Wednesday, May 27, 2009

Painted Ladies


One of our most frequent visitors to our garden so far has been the Painted Lady Butterfly.  These butterflies are one of the most widespread in the world.  They are a migratory lepidoptera.  The scientific name for these winged beauties is Vanessa cadui.  Their favorite flowers are aster, thistle, cosmos, and buttonbush.  Their caterpillars are especially fond of thistle, mallow, hollyhock, malva, and sunflowers.  Of these plants we have an abundance of sunflowers (they can really take over a garden) and mallow (which we were pulling like mad, but have decided to make peace with in at least one section of the garden).  

This particular specimen was caught on the way to school by one of my students.  He proudly brought it to me in a plastic grocery bag.  At first we placed it in a "critter box" and observed it for a morning in class.  In the afternoon I released it into the garden only to have it recaptured after school.  Upon close examination we discovered that it had a damaged wing.  It was taken home and fed nectar aka sugar water and brought back to school the next day.  It appeared to be better but was still unable to fly.  So, the same student took it home to nurse it over the weekend, unfortunately it did not make it.

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