Other differences include

• Posture: dragonflies hold their wings out to the sides when they perch, while damselflies fold them over their backs, parallel to the axis of their body.
• Head structure: Dragonfly eyes are so large that they don’t have a “top of the head”; instead their eyes meet along the occipital seam where the top of their head would be. Damselfly eyes, while still quite large, are separated by the braincase externally as well as internally.
• Wing structure: If you’re up to a bit of taxonomic Latin, another difference between the two suborders of Odonata can be found in their names: Anisoptera, the dragonfly suborder, means “unequal wing,” because their forewings and hindwings are shaped differently; Zygoptera, the damselfly suborder, means “joined or paired wings” and, as the name implies, the two pairs of damselfly wings are similar in shape.

Also, dragonflies eat damselflies from time to time. (And so do damselflies; I’ve not heard of damselflies eating dragonflies, but I haven’t searched the literature at all.)

So anyway, here’s the face map of the damselfly, courtesy of the ubiquitous Rambur’s Forktail (Ischnura ramburii). Mouse over the image to get the labels.

If you were wondering about the visual acuity of damselflies with their eyes being so much “smaller” than those of their cousins, don’t. They can see incredibly well. Here’s another Rambur’s Forktail making a lunch out of some hapless moth it happened to grab as it was trying to avoid the approach of my camera:

Rambur’s Forktail (Ischnura ramburii) eating lunch. Om nom!

As you can see, the successful predation comes at a cost: now the damselfly is coated in scales (remember that moths are in the order Lepidoptera, which translates to “scaly wing”) from its lunch. Presumably it will have to undergo some extended grooming sessions later on to remove all that debris. But for right now: yum! (If you refer back to the image at top, you’ll see that the legs have a series of spurs along them that aid them in capture of aerial prey. They end in a sort of v-shaped structure called the tarsal claw; that’s what they use when cleaning their faces.)

While damselflies aren’t as robust as their large cousins, the dragonflies, they’re no slouches when it comes to the eat-or-be-eaten game that all life on this planet participates in. The other day, as I was trying to get a good picture of a damselfly face to use on this post, I observed this young female Citrine Forktail (Ischnura hastata):

Citrine Forktail (Ischnura hastata). Boca Raton, FL, May 7, 2013.

I was chasing her from perch to perch to get the best angle for the photo, and at one point I noticed a spider drop from a blade of grass as if to attack her. They both disappeared under the tall grass, and I dug around in there with my hand, ripping out blades of grass, in an attempt to see what was going on. I’d seen lots of dragonflies trapped in spiderwebs before, but this was the first time I’d seen a spider make a jumping attack on a damselfly. I felt awful; my quest for a beautiful photo had ended in the untimely demise of this beautiful orange jewel.

Turns out, I had misinterpreted the interaction. The spider wasn’t so much jumping out of the grass to attack the damselfly as it was falling out of the grass in a desperate attempt to avoid the damselfly. And without success. Here she is after I cleared away the obscuring grass stems, glaring balefully at me for disturbing her meal:

Citrine Forktail (Ischnura hastata). Boca Raton, FL, May 7, 2013.

In the shot above, it’s hard to tell what kind of spider this is. I suspect, based on all the silver visible in the shot below, that it’s one of our two common Argiope species, either Silver (A. argentata) or Florida (A. florida), but I don’t know how to tell for sure:

Ischnura hastata with unidentified spider, Boca Raton, FL, May 7,.2013.

If any of you are able to ID that spider from the belly and head shots on this site, please let me know what it is!

Anyway, hope you enjoyed this brief romp through damselfly facial anatomy nearly as much as I did.

References

Corbet, P. (1999). Dragonflies: Behavior and Ecology of Odonata. Ithaca: Cornell UP

Westfall, M. J. Jr. and M. May (2006). Damselflies of North America, Revised Edition. Gainesville: Scientific.

Paulson, D.R.  (2011). Dragonflies and Damselflies of the East. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP.

A lot of you might think that the dragonfly, with its enormous eyes, can also be described by that pithy little phrase. After all, their eyes are enormous, taking up most of their head. But, as you can see below, while it might make for a nice catchy song, it doesn’t describe the dragonfly very well. Dragonflies definitely have a “face.”

