Phloral Arrangements – Strange Bouquet

On By TimelessladyIn Phloral Arrangements

Fennel flowers, Rue seedpods, and some fennel fronds with a piece of dill added here and there, make up my rather strange vased bouquet for Ramblings in the Gardens challenge of In a Vase on Monday. The herbal bouquet has a job to do, provide food for the caterpillars feeding in the Butterfly House. They are still in the small to medium stage, the larger ones have formed chrysalis, save one, who is still deciding if the time is right to drop off the rue stem.

I have seven smaller caterpillars happily munching the new bouquet. The climate in this area has been perfect for the development of caterpillars now that the wildfire smoke is gone. This bouquet will soon be eaten down to mere nubs, not a long-lasting arrangement to be sure. All of these herbs, along with parsley and Queen Anne’s Lace are host plants for Black Swallowtail butterflies in my area.

Although they produce a lot of frass (insect waste), they don’t make any type of fracas, and are silent companions on the porch. An ongoing diary of the Butterfly rearing of 2023 can be found at the top of this page, or can be followed from this link: Butterfly Diary.

18 thoughts on “Phloral Arrangements – Strange Bouquet”

    1. I place the vase in a butterfly screen cage now. In the past they wandered all over the porch when they searched for a place to transform in a chrysalis. Due to spider webs and other obstructions though, I feel this is a way to better raise them. They never drop off the plant host as caterpillars just feeding, unless it is accidental, they have no idea they are confined. But…when they emerge, they are ready to go and claim their freedom in a matter of hours.

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    1. It is a screened in boxy apparatus, with a zipper for easy access. It was not expensive, and I wish I had purchased one years ago. I actually bought another one after the first arrived. I am able to thoroughly clean one, even with several chrysalis attached to the sides. The bottom gets very mucked up, even with an additional protective piece of covering. I’m glad to have the two so I can really let the bottom of the house dry out before starting all over again.

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        1. I have two, that way I can thoroughly clean one up in between batches. One is about two feet tall, the other about eighteen inches. They are rectangular, boxy screened in houses. I’ll try to post a photo soon to the Butterfly Diary page.

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  5. I love the vase both with the original content minus the caterpillars, which I would happily have on my mantle shelf. Yes looking after wildlife is important especially that the fires will have destroyed so much. The large butterflies are quite marvellous, I am going to look these up.

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    1. This is a Black Swallowtail butterfly. I haven’t seen many caterpillars on the fennel in the past week or so, but now the Monarch Caterpillars are here. The Monarchs are a much harder caterpillar to raise to a butterfly. The Swallowtails are very hardy.

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Thanks so much for your comments. They fill my life with sunshine.