As I meander about our gardens here at Beyond Mountains Homestead, I do from time to time, notice these lovely brown butterflies flitting about. They seem to really enjoy our sunflowers and purple coneflowers.
The Great Spangled Fritillary:
Family: Nymphalidae
Subfamily: Heliconiinae
Identification: Large. Upperside of male tan to orange with black scales on forewing veins; female tawny, darker than male. Underside of hindwing with wide pale submarginal band and large silver spots.
Wing Span: 2 1/2 - 4 inches (6.3 - 10.1 cm).
Life History: Males patrol open areas for females. Eggs are laid in late summer on or near host violets. Newly-hatched caterpillars do not feed, but overwinter until spring, when they eat young violet leaves.
Flight: One brood from mid-June to mid-September.
Caterpillar Hosts: Various violet species (Viola).
Adult Food: Nectar from many species of flowers including milkweeds, thistles, ironweed, dogbane, mountain laurel, verbena, vetch, bergamot, red clover, joe-pye weed, and purple coneflower.
Habitat: Open, moist places including fields, valleys, pastures, right-of-ways, meadows, open woodland, prairies.
Range: Alberta east to Nova Scotia, south to central California, New Mexico, central Arkansas, and northern Georgia. Comments: The most common fritillary throughout most of the eastern United States.
Conservation: Not usually required.
NCGR: G5 - Demonstrably secure globally, though it may be quite rare in parts of its range, especially at the periphery.
Management Needs: None reported.
This information is courtesy of :
https://www.butterfliesandmoths.org/species/Speyeria-cybele
Two butterflies on my sunflower seemingly having a very important meeting.
Thanks for dropping by and I hope you have enjoyed this post... Steem on friends, Steem on !!
Beautiful shot ..👌
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Thanks 🙏 @saan
Do you dehydrate your echinacea? Mine is only just starting to flower so though I have petals, they are not purple yet, everything is so behind for us this year thanks to this unusually cold, even for us, summer
I usually just let the seed heads fall to the ground to create bigger patches of flowers in the garden.
I mostly dry the leaves but the flowers too, but yes, I am wanting more of this beneficial and beautiful plant so I am going to let some of the flowers just go to see and give me more :D
They really blend in, nice coloring and cool shots!!!
Thank you @cognoscere
Cool Shots!
Thank you @lrich, I do appreciate it:)