Last year I planted a bed of vegetables specifically for butterflies - cabbages for Cabbage Whites, carrots and bronze fennel for Black Swallowtails, and hollyhocks for several other species (had to fence it in because we are the only house in the neighborhood without a dog, so the rabbits seek refuge here, to the detriment of various plants).
The Black Swallowtails never found the carrots (or at least never oviposited on them). When autumn came I just cut the tops without harvesting the carrots, mulched them, and left the roots in place over the winter. This year they used the energy stored in those roots to generate marvelous inflorescences -
- which totally resemble those of Queen Anne's Lace (the "wild carrot"). Compound flowers like these are magnets for bees, flies, and butterflies, who greatly prefer these as food sources rather than large showy single flowers. Here is a Hairstreak nectaring on the carrot blossom -
The tiny little "tail" at the back identifies this as a member of the "hairstreak" family; I think this is a
Banded Hairstreak rather than a
Hickory Hairstreak or
Edwards' Hairstreak, but it's not important. What's most interesting is that he/she has a through-and-through hole in the hindwing (a bit of green shows through) probably as a residuum of escaping from a bird attack.
ليست هناك تعليقات:
إرسال تعليق