h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

We mainly get whites and small tortoiseshells. Occasionally red admirals. Elsewhere in Ireland I've seen peacocks, commas, silver fritillaries and this guy.

The Monarch butterflies have become extremely rare around here. Yellow swallowtails sometimes visit, though. Too many of my neighbors are city people who don't seem to know one native plant from another. This hurts them when they get into poison ivy, and it hurts the environment when they pull up the milkweed that butterflies need in order to suvive. :-9

We used to have red and gray skippers in my father's field.

what a shame. If only people would take the time to learn a butterfly's life cycle, they could have a garden full of living art, and help save the environment too.

GB

Some types of butterflies mate as they emerge from their cocoons. This allows the females to get about the important business of laying their eggs without delay.

My daughter Iz got a butterfly kit which had live caterpillars and a big box with a window. After feeding the caterpillars on leaves for a few weeks, they turned into coccoons. One day they emerged as butterflies and we fed them sugar syrup for a day, then released them.

I was amazed that the caterpillars abandoned their heads when they became coccoons and grew new butterfly heads.

http://www.panoramio.com/user/4447772/tags/Twinevine%20Milkweed

Plant I grow for butterfly feed for both the monarchs

http://www.honeycolony.com/article/heres-can-help-bring-monarch-butterflies-honey-bees-back-brink-extinction/

and the tiger swallow tails,

http://www.bentler.us/eastern-washington/animals/insects/butterflies/western-tiger-swallowtail-butterfly.aspx

a vining milkweed variety on which I've successfully reared both types of butterfly.

Despite its fenceline engulfling character, the caterpillars usually chew it back to the bare vines before going into çhysalis.

Of course, it helps if one is readily able to identify the caterpillars,

http://nhpr.org/post/monarch-butterflies-sharp-decline

Which with the tiger swallowtail isn't always quite wha one might expect,

https://www.google.com/search?q=tiger+swallowtail+butterfly&newwindow=1&client=tablet-android-verizon&prmd=isnv&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjvqY6WzO_MAhUX1GMKHSfVDPcQ_AUIBygB&biw=962&bih=601#newwindow=1&tbm=isch&q=western+tiger+swallowtail+butterfly%2C+caterpillar%2C+images

and their chrysalises.

http://www.chasenbutterflies.com/item_30/Monarch-Chrysalis.htm

http://www.google.com/search?q=tiger+swallowtail+butterfly+chrysalises,+image&newwindow=1&client=tablet-android-verizon&prmd=isnv&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&fir=6l1OFPPm8u6kQM%253A%252Cn40FxBBvllEddM%252C_%253BUDzwGi3CP5-zeM%253A%252CyQMLB7_iMW1NiM%252C_%253BnXr-4Eb9u9mfvM%253A%252CdSo5I9KI3oVBBM%252C_%253B65Dyz-fHsStOsM%253A%252C4cn4BZMiITuq1M%252C_%253BPqmTVdifIjNWUM%253A%252CR0cN_kvbrKyszM%252C_%253BbEtTQWduNYFs5M%253A%252CyQMLB7_iMW1NiM%252C_%253BVkmgKu7vADoZtM%253A%252Cn40FxBBvllEddM%252C_%253BuJFFCLdw6GqjgM%253A%252CR0cN_kvbrKyszM%252C_%253B6H5jRYEDtL-_hM%253A%252C3ewbffmoT9lx4M%252C_%253BQKi_uN7EyL_oaM%253A%252CMAoQx9XBVbahuM%252C_%253BLsG0ibPHN-AfbM%253A%252CuaJ059AVvk-iHM%252C_%253BegWyyR2pPzjrXM%253A%252Cq3N4yl0WxbdKGM%252C_%253B_Kl51UX5MfDwdM%253A%252CmpxyENlMl-OnIM%252C_&usg=__ElR4HqOFPLDHk3z03p1zkONkkYU%3D&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj3v9ic0-_MAhVCxGMKHcQLATwQ7AkIOQ&biw=962&bih=601

Though there are many, often higjly ornamental milkweeds, a great stumbling block is matching them adequately to one's local environment.

The one I'm using, funastrum cyanochoides, is a local native and at least produces abundant forage for the caterpillars.

