Winged Pollinators

It is time to celebrate those busy insects, not just bees, that are so actively collecting the sweet nectar from flowers.  They don't care that they are also spreading pollen, acting as sexual agents. 

Here is a simple bumble bee on Allium "Millenium' with its small compact globes of lavender flowers.  I have been very pleased with this allium, since it is well behaved. It blooms over a very long period in the hottest and driest part of the summer, and doesn't seem to be spreading seeds all around.

The most popular of the flowers for all of the butterflies are the Verbena bonariensis.  A tender perennial, the verbena has self-seeded across the garden, coming up wherever the soil doesn't have any mulch.  Sometimes plants will survive a mild winter, but usually it is better to encourage newly sprouted seeds.

Here is a Zebra Swallowtail Butterfly, which relies on pawpaw trees, with the females laying their eggs on the leaves, and the larvae feeding on those leaves.  So there is another benefit of the many pawpaws on the slope.

It is amazing what can be found on the Internet with a little patience.  This small butterfly is a Pearl Crescent (Phyciodes tharos) according to the Gardens with Wings website.  It is very small, only a couple of inches across the wings, and is here feeding on marjoram flowers.  It is described as very common, and the host plant is asters.  There are certainly a number of those in the labyrinth garden.  I just hope the caterpillars don't do too much damage, since my asters are not particularly strong plants.

Back to the verbena banquet.  Here is what appears to be an American Lady (Vanessa virginiensis), again according to the Gardens with Wings website. 

And what a useful resource it is!  On the identification page, there are different starting points, based on the wing shape, colors, common names, and size.  I only wish it allowed you to select more than one characteristic at a time, to narrow down the options a bit more.

This little fellow feeding on one of the cone flowers, is probably a  Variegated Fritillary (Euptoieta claudia).  There are a lot of these to be seen.  The host plants are supposed to violets and stonecrop, which I don't have in the maintained garden area, but I know that there are violets growing in all of the wild areas.  Since they are a smaller size, they do not attract as much attention, but the multitude of them can create a small cloud of movement and color.

The final picture is of a Silver Spotted Skipper (Epargyreus clarus).  This is an oddly shaped butterfly, and the description of it being a combination of butterfly and moth certainly applies.  It has a much larger body, and short wings.  I am not surprised to learn its host plant is false indigo, since there are many of these planted in the labyrinth area and on the sides of the ravine.  I didn't realize that I was also providing butterflies their preferred diet!

This has been a fun research project, and I hope to have more pictures of other varieties.  There was one dark blue swallowtail that moved too fast to get a picture, either a Spicebush Swallowtail or a Pipevine Swallowtail.  There were also a number a very interesting black wasps, but they will have to wait until I can get a good shot and confirm their identity.