Great Spangled Fritillary

Here's a Great Spangled Fritillary I met early in the summer, probably nectaring on Common Milkweed. This is a classic wildflower for the Great Spangled Fritillary; they seem to prefer flowers that are purple/pink/red. (Although not very many animals can eat milkweed plants, their nectar is popular with lots of pollinators.)

There's also a purple link to them as caterpillars; they use violets as host plants. Caterpillars that hatch this year actually don't eat until after hibernating through the coming winter. When things start to warm up, they'll hopefully find some healthy violet leaves to chow down on.

As butterflies whose development is tied to winter, I would have expected to see all of the summer's GSFs approximately the same time of year, but I've seen them June - August. I don't know why some would emerge from hibernation significantly sooner, so I suspect some caterpillars take longer to find the violets they need to eat.

I suspect that these guys are sometimes mistaken for Monarch butterflies, at least when seen at a distance and in motion; they're both largish orange butterflies.

June 23, 2021 at Duke Farms
Photo 141960533, (c) jpviolette, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC)


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