Great Spangled Fritillary on Wild Bergamot
It seems like if you want to attract butterflies, you should get some Wild Bergamot ; here's yet another butterfly attracted to this wildflower: a Great Spangled Fritillary . These are one of my favorite butterflies. Their orange-and-black coloring and relatively large size make them easy to spot and fairly easy to identify. Probably the easiest butterfly (in my area) with which to mistake the Great Spangled Fritillary is the Aphrodite Fritillary , which has a black spot near the base of the forewing that the GSF lacks, and which is generally smaller. (My pictures don't show that spot, but the fritillaries I was seeing were almost the size of the Monarchs. I don't think an Aphrodite would ever get that large.) People sometimes see a Pearl Crescent and wonder if it's a baby GSF, but of course butterflies don't grow that way. They're pretty much at their full size when they emerge from their chrysalis. (I will admit that it's a little hard to see the pattern ...