Blue Dasher (Pachydiplax longipennis). Uncropped version from which the face detail was taken. Boca Raton, FL, May 7, 2013.

The dragonfly in question is a Blue Dasher (Pachydiplax longipennis), one of the most widespread and abundant dragonflies in North America. Apparently its larvae are able to tolerate a wide range of water quality, and compete in both fishful and fishfree ponds, which gives them a huge range of habitat in which to reproduce. They also make wonderful photographic subjects, often sitting nice and still to let the careful photographer get as close as his or her equipment will allow. (If you have a macro lens, that’s pretty darn close. Close enough to be able to crop an image and give you a little lesson in dragonfly facial anatomy.)

This picture was taken in my normal study site, aka my backyard, from about a foot and a half away; when I tried to pull in even tighter, the dasher lived up to its name and dashed away (flying of course; dragonflies, despite having six legs like most other insects, can’t walk). But when your camera has way too many megapixels (actually, that hardly matters at all) and you’re able to hold it nice and steady to get a sharp image (that’s the important bit), you can blow up a crop to just about whatever size you please. So I decided to spend a few minutes in Photoshop to give you all a little roadmap of the dragonfly’s facial anatomy.

Hover your cursor over the image to see what each structure is.

The “face” of the dragonfly, starting from the very bottom, consists of mandibles (not labeled, barely visible as dark smudges at bottom) that are usually concealed under the labrum, or “lower lip” (labeled). The clypeus is composed of the “top lip,” or postclypeus, and the anteclypeus, which is in what would be the “tongue” position were this a human face. Above the clypeus is the frons, from which arises the vertex, which serves as the anchor for the three ocelli, or simple eyes. The antennas arise from the base of the vertex as well. At the top of the “face,”the two eyes meet; the “joint” or seam is called the occiput.

Now that we’ve got the unfamiliar parts of the dragonfly face out of the way, let’s go back to that most familiar, and most prominent, feature of the dragonfly head: the huge compound eyes, with thousands upon thousands of ommatidia, or facets, that make up this complex visual apparatus. If you look closely, you’ll see that the larger facets are all on the top of the eye, the part that’s colored deep red. The smaller facets are on the bottom half, the part that’s colored blue-gray and has the black “pseudopupils.”

Most dragonflies that you’re likely to see fly during the day (the twilight-flying dragonflies are quite a bit less common in most people’s experience) and have excellent color vision. Our own eyes have three different color-sensitive retinal proteins, called opsins, that give us the familiar red-green-blue mix of color perception. (Those RGB  color values don’t correspond exactly to the peak sensitivity of each opsin, but, meh… close enough). Diurnal (day-flying) dragonflies, on the other hand, have as many as five opsins in their visual reception apparatus, giving them access to a much greater range of the electromagnetic spectrum.

What’s interesting is the arrangement of the ommatidia with respect to the part of the spectrum they’re sensitive to. Recall the visual spectrum mnemonic: ROYGBV. That is, red-orange-yellow-green-blue, in ascending  wavelength order. Red has the longest wavelength, while blue, violet, and, beyond the violet, ultra-violet, have the shortest wavelengths:

Visible spectrum. Image from Wikipedia.

Those larger facets on the top of the dragonfly’s eye? They are sensitive to UV light and blue light (on the right in the image above). The smaller ommatidia on the bottom half of the eye? They’re specialized for longer-wavelength light, like orange or green.

As anyone who’s tried to get close to a dragonfly, whether to capture it or just its image, those eyes are extraordinarily capable of detecting movement. That great visual acuity appears to be related to the presence (and direction) of  the pseudopupil (the dark region in the light blue-gray portion of the eye in the photo above). They seem to indicate the insect’s fovea, or zone of greatest visual acuity.

Land and Nilsson (2012) write that “perhaps the most useful feature of the pseudopupil [to the entomologist, if not to the insect itself] is that one can use it to measure inter-ommatidial angles. If one rotates an insect’s head through a degrees, and the pseudopupil appears to move across b facets, then the inter-ommatidial angle is a/b degrees. Variations in inter-ommatidial angle in different planes, and in different regions of the eye, can be mapped in this way, revealing how the eye is is organized to make the most of its limited visual acuity.”

