Rustic sphinx caterpillar (Manduca rustica) and beautyberry bush (Callicarpa Americana).

I’ve found a reference to beautyberry being a host plant for the rustic sphinx.

Apparently, the berries also can be used for human consumption!

Striped cutworms feasting on oregano and rudbeckia

(click pictures to enlarge)

Tropical milkweed blooms and cats

First bloom on agalinis purpurea, buckeye caterpillar and butterfly.

Cloudless sulfur butterfly (Phoebis sennae), caterpillar, partridge pea (Chamaecrista fasciculata)

More pictures of the sulfur butterfly

Manduca rustica caterpillars on vitex

Carrot patch

Who could ask for a better reason to allow some of their carrots to bloom?

bean leaf roller

Apparently this guy turns into an adorable skipper butterfly

Cutworm

I was having a discussion with someone recently, trying to figure out what the cutworm gets out of cutting our plants down.

Seems like he wouldn’t be able to fill his hungry little belly very easily if all he got to eat was a few nibbles off each plant…

My friend queried… Maybe they’re just mean?

could be.

Monarch caterpillars on butterfly weed

Gotta have caterpillars to get butterflies, and gotta keep the host plants if you’re gonna have the caterpillars.

The cloudless sulfur uses coffee weed (Senna obtusifolia) as a host plant, which means finding room in the garden for a patch of these “weeds”. Luckily, I find coffee weed attractive, with those yellow flowers, and those leaves that look like a peanut plant…

After the yellow butterflies have eaten them, there isn’t much coffee weed left…

It doesn’t hurt the plant, though, it comes right back after the cats crawl off to spin chrysalises.

Cloudless sulfur butterfly. (Phoebis sennae)

Lots of orange cats on the passion flower vines means lots of orange butterflies on the lantana