Last September Jay and Mike Gurney and Cathy Weiss of Yankton Nurseries chatted about the weather of the 2018 growing season and related oddities. They hadn’t seen many butterflies until the end of the season, especially swallowtails and monarchs.
Arriving butterflies became quite busy around the nursery, gathering nectar and pollen. As a curiosity to watch butterflies develop, they brought leaves with eggs into thier nursery store and put them in a butterfly house on the counter. They kept water and appropriate food foliage in the butterfly house. For weeks, all who passed by could see the butterflies development.
Monarch caterpillar is brought out to meet the public before continuing its lunch.
One of the swallowtails is about ready for release by blooming plants outdoors.
Cathy, Mike and Jay monitor the butterflies, spurred by their interest. They share about butterfly food preferences in the wild and other observations in the published article at this link:
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