Category: Apple Mint

Big Meal For Little Spider

This afternoon I discovered a little White-banded Crab Spider (Misumenoides formosipes) enjoying a late lunch consisting of very large meal, a Tachinid Fly (Tachinidae). The White-banded Crab Spider uses its two front pairs of legs to capture its prey and then bite it, injecting venom to disable its meal. Its strong legs and use of venom allows it to capture insects that, like this Tachinid Fly, are much larger than the spider.

A spider that doesn’t build a web, but a spider that will find a spot among flowers to sit and wait for its meal to arrive. Sit and ambush.

This action took place in a garden filled with Apple Mint (Mentha suaveolens) which I enjoy because of the variety of interesting pollinators that it draws.

Black and Yellow Lichen Moth

A moth that flies during the day, diurnal. A Black and Yellow Lichen Moth (Lycomorpha pholus). Though the name implies the color yellow you can see that this one, above, is reddish-orange along with the striking black with a subtle blue sheen. Many of this species of moth come in shades of not just yellow but also red and orange along with that black.

Black and Yellow Lichen Moths are found in North America from Ontario and Quebec down into the eastern United States. In my photos you can see these moths enjoying the nectar of Goldenrod and Apple Mint.

The larvae of Black and Yellow Lichen Moths eat lichens and blue-green algae. From these meals they pick up chemical compounds produced by the lichen which provides protection both for the caterpillars but also for the adult moths. Predators beware! These Black and Yellow Lichen Moths are poisonous!

Silvery Checkerspot

Warm sunlight shining through a tiny butterfly wing. Capturing this view of the wings was a challenge. A view that this little critter didn’t want to share. But seeing this, the underside of the wings, makes identification easy. Silvery Checkerspot (Chlosyne nycteis) on Apple Mint (Mentha suaveolens). In this view the hindwing is pale with a large white crescent at the margin. That is a key to identification.

Another Silvery Checkerspot with that same ventral view of the wing. Again the telltale white crescent at the margin.

Adult Silvery Checkerspots seek nectar at many species of flowers including Black-eyed Susan, Apple Mint, Common Milkweed, Red Clover, and Dogbane.

Females lay eggs often a bit more than one hundred at a time on larval host plant leaves that include asters, coneflowers, and sunflowers. In their early larval stages they stay together consuming those leaves. Though they can totally skeletonize those leaves I won’t panic since I know that they’ll turn into precious little butterflies.

Common Buckeye Butterfly

A beauty in the world of butterflies. Common Buckeye (Junonia coenia). It’s common in the southern states, along the California coast and in central America. Also found in other areas of the US, though not as commonly seen.

Here at my cabin I see the Common Buckeye butterfly on apple mint, which is what it’s on in all three of these photos, and on various species of aster.

Common Buckeyes don’t depend on just a single larval host for their eggs and caterpillars but many. A few of these host plants are snapdragon, plantain, ruellia, and toadflax. I look forward to seeing these butterflies every year, and most years I do get to see them. I’ve got my fingers crossed for this year.

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Juniper Hairstreak

How often do you get to see a green butterfly? For me, not often at all. Actually only once. And here it is. This is a Juniper Hairstreak (Callophrys gryneus gryneus). Their host plant in my area, the Blue Ridge Mountains of central Virginia, is Eastern Red Cedar (Juniperus virginiana). The Juniper Hairstreak overwinters as a chrysalis. A mighty small butterfly with a wingspan of one inch. This one, in the image above, is drinking nectar from my Apple Mint.