You might recall when I tailed a pipevine caterpillar for "miles" in March. At any rate, please go back and look at the photos of the caterpillars devouring our pipevine plants down to the stems. Well, those pipevine vines grew back, then mama pipevine butterflies came back and deposited more eggs. Yep, you got it. The caterpillars have once again devoured all the pipevine vines. Yesterday, I'd seen a couple take off, I guess in hopes of finding more food....
This afternoon, I was making my rounds in the gardens, when I noticed THREE pipevine caterpillars on the snakeroot pipevine. Oh My Goodness! I swear, the snakeroot had previously been untouched because I regularly stop by and check on it. Which means that these three amigos had crawled ALL THE WAY (together??) from the ORIGINAL pipevines in the Meadow to the snakeroot in a far corner of our back yard!
In the photo above, I'm sitting in a little chair that's near the snakeroot. See the wooden chairs and the chain-link fence, then the live oaks way off behind the chairs? That's where the pipevine vines are!
Indeed, the three seemed a bit exhausted and were just resting on the rocks and snakeroot.
I'm still floored by this.
Isn't nature amazing??!
UPDATE Sunday, April 30 (the next day): Our snakeroot pipevine is completely GONE! The three amigos ate it ALL UP!
1 comment:
Fascinating! It seems that pipevine swallow tail cats are programmed to roam. I wonder if it because in some areas they have to crawl from plant to plant to find food if that food source is 'swan flower'. Here's a little story about that unusual looking member of the pipevine family:
http://forums.gardenweb.com/discussions/2222200/plant-id-native?n=11
I have about 25 or 30 aristolochia fimbriata plants for the caterpillars. They keep me busy moving them from a plant when they've eaten one down to the nubs to one that has more foliage. If I don't get there soon enough they take out on their own ... :-)
Thanks for your story and the great photos!
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