigs of whatever host they were eating when I found them, then add the stick in later instars for them to pupate on.

coleup, I've released three at home and seven at the library.
The seven mostly seemed to flutter up over the one story building, hover, and then head south!

I have six large, should pupate this week, and thee in chrysalis for a friend (give her the whole enclosure) and five various babies. SO hard to find eggs or babies here. I still have never witnessed a laying.

I have extra black meshes now, I can return your big white one.

Thanks for the good advice, coleup and CatMint! She laid the egg on a flower head, and there are no leaves at all on the sprig it's on. I'll pick a nice leafy sprig with a flower head, put it in a vase and nestle this sprig in it.

Sounds nice, Muddy! :-)

Hopefully it'll hatch within a few days!

Saw 3 new Cats on 3 different Parsley plants today.
None of them full-grown yet....Someone must have laid more eggs,,,

My tropical MW has bloom buds on 2 of the 4 plants. Maybe when all the
flowere open--I will see some Monarchs????

First Monarch I've seen this year!

Yay for you!
I saw one briefly before, but this morning finally saw one cruising the milkweed patch for many minutes. I checked some of the leaves she stopped at, and found two cats and one egg. Was she visiting her babies, or saying. "Oops, this one's already taken, better move on!"

When the coo air came in, last night, took DS to show him where to pcik leaves. We found four more big cats. I just don't know how they hide until they grow!! Several of the big ones are eating green seed pods of Tropical MW.

She probably was saying "this one's taken!" I keep looking for big cats, thinking that maybe some will manage to escape the predatory insects but alas, so far I haven't seen any.

I watched a Swallowtail (Black, Spicebush or dark form Eastern Tiger) cruise the plants on and around my patio today. She kept landing on leaves and staying for a second before taking off and landing on others. I think she was looking for host plants. I wish I could have told her that Zizia aurea was a few feet to the right and that parsley, dill and Spicebush were 25 feet away at the top of the hill.

I hope she was able to find the right plants, Muddy! :-)

I made a brief trip outside this afternoon to the gruesome sight of a poor tiger swallowtail in the butterfly bush with a mantis chomping down on its wing. I flicked the mantis away. The EST was still alive (though with a damaged wing), so I picked him up and placed him on the phlox. When I checked later, there was no sign of him. Hopefully, he found a place to rest and didn't get devoured by another mantis. I seem to have a few of them in the yard now-- wish they would go after the European paper wasps. :-/

Ahh, poor butterfly!

Speaking of Swallowtail host plants...I forgot that I also have this volunteer Sanicula gregaria (clustered Black Snakeroot). I think it has attractive foliage and it's a neat-looking plant. I'll be saving seeds from it. This photo was taken in early summer; it's going to seed now.