Mapping the organization of the dragonfly eye is exactly what Truman Sherk did in a classic series of articles in the mid-1970s, tracing the development of dragonfly eyes from larva through adult animal, mapping the foveae and relating it to predation style. In the photo above you can see the pseudopupil looking directly at the camera, “anteriorly” as the scientists like to say. That is, directly in front of the animal.

In the example below, though, you can see lots of “accessory” pseudopupils:

Blue Dasher (Pachydiplax longipennis) displaying multiple accessory pseudopupils.

That is, in addition to the main, large pseudopupil, you can see several other dark spots; each of these is also a pseudopupil and indicates a zone of great visual acuity. According to Sherk, “the size and shape of the accessory pseudopupils [appear] to be related to the geometrical arrangement of the corneal facets, the slight curvature of the individual facets, and to the regional radius of curvature of the cornea. The contrast between the accessory pseudopupils and the surface [appears] to be related to the maturity of the cells between the cornea and the rhabdom.”

That might be a bit more than you wanted to know about the dragonfly and its face, but next time you see a dragonfly buzzing off when you so much as twitch a muscle in its direction, you might have a deeper appreciation for what makes that response possible: those amazing eyes.

References

Corbet, P. (1999). Dragonflies: Behavior and Ecology of Odonata. Ithaca: Cornell UP

Land, M. F., and D.-E. Nilsson. (2012). Animal Eyes, 2d ed. New York: Oxford UP.

Needham, J. G., and M. J. Westfall. (1955). A Manual of the Dragonflies of North America (Anisoptera).  Berkeley: U of California P.

Paulson, D.R.  (2011). Dragonflies and Damselflies of the East. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP.

Sherk, T. E. (1978). Development of the compound eyes of dragonflies (Odonata). III. Adult compound eyes. J. Exp.Zool 203:61-80.

As a rule, damselflies are quite a bit less conspicuous than their larger cousins, the dragonflies. Their bodies are slimmer, they tend to hold their smaller wings parallel to their bodies over their backs, rather than perpendicular to their bodies like those great big oars of wings on the dragonflies. They like to flit around in the tall grasses or, if you’re one of those more meticulous lawnkeepers, any shrubby vegetation you might have (although, if you’re a meticulous lawnkeeper, you or your gardener probably use pesticides, so you’re much less likely to see any of these beautiful little mosquito-eaters than those of us who practice a more holistic gardening approach, sometimes referred to as “leaving things alone.”).

The sprite family of damselfly takes this inconspicuousness to the extreme. Hal White, the longtime odonate observer up in the Delmarva peninsula, writes about these little guys as follows:

Because it is inconspicuous and rarely flies unless disturbed, it is easy to overlook even when searching for it. The presence of one Cyrano Darner at a pond attracts attention while hundreds, or even thousands, of Southern Sprites might be at the same location and go unnoticed.

I doubt that there are hundreds, or even dozens, of Southern Sprites in my little quarter acre, but I can certainly say that there’s at least one. And it’s very nice to meet her at long last:

Southern Sprite (Nehalennia integricollis. Boca Raton, FL, May 6, 2013.

They have the prettiest blue eyes, and a wonderful metallic green color that looks a bit dull in the shade but really lights up when the sun hits it:

Southern Sprite (Nehalennia integricollis. Boca Raton, FL, May 7, 2013.

Etymology

Nehalennia, as I’ve discussed before, is a river goddess from the Rhine region; the specific name integricollis means that the hind lobe of her prothorax (her collar, if you prefer), where the male damselfly would grasp her for copulation, is “entire,” or complete (integral), rather than interrupted or grooved. Presumably the shape of this region of the thorax matches the terminal abdominal appendages of the male to facilitate reproduction, as illustrated by this pair of Everglades Sprites:

Everglades Sprite (Nehalennia pallidula) female in copulatory position. The hind parts (caudal appendages) of the male are grasping her right behind her pronotum.

According to Westfall and May, the Southern Sprite is the “smallest, most southern, and least studied of the darker, northern group [there are five species in the genus Nehalennia, and three of them comprise the "northern" group of metallic green damselflies, while the remaining two are part of the "southern" group of darker, browner damselflies]. It is found in areas as diverse as the margins of sandhill lakes in Florida and sphagnum bogs…in New Jersey, but its ecological requirements have evidently never been described in detail.”

