For some reason, lots of plants get named Butterfly. Can't imagine why...
- Curious about something you saw while walking in the woods? Spot the coolest bug ever? The prettiest flower and butterfly? Stumble on a rock and found a fossil? Or was it? This is the place to show your discoveries and share in the knowledge of the natural world right outside our doors. Join in the fun everyday at The Daily Bucket.
August 2015
Here's a
Spurred Butterfly Pea, a native of the lower southeast to midwest.
This flower is not quite fully open; color in photo is fairly true.
Centrosema virginianum
I've been nursing this viney annual (sorry - perennial down south, more annual up north) for a few years after discovering it on the front fence at the top of my hill. It wasn't hard; all I had to do was leave it alone and pull up the weedier plants like Beggarticks. Like others in the Pea family (Fabaceae) it produces a pod and reseeds easily.
Looking forward to when it covers the whole fence. I haven't seen anything feeding on the leaves or any visting pollinators but I have no doubt something makes use of it.
Updated below the orange vine...
This was posted in comments late the other day. It's a Milkweed Tussock Moth Caterpillar - (Euchaetes egle) that I see every year about this time. It's munching a Milkvine (Matelea.)
A plant I look forward to seeing bloom someday - Yellow Passionflower - Passiflora lutea.
This grows in the woods with limited sunshine.
I also see vines of the gorgeous Purple Passionflower except mine are in the woods where it gets enough light to grow but not enough to flower. It prefers full sun. A favorite food for Gulf Fritillary caterpillars, they can strip a vine of leaves in no time. Produces the edible Maypop.
Sunny today, mid-90s at the Tallahassee International Airport (same crappy overpriced airport, new name) but out here in the woods it stays a few degrees cooler. There's been a front lingering along the Gulf Coast that finally pushed thru taking some of the mugginess with it. Alas it's only for a couple days and then the high pressure system moves north leaving us to swelter and sweat with more Gulf moisture.
A short bucket so I'm really expecting the rest of y'all to jump in with comments! I'll post a few more photos as I get to them. Photos in Lightbox because as Oceandiver says - Let's use it or lose it! Actually working with the Library right now, I'm getting bugged. Last photo is not in Lightbox because I could not get it to queue. The previous photo keeps queueing despite several attempts to unqueue and queue another.
--- rant --- I'm also displeased, frustrated, with "autospeller" whether it's on my Mac, iPad or iPhone. For example, autospeller - it's a word, it's not autopiler and it's not auto-speller so quit trying to correct it. There! Learn it! And look, it didn't catch the small i in I'm. And how about those words I mistype so many times that the speller learned it wrong and substitutes.
Grrrr --end of rant--
Onward!!
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