The night temperatures are growing cold enough so that last week I turned the heat on in my house for the first time since spring. The plants have caught a whiff of the oncoming season, but most of them are still going strong. The roses shine, almost literally, in the autumn light, with a color intensity that is peculiar to October, amid beds that are full of hundreds of asters. Hardy, garden chrysanthemums await the moment when they will bring down the curtain on the fall flowers.
The flowers go gradually, but the butterflies leave the scene all at once. We always notice this in our household, because we keep track of the butterflies and a few of the more unusual moths. I never fail to feel a sense of loss on the day that I realize the butterflies have gone. Even though the sound of their wings is inaudible to human ears, the absence of that sound contributes to a great stillness in the garden.
This year has been only moderately good for butterflies. The long, cool spring delayed their appearance and most likely disrupted their reproductive cycles. It took a long time before the few stalwart cabbage white butterflies of early spring were joined by other, showier species.
As I say goodbye to all of the jewels of the sky, I go through the butterfly census in my mind. We have had some beauties this year.
The first butterfly of spring for us is almost always the mourning cloak—Nymphalis antiopa. They are about twice or three times the size of the common cabbage white, with purple wings banded in cream. Mourning cloaks come first because they often overwinter, hiding in tree cavities or under eaves. This advantage allows them to mate earlier in the season and give their offspring a good start. The adult butterflies are only casual flower-frequenters, preferring such delicacies as tree sap. In my garden, we don’t see them much after the spring.
After the mourning cloaks blaze the trail, the large, yellow and black tiger swallowtails—Papilio glaucus—make a flashy entrance. Marked on the wing edges with blue dots, I have seen three at once in the butterfly bush in the backyard, which seems to be their go-to nectar source. These tailed marvels float as much as they flit, which makes them easier to keep track of. Sometimes they are joined by other, faster-flying swallowtails, like the black swallowtail and—possibly—the dark-winged pipevine swallowtail. These generally fly too fast to make good identifications possible.
Sheer size makes the tiger swallowtails the most impressive, but in mid spring and early to mid summer they are joined by the smaller red admirals—Vanessa atalanta—with their jaunty black wings dotted in white and striped with orange. The red admirals’ logical fellow travelers are the painted ladies—Vanessa cardui—which are a similar size but with more orange and less black on the wings. They dine on the nectar of the summer flowers, especially the various daisies and coneflowers. Usually they are joined by a large number of silver-spotted skippers—Epargyreus clarus–that look like a butterfly/moth cross and flit rapidly among the flowers. Skippers are roughly triangular in shape, about three quarters of an inch long and adorned with a prominent white wing blotch against a brown background. Though they prefer members of the pea or legume family as host plants, the skippers that frequent my place sample from a wide variety of flowers. I have seen scores of them at once going about their business among the single roses, butterfly bushes and other plants. They have a jerky, skipping flight pattern that would mark them even if you couldn’t see the “silver” spots.
Monarch butterflies—Danaus plexippus– arrive in the late summer, floating lazily over the landscape as if they had no thought at all about migrating. We have a few milkweed family plants in the yard and I always hope that the monarchs will lay eggs on them. So far, I have never seen any caterpillars, though the adults stop by every year. On 9/11, twelve of them—a record number—spent the morning feeding on the butterfly bush with golden sunlight streaming through their wings.
This year we had two less-usual visitors. One was a great spangled fritillary—Speyeria cybele—about the size of a monarch with wings boldly check in orange and dark brown to black. The fritillary restricted its dining options to one of the butterfly bushes and only appeared for a few days, but it was a lovely sight. The other handsome butterfly was a butter-yellow clouded sulphur—Coleus philodice–with impressive black wing edges. He—and I know from his flashy coloration that the butterfly was male—feasted exclusively on asters, flirting with the cabbage whites who had the temerity to fly into his orbit.
All the butterflies made the garden beautiful while the sun shone on their wings and warmth pervaded the landscape. Now they have gone to the various places that butterflies go, but from an uninformed human perspective, they disappeared into the ether overnight. I get a little mournful about such things, but then I remember that while many butterflies have flown away, at least the mourning cloaks remain, just out of sight. I wish that I could emulate them and find a warm place, furl my wings and lie low until winter recedes.