Lepidopterally yours
According to an informal survey, there are more lepidopterists per capita in Eureka Springs than anywhere else, and every one of them knows lepidopterous things better than I do. However, I have noticed lepidops in my gardens for years, and here is what I know.
First of all, butterflies and moths flutter around in flashes of color as they feed on the nectar of flowers, so they are a delight to observe. While feeding, they perform the important task of pollinating. According to the USDA, 75 percent of flowering plants and more than one-third of food crops need animal pollinators, and butterflies are dependable in this regard. They also help in the decomposition of animal carcasses.
Planting flowers and herbs that attract butterflies will attract other useful pollinators such as dragonflies, mantids, bees and spiders. Larvae of monarch butterflies feed exclusively on varieties of milkweed, so plant a little patch if you have space. Other plants that attract butterflies include monardas, Rudbeckias, coneflowers, zinnias, asters, cosmos and marigolds.
Part of nature’s cycle is for butterflies, moths, and their larvae to be preyed upon by birds, bats, lizards, frogs and spiders.
Butterflies and moths lay eggs on the plants their larvae will eventually eat. A butterfly larva eventually wraps itself in a chrysalis which might then hang from a leaf or stem before it emerges as a butterfly. A moth larva creates a cocoon for itself usually in the ground before emerging a moth. As every third grader knows, holometabolous is the term for going through these four stages.
The egg stage lasts about a week or so, the larval state for as long as a month, and the chrysalis stage lasts a couple weeks. Adult butterflies typically live less than two months and maybe only a few days, but Monarch butterflies emerging in autumn can migrate 50-100 miles per day as far as 2500 miles to central Mexico and live six months or longer. Impressive.
Out of the 15,000 species of butterflies in the world, folks paying attention have identified 134 of them in Arkansas, and 95 species have been seen on Mount Magazine in the central part of the state. There might be as many as 3000 species of moths in Arkansas.
Ninety percent of the Lepidoptera order are moths. The wildly colored Atlas moth of southern Asia, the largest moth, can have a 12-inch wingspan. The Goliath Birdwing butterfly of Papua, New Guinea, is bright yellow with black and lime-green markings and maxes out at 11-inches.
The smallest moth is the Stigmella maya of southern Mexico with a forewing of .05 inches, and the smallest butterfly is reputed to be the cute Western Pygmy Blue with its half-inch wingspan and a range from Central California down through Central America. Those two have probably sipped leftover cerveza together on a patio in Oaxaca.
We love our butterflies and colorful moths enough to include plants in our gardens and yards to attract them. However, their larvae can be pests. Sphinx moths in their caterpillar stage are known as hornworms, and tobacco hornworms ravaged my pepper patch this summer.
I’m a fan of black swallowtail butterflies, but those darlings are known as parsley worms in the larval stage, and a host of them ate my young fennel plants down to the bone last week. Last year it was several parsley plants, but the parsley survived and maybe the fennel will also. At least I’ll have butterflies for a few weeks.
The wings of the black cutworm moth are a masterpiece in abstract design, but its larvae will wrap around the stalks of seedlings overnight, down go the plants, and the cutworms snuggle back below the surface.
“There is nothing in a caterpillar that tells you it’s going to be a butterfly,” – Buckminster Fuller observed. So who’s smarter – Bucky Fuller or the butterfly?