Though the flowers are inconspicuous, they do have a pleasant vanilla like scent.

http://www.google.com/search?q=tiger+swallowtail+butterfly+chrysalises,+image&newwindow=1&client=tablet-android-verizon&prmd=isnv&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&fir=6l1OFPPm8u6kQM%253A%252Cn40FxBBvllEddM%252C_%253BUDzwGi3CP5-zeM%253A%252CyQMLB7_iMW1NiM%252C_%253BnXr-4Eb9u9mfvM%253A%252CdSo5I9KI3oVBBM%252C_%253B65Dyz-fHsStOsM%253A%252C4cn4BZMiITuq1M%252C_%253BPqmTVdifIjNWUM%253A%252CR0cN_kvbrKyszM%252C_%253BbEtTQWduNYFs5M%253A%252CyQMLB7_iMW1NiM%252C_%253BVkmgKu7vADoZtM%253A%252Cn40FxBBvllEddM%252C_%253BuJFFCLdw6GqjgM%253A%252CR0cN_kvbrKyszM%252C_%253B6H5jRYEDtL-_hM%253A%252C3ewbffmoT9lx4M%252C_%253BQKi_uN7EyL_oaM%253A%252CMAoQx9XBVbahuM%252C_%253BLsG0ibPHN-AfbM%253A%252CuaJ059AVvk-iHM%252C_%253BegWyyR2pPzjrXM%253A%252Cq3N4yl0WxbdKGM%252C_%253B_Kl51UX5MfDwdM%253A%252CmpxyENlMl-OnIM%252C_&usg=__ElR4HqOFPLDHk3z03p1zkONkkYU%3D&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj3v9ic0-_MAhVCxGMKHcQLATwQ7AkIOQ&biw=962&bih=601#newwindow=1&tbm=isch&q=tiger+swallowtail+butterfly+caterpillar%2C+images

apologia, I just tossed out that old pair of reading glasses and I'm going to be scheduling to get a new pair of prescription corrections for my astigmatism next month.

We have milkweed and sage/salvia in our Common Area. The milkweed just naturally grows there. I planted all the sage. I've planted sage in two other places as well.

In the last two months I've gone online and ordered seeds for about a dozen native plant species. Most have been planted, and most of the seeds have sprouted. I hope to nurture them to adulthood.

One of the frustrations of growing native flower species in Massachusetts is the fact that many of them do not bloom until the second year, if then -- Dewberries take four years to bloom and bear fruit, Pale-leaf sunflowers take three years, dogtooth violets take seven years, and trilliums take *nine* years.

I have wild geraniums and bluets in hanging pots. They will bloom next year, not this year.

Two more entries picked today and on their way into the Edited Guide:

How to pronounce Mandarin Chinese
The Ham Sandwich and Pancake Theorems

I'm writing them faster than they are being published at the moment. I know when I was one of the Editors, the bottleneck in the publication pipeline was getting suitable pictures for the entries, as we liked to have a picture on every published entry. A lot more people read an entry if it has a good picture.

That still seems to be the case. If we got rid of the pictures, we could publish entries a lot faster, but would anybody read them?

I was going to ask "Does anybody read them now?" but it occurred to me that that would have been a question that could be answered with data on how many hits different entries got....

In the early post-BBC days, entries were getting thousands of hits a day, but I don't know how you can tell the difference between someone reading the entry and someone leaving immediately.

and do keep writing

There are only two Featured Entry slots on the Front Page, but the list of Newest Edited Entries shows some of the ones that are being published - they get Featured when their images are ready.

The proxy I use for how often an Entry is read is the Facebook Like thingy that is on the right hand side of an Entry in Pliny. It takes a while to load, but eg if you look at the Towel Day Entry that's on the Front Page at the moment, you can see that 16 or so people have clicked the Like button. If 16 actively click, then quite a number more than 16 people have read it.

My Massy's Wood entry is now on the Front Page.

My "Panufnik's Westminster Mass" has been picked. I now have 11 entries in the publishing queue, i.e. being sub-edited, waiting for a picture or ready for publication.

I've another 6 in Peer Review, but I've no new ideas for entries today and haven't written a new entry suitable for the Guide in nearly a week. I'm sure something will come to me over the weekend.

good going, Gnomon

GB

My Orcs entry is on the Front Page today. By my reckoning, that's my 219th solo Edited Entry.

And I've put the Iain M Banks Culture books entry into Peer Review.

Solo reckons 228, but then it always seems a couple ahead for me too...

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