P.S. Bluffhead, Guilford CT

Dale Roberts/Bill Yule droberts03 at SNET.Net
Wed Apr 24 18:01:07 EDT 2002


HI,
   I sent this separate post because I want to ramble a bit about Garlic Mustard and butterflies so if you're not interested or it's all old hat to you can skip the post.
Before I get started...this is such a quiet list...I belong to a bunch of other bug lists and most of them will talk about anything and in fact some of them never shut up...but I digress.
      All during the month of April I've noticed that the invasive roadside plant Garlic Mustard (Alliaria officinalis)has become extremely abundant this year and in fact has increased steadily here in Guilford since I first noticed it about six or seven years ago.  It has become plentiful along route 77 parallel to the traprock ridges of Guilford that have populations of Falcate Orangetips and also adjacent to the wetlands that have had a population of West Virginia Whites.
For the past three seasons I've noticed that Falcate Orangetips are no longer confined to the ridgetop and talus slope that contains their "real" hostplant Rock Cress but now spill down to the roadside to nectar and oviposit on Garlic Mustard, a plant that is apparently toxic to the caterpillars. This seems to be a bad thing although there was a good flight of Falcates this year. Five or six times I went to Bluff Head this April and found Falcates at the base and along the road on Garlic Mustard. Also West Virginia Whites seem to stray from the wetlands that have their "real" hostplant Toothwort to nectar on GM.  Today I went to Bluff Head and walked the Garlic Mustard trail along Route 77 below Buff Head and I netted every white butterfly I saw on Garlic Mustard.  These are the results--
12  Falcate Orangetips...10 male, 2 female
6  Cabbage White
2  West Virginia White
1 white Clouded Sulfur
    Anyone care to comment??  If I hadn't stopped and netted them and instead noticed white butterflies as I drove by I would have assumed they were all the ubiquitous Cabbage White.
     Other butterflies today in Guilford
2 Painted Ladies
1 Pearl Crescent
 plus the usual suspects, juvenal's, sulfurs, etc.

Those of you that got this far, thanks for hearing me out.

                                              Bill Yule

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