Giff Beaton observes that this species “tends to stay in heaviest vegetation, and small size makes observation difficult unless focusing on a small area and looking for movement.” I can certainly attest to that. I’ve been playing hide-and-seek with one or two of these little ladies for days now. Just when I think I’m about to get a good photo, she takes off, and when I finally relocate “her,” I find one of the dozens of Everglades Sprites that are littering my lawn, and she’s nowhere to be found.

So, while we don’t know too much about this lovely little lady, we do know that she’s alive and well in downtown Boca, and perhaps at a natural area near you!

References

Beaton, G. (2007). Dragonflies and Damselflies of Georgia and the Southeast. Athens: U of Georgia P.

Westfall, M. J., and M. May. (2006). Damseflies of North America, Revised Edition. Gainesville: Scientific.

White, H. (2011). Natural History of Delmarva Dragonflies and Damselflies: Essays of a lifelong observer. U of Delaware P.

Last year, almost to the day, my home office was graced by a lost and confused swift that had made its way down my disused chimney and popped out on the inside. I was so pleased to be able to document that occurrence with photos (see the post here). Well, Sunday, Cinco de Mayo 2013, saw a repeat of this occurrence, but with our whole family home to see it. We were out in the family room watching YouTube videos and the Marlins game (they won!) when all of a sudden a swift shot around the corner, played peekaboo with our ceiling fan, and tried to escape through our glass doors (without success). We tried in vain to usher it to an exit, but it vanished back into the part of the house where the chimney is, and since we couldn’t find a trace of it, we assumed it had gone back up the chimney.

But a couple of hours later, it came back out to the family room. This time, the boys and I were outside, but Marcella was inside and had the presence of mind to open all the doors. Eventually it found the exit, and both of us cheered heartily. (The boys were too busy playing with the hose in the sandbox.)

So yay! Two years in a row our house has been deemed worthy of a close inspection by Chaetura pelagica. Still haven’t heard any indication that our chimney is inhabited, but I’m holding out hope! (And it’s the only thing that’s keeping me from knocking this chimney down and putting something more practical in my tiny little office.)

[UPDATE: A day later and now I have photos. Don't know whether this is the original bird, or a second one, but as I was picking up some of the kids' toys upstairs, I heard the now-familiar whirr of giant flying cigar wings, and sure enough, a swift had made its way up our stairs and into the laundry basket on the landing. With great presence of mind, I grabbed a baby blanket and tried to herd it into a grabbable spot, which I did, sort of:

Chimney Swift (Chaetura pelagica). Boca Raton, FL, May 6, 2013.

As I was carrying it downstairs to release it, I tried to take a few photos, but, as with last year’s experience, it is just plain hard to take pictures of a fragile little thing that you’re trying to keep calm by covering its eyes with a blanket. Here’s one that sort of turned out:

Chimney Swift (Chaetura pelagica). Boca Raton, FL, May 6, 2013.

I got it outside and removed what I thought was just enough blanket that I could keep hold of it and still grab a shot or two, but it was not to be. As I was trying to unhook a snag of the blanket from one of its teeny little claws, it took matters into its own wings and flapped like mad to get out of there. I guess wandering around in a big enclosed space, bonking into windows and television screens was more than it had in mind when it explored our little chimney…]

Over the last three years, two Aprils have been fairly wet (7.5 inches at my rain gauge this year, and a whopping 9.22 inches the previous year), while one was quite dry (in 2011 we had only 1.15 inches of rain in April). This year, May started off with a bang: Over six inches of rain in the first three days, five and a half of them in one long rainy day that also included at least one tornado here in Boca Raton (at my dentist’s office, no less!).

All that moisture falling from the sky, saturating the local soil, has an effect on wildlife. Saturday morning, after what seemed like forever, the yard was full of odonates again. Damselflies (Rambur’s Forktails, Fragile Forktails, and Everglades Sprites) and dragonflies both (Blue Dasher, Little Blue Dragonlet, Eastern Pondhawk) were flitting around in the tall grass (after months without having to mow, I can see that I’ll be back out on a weekly basis with my trusty reel mower—no gas for me!).

