Category: Host & Larval Plants
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Species Profile: In Search of the Clodius Parnassian Host Plant East of the Cascades
Searching host plants for immature butterfly stages can be a fun pastime while waiting for spring flight season. Sometimes, even finding the host plant can be a challenge. Dicentra uniflora is a plant that can often go unnoticed in sage steppe habitat. It emerges soon after snow melt and is quite small. Photos of it…
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Species Profile: Eriogonum elatum, Tall Buckwheat
Watch Out for this Plant In a talk to our group two years ago, Jon Pelham discussed butterfly foodplant guilds. He defined a foodplant guild as a plant species that supports at least three species of butterflies as a distinct community in an ecosystem. This plant is durable and persistent over time and over a…
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Genus Profile: Castilleja
For a change of pace, rather than a butterfly species, I’m going to describe a flowering plant genus, but one with an important role as a larval host plant for Euphydryas checkerspot butterflies as well as some Noctuid moths. Castillejas, or Indian paintbrushes, are hemiparasitic herbaceous flowering plants with a wide range through North and…
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Native Larval and Nectar Plants
Winter and time to be planning for spring. To us native plant enthusiasts, that may mean it will be time to plant and time to enjoy flowers blooming. To the butterflies, it will be time for some to fly from their hiding spots where they spent the winter as adults or chrysalids to look and…
