Butterfly Gardening Blog

While were visiting The Butterfly Farm at St. Thomas Carmen also showed us a passion vine they had growing there:

In general, passion vine is used as a host plant in the Virgin Islands by the Gulf Fritillary (Agraulis vanillae) and the Zebra Longwing (Heliconius charitonius). I don’t know which particular species this passion vine is or if they both use it or not.

I found a few small caterpillars on it – maybe someone can tell which butterfly species it is? Or maybe its still too small to tell yet:

I believe Carmen said this was another species of passion vine:

Here is a close up of one of the leaves:

At any rate I found a few eggs on it:

I think this plant was also a host plant:

This was a picture I took of a skipper caterpillar – its way out of focus, but someone may be able to identify it – I think it may have been on the plant pictured above:

Here is an egg, which I believe was also on the same plant:

Next week – other wildlife from The Butterfly Farm!