Here’s a shot I liked of one particularly patient Everglades Sprite (Nehalennia pallidula):

Everglades Sprite (Nehalennia pallildula). Boca Raton, FL, May 4, 2013.

As usual, you can click on the image for a larger view. If you look closely, you can see the individual facets in the right eye:

Everglades Sprite (Nehalennia pallildula), detail. Boca Raton, FL, May 4, 2013.

As you may recall, those individual facets in the compound eye are called ommatidia. These tiny simple lenses, in combinations of hundreds (in the simplest compound eyes) to tens of thousands, form a complete image in the brain of the animal. The more ommatidia there are, the greater the visual acuity of the animal in question (in addition to insects, millipedes and mantis shrimp have compound eyes featuring ommatidia). In that respect, they function very much like the pixels on a CCD chip: as you add more pixels to your camera, you can create larger and larger images at high resolution. (Can you tell I got a new camera recently? One with a ridiculously high pixel count?)

Another damselfly appeared a bit after I got tired of chasing those sprites around. This one is a Fragile Forktail (Ischnura posita):

Fragile Forktail (Ischnura posita). Boca Raton, FL, May 4, 2013.

And there was the ubiquitous Rambur’s Forktail as well:

Rambur’s Forktail (Ischnura ramburii). Boca Raton, FL, May 4, 2013.

Here’s the first dragonfly I’ve managed to image so far this month; the Blue Dasher (at one point the most commonly photographed odonate on odonatacentral.org):

Blue Dasher dragonfly (Pachydiplax longipennis). Boca Raton, FL, May 4, 2013.

And here’s the second. (Surprise, surprise! Another Blue Dasher):

Blue Dasher (Pachydiplax longipennis. Boca Raton, FL, May 4, 2013.

And the third, a different species this time (Little Blue Dragonlet):

Little Blue Dragonlet (Erythrodiplax minuscula). Boca Raton, FL, May 4, 2013.

If this keeps up, it might be an interesting season for backyard wildlife after all!

The first photo was taken at f/11, which is the “standard” aperture for macro photography out of doors. The region of best focus is centered on the damselfly’s eye and the body is rather blurry:

Ischnura hastata. f/11, 1/400. Eye in perfect focus, most of body blurry.

The second image is taken at an even smaller aperture, f/14, with a correspondingly greater depth of field. And while the eye isn’t in as good a focus, the entire body is crisp and clear:

Ischnura hastata. f/14, 1/250 exposure. Eye slightly blurry, body entirely in focus.

To get a better idea of what I mean when I say that the eye is in perfect focus in the top image and in not such perfect focus in the second image, here are cropped views of the two images:

The eye, legs, and thorax are in excellent focus.

Here is a cropped view of the eye in the second image. Notice how much less impact this crop has than the first one; it turns out that the eyes are critical to good insect photography. (If you don’t agree that the first crop is better than the second one, click on the image to get the full size version; it should be much easier to see.)

The eye is not in perfect focus, but the thorax and the rest of the body are crisp and clear.

The question is, how much of the difference is due to the slight difference in depth of field, and how much is due to any inadvertent camera rotation (or movement of the subject itself)? The only way to answer that is to have a guaranteed stationary camera (use a tripod) and a guaranteed stationary subject (difficult for wildlife photography).

The trouble with tripods, of course, is that they’re difficult to set up and to move in areas that are dense with vegetation, which just happens to be the type of area damselflies frequent. If by chance the insect alights in a cleared-off area, chances are that maneuvering a tripod into the area will be enough to scare it off.

I’m tempted to try a monopod for two reasons: first, it will help steady the camera, even if it won’t guard completely against rotation issues; second, it can serve as a walking stick and, in a pinch, to beat back brush, clear aggressive spiderwebs, etc.

I’m generally only able to go out on photo safari during the lunch hour (I do have a day job, after all), and I’ve found that the local damselflies are pretty wary in the middle of the day. But the other afternoon I was able to sneak up on one bright yellow male Ischnura hastata (Citrine Forktail); it was quiescent enough to allow me to discover the effects of depth of field on odonate photography. These animals are small, but in macro photography, small distances matter.

