| Cassius Blue Butterfly | Leptotes cassius |
Cassius Blue Butterfly nectars on Phyla nodiflora:
These tiny Cassius Blue Butterflies are very very small. The photo
below of one sitting on my hand illustrates just how little they are
(wide view and close-up of same image).
They live on my Plumbago where they are a constant whir of activity. They make occasional visits to my Phyla nodiflora to sip nectar.
Cassius Blue Caterpillar (larvae):
The Cassius Blue caterpillar is even smaller, and extremely hard to
find. It looks a lot like the tiny leaves at the base of the Plumbago
flower, which I suspect works to camouflage it from potential
predators.
It has a darker green line down the center, and when its head is tucked
in underneath, the dark spots on top appear to be eyes, probably to
scare predators away.
The caterpillar is on a bit of Plumbago stem on the flower petal on the
dime. I put that in to illustrate how tiny they are. Do you see the
caterpillar in the flower picture below?
The male Cassius Blue Butterfly is investigating the female. See how his
wings are blue all the way across the top?
Close-up of caterpillar:
...and there it goes, crawling out of the picture I set up again. Ok,
enough caterpillar pictures I guess.
Next, the caterpillar makes a chrysalis:
Cassius Blue Chrysalis
I'm so jealous! I thought I'd photographed all the exciting stuff about
my blue butterflies, but I've never seen them puddle, and I just
discovered that
Werner has a photo
of two other species of blue butterflies puddling. I'm making a
small mud puddle by my Plumbago to see if mine will too. I'll
update if I catch them at it.
