Butterfly Gardening Blog

Altogether I’ve now collected 4 eggs from the butterfly that laid some on May 7th. Three of them have hatched. Two on Monday and one today. I suspect the last will hatch either tonight or tomorrow morning.

It’s been really cold and rainy here for like a week or so, so I don’t have much gardening stuff to write about. No new pictures either – too wet and nasty out to take any.

These last two eggs I brought in from outside more recently, that is why they are hatching later – since its been so cold outside they were developing slower.

As soon as I get more pictures of something worth seeing, I’ll post them.

Following up on my post from May 7th about the Question Mark or Comma eggs: before I left for my mom’s I cut off two leaves which each had an egg on it – just in case they hatched before I got back. Well, on Monday those two hatched (after I was back home!)! One leaf was from the hops vine, the other the pipevine. Anyway, those two little guys (or girls) are doing just fine! I was concerned about getting them the leaf they were on quickly. The hops leaf was starting to dry up a bit, and of course pipevine is the wrong host plant and likely the caterpillar would have died if it had eaten any of it. I had to use a paintbrush to move one of them, but had no problems with it.

And no, I don’t have a picture of them. As mentioned before, my digital camera doesn’t have a good enough macro function to get a picture. I will have to take one with the film camera. I’ll post the pictures when I get them back.

Another detail worth mentioning – I said before that the eggs were laid on top of the leaves although I had read they lay them on the underside. Well, both of the eggs I could find that were laid on the hops leaves were on the top, but the two I found on the pipevine were actually laid on the underside of the leaf.

Oh – and one other thing – both caterpillars crawled over to the underside of the leaf right away to feed, and stayed there. One of the things that really fascinates me about these guys is how their is sometimes very predictable and obviously programmed into their genes. That fascinates me! Exactly how is behavior like that programmed into their genes and expressed like that?

I’ve been posting a awful lot about wildlife other than butterflies around our yard! Its still far from the peak season for butterflies around here – and all the other critters seem to be everywhere now.

I was quite excited however this Sunday when I saw what was either a Question Mark or Comma flying around the garden. I could tell right away it was female as she was landing briefly on various plants trying to find the right one to lay eggs on – and then she flew over to my hops vine!

We’ve had lots of Question Marks and Commas around here the past few years, but this was the first time I’d ever seen one looking like they were going to lay eggs.

I went and got a camera and luckily she was still around when I got back! I couldn’t get her to sit still for a picture and eventually started looking over the hops to see if I could find any egss. I couldn’t see one anywhere – then all of a sudden she comes flittering by and lays an egg right on top of a leaf just a few inches in front of me!

Of course, I couldn’t get the camera ready in time!

I did watch her lay some more eggs though too. I saw her lay one on a pipevine leaf, which is pretty odd. Pipevine should be toxic to any butterfly except Pipevine Swallowtails. The vine is growing right next to the hops – could that have confused her?

And according to James Scott (‘The Butterflies of North America’ 1986) both Question Marks and Commas lay their eggs on the underside of the leaves, the ones I found on the hops were all on the tops of the leaves. I know she laid some more on the higher parts of the vine too though, but I can’t get up that far to find them – perhaps some of those are on the undersides of the leaves. Apparently they sometimes lay them stacked in piles, but all I saw was singly laid eggs. I will have to check the plant again more closely.

At any rate she never did sit still enough for me to even be able to tell which she was – a Question Mark or a Comma. And the eggs are too small for me to be able to photograph with the digital camera we have. I took some pictures of them with a film camera though, so it will be a while before I get them back.

I did get one quick picture of her from a distance though – its too hard, for me anyway, to make out what species she is:

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