As Sid Dunkle, coauthor of the recent monographic  guide to the damselflies points out, depth of field is critical to successful odonate photography.  In the photographic Supplement to Damselflies of North America, the standard treatment of the zygoptera, Dunkle writes that

I have had the near eye and the tip of the abdomen of a damselfly in focus, but the near surface of the thorax was out of focus! … The film plane [or in my case, the CMOS chip] must be aligned exactly with the longitudinal axis of the body to get both head and tip of abdomen in focus. A lot of patience is needed!

In my case, patience was needed simply to approach these maddeningly elusive little beasts. I say maddening because one would expect that a relatively large and slow-flying animal like this would be pretty easy to keep track of once spotted. But nothing could be further from the truth. It might just be my aging eyes, but I found it quite difficult to keep my eye on these little buggers as they flew from brightly lit areas to shade, and from grass stem to grass stem. At times I found it easier to track them by their shadows than by their actual bodies!

But once you get a damselfly quiet, it is indeed possible to approach them closely enough to capture some successful photographs, as the gallery below indicates. It’s also possible to discover just how critical focusing is in macro photography.

I took many more than seven photos, of course; these are just the ones that are anywhere close to being keepers, or that can serve as instructional reminders for myself.

Today’s lunchtime views come to us courtesy of a couple of weedy species: the common weed Bidens alba, aka Spanish Needles, and the common butterfly, Strymon istapa, aka Mallow Scrub-Hairstreak. (To be fair, I should add a third weed species, Common Fanpetals, Sida acuta, which is the larval food for the butterfly.)

The first weed, which I try to pull up whenever I notice it on account of its wickedly clingy seeds (see below), nevertheless has a pretty flower with a yellow corolla and white petals. It provides much-needed pollen for many insects when there’s nothing else abundant and in flower. And if there’s one thing this flower can be said to specialize in, it’s abundance, on account of those aforementioned (and below-pictured) seeds. They are about 0.25–0.5 in (0.6–1.3 cm) long, ribbed, and individual seeds look somewhat like needles; they have from 2 to 6 barbed hooks at each end (most commonly two, bi-dens). The seeds are borne in loose round clusters that somewhat resemble the traditional “peony” firework display:

Bidens alba seedhead. Note the twin teeth on each little spikelet. Very effective at hitching a ride.

Here’s a close-up of those teeth:

Bidens alba seedhead (detail).

As I found out from the Floridata page about this species, a single plant is capable of producing 3,000–6,000 seeds, which maintain viability for at least 3-5 years and germinate readily. If left unweeded, this little flower will soon carpet your property, causing untold annoyance when your toddler tramps through the weeds. Launderers and laundresses, beware the bidens! (I also found out that the “correct” common name of this plant is “shepherd’s needles,” but no one here in South Florida uses that name.)

As I mentioned, though, this little weed is very attractive to the local pollination crew; bees, butterflies, and even beetles, can’t seem to get enough of it. Floridata has a partial list of lepidopteran visitors to the blossoms:

[They] are a favored nectar source for many species including the great purple hairstreak (Atlides halesus), the dogface (Zerene cesonia) the red-banded hairstreak (Calycopis cecrops), the lantana scrub hairstreak (Strymon bazochii), and the gray hairstreak (Strymon melinus), and many others.

Our local scrub-hairstreak, the Mallow (Strymon istapa), is no stranger to this little flower, as you can see. Here it is, proboscis coiled as it anticipates how best to attack this scrumptious snack:

Strymon istapa (Mallow Scrub-Hairstreak), Boca Raton, FL, March 28, 2013.

And here it is, proboscis uncoiled, rooting away among the multiple carpels (the “yellow stuff” that you see “inside” the flower):

Strymon istapa (Mallow Scrub-Hairstreak), proboscis extended. Boca Raton, FL, March 28. 2013.

I’ve written this species up before on this site, but since it was a short article and I didn’t have such a wonderful macro lens as I have now, I figured I’d give it a “relook” as they say on the subcontinent. Cech and Tudor highlight the characteristic that makes this butterfly so much fun for the photographer: “imperturbable.” As I said when I wrote it up last time, it stays put (“If only all butterflies—and any bird—were this easy to photograph!”)

As its name implies, its larval host plants are in the family Malvaceae; after puzzling over the identity of one of the many weeds in my yard, research conducted for this blog post clinched the ID for me: Sida acuta, aka common wireweed, aka common fanpetals, is the larval hostplant for this butterfly. Here’s a picture from the interblogs; I’m happy to report that, thanks to a recent bout of weeding, I don’t have any specimens worthy of photographing, although I do have several little ones that I need to get out of the ground:

Sida acuta, from the website of Belgium’s Royal Museum for Central Africa.

If you want to know more about this plant, check out Stephanie Sanchez’s page over at heuristron.net; she’s always got something interesting to say!

This is one of the reasons I write this blog: I’ve been pulling this weed for over two years, never realizing that it’s the larval plant for one of my favorite little butterflies! From now on, when I weed this plant, I’ll be sure to leave a few behind (heh heh—as if it’ll be by choice!) in hopes of one day seeing the Mallow Scrub-Hairstreak caterpillar.

References

Cech, R. and G. Tudor. (2005). Butterflies of the East Coast: An Observer’s Guide. Princeton UP.

Minno, M. F., J. F. Butler, and D. W. Hall. (2005.) Florida’s Butterfly Caterpillars and Their Host Plants. Gainesville: UP of Florida.

It also means it’s time to get out into the garden and check out what needs trimming and what needs watering. (This wisdom comes to me from my next door neighbor at my old house, who ran a plant service in her working days.) The lovely American Beautyberry (Callicarpa americana) tends to get a bit leggy, and it’s best to cut it back fairly hard before the growing season begins. Also, this cold, dry weather has some of my other normally hardy natives looking a mite piqued: the coffees are drooping and my Cordia globosa are looking parched.

So late this morning, I took my pruning shears, hose, and camera to freshen up the yard a little. The shears to trim, the hose to refresh, and the camera to see what might be drawn in (or flushed out) by the water.

And lo and behold, I found my first instance of a butterfly “puddling.” Strictly speaking, butterfly puddling is when male butterflies find a nice muddy spot and lap up minerals through those long probosces of theirs, so perhaps this isn’t really puddling, but it is a fine example of a Gulf Fritillary drinking from the moist mulch:

Gulf fritillary (Agraulis vanillae enjoying the just-watered mulch in the front yard. Boca Raton, FL, March 27, 2013.

Apparently this bit of open water over mulch was so tempting for this chilly little lepidopteran that it let me get much closer than I’ve ever been able to get to one before:

Gulf Fritillary (Agraulis vanillae) close-up. Boca Raton, FL, March 27, 2013.

These bright spangled gems use our native maypop/passionvines (Passiflora species) as larval foodplants, so they love my back yard, and are often found there. I’ve written about this species before, but I neglected to point out that the “fritillary” in its common name is actually something of a misnomer. According to the best butterfly book I’ve ever seen, this butterfly is a heliconian, not a fritillary:

This species and the next [Euptoieta claudia, Variegated Fritillary] are evolutionary “lynchpins” that straddle a blurry taxonomic line between the heliconians and fritillaries. The Gulf Fritillary was named (or misnamed, actually) on the basis of its appearance more than its ancestry, since it falls on the heliconian side of the divide, whereas the Variegated Fritillary is more properly labeled as a “fritillary.” The Gulf Fritillary is the sole member of its genus. [...]

The species’ common name reportedly refers to individuals seen flying over the Gulf of Mexico during seasonal irruptions.

Yay, nature! If you haven’t gotten out there yet to enjoy it, there’s still time to heed Candide’s injunction to Pangloss: il faut cultiver notre jardin! If you want to see anything, that is.

Ischnura hastata (Citrine Forktail). Boca Raton, FL, March 26, 2013.

There was at least one female that I’m calling a Rambur’s today as well, although now that I’m seeing more of them, I’m wondering if these might not be female citrines; they’re harder to disambiguate than I’d like:

Ischnura ramburii (Citrine Forktail). Boca Raton, FL, March 26, 2013

Still, no matter what you call them, it’s fun to see these dainty little predators patrolling the yard; gives me hope that eventually the whitefly invasion will be beaten back.