aromatisse's Favorites

First Margined White I’ve ever seen in Seattle! Previous Seattle records were mentioned in a 1946 publication, but none for Seattle since then. And it visited the butterfly meadow I’ve been working on to create better butterfly habitat in for some years now! At first, I assumed it was going to be a cabbage white, which I actually don’t see very often in this opening in the woods, but with darkened veins and no dark wing tips, I think I indeed got a margined white here! I already have a lot of our native Tower Mustard - Turritis glabra (formerly Arabis glabra) growing here if it wants to come back to lay eggs.

The Tower Mustard is a species that I had found on a list of Seattle's lost native species 25 years ago, but then found one colony of the plant still in Seattle, and I established 2 new colonies here with seed from that first colony I found here, including this one in Lincoln Park.

This Red Admiral is perched on its host plant Stinging Nettle - Urtica dioica. I've only now seen a few Red Admirals at Lincoln Park this year, a species I never see that many of, and one I am monitoring because I started one patch of Stinging Nettles for them in a sunny spot where the butterflies can find them, and for 4 other butterfly species, that need them to lay eggs on, or that can lay eggs on nettles, as well as other species. After seeing one lay eggs on the plants, I am now looking for the shelters of their caterpillars that I call "tacos", the nettle leaves, with their sides curled up, their edges silked together, their undersides exposed, to make what I think of as a "taco shape". And a second butterfly species laying eggs on this patch of nettles.

I only had seen one broken growing tip of a phantom orchid this year, and I've never seen a Phantom Orchid grow a new flower stalk after the initial growing stalk was broken. I was then afraid we would have none this year. I then checked the spot where I first discovered the species in the park, but where I hadn’t seen any in years, and found this one!

I will add that one almost surely can't successfully transplant a Phantom Orchid, as it is attached to a fungus that feeds it. The microscopic fungus mycelia is spread through the soil, and the fungus likely depends on a tree that couldn't be dug up with the fungal mycelia spread through the soil around the tree roots.

The butterfly is in the middle, under a leaf, mostly obscured by the shade, where it is laying an egg!

Two years ago, after someone dug up the nettle patch in my growing butterfly meadow, where I often see Satyr Commas, I planted a nettle root in this sunny spot, which grew into this nettle patch. I was very happy to see this one landing on the nettles, laying an egg on the underside of a leaf, taking a flight, land on the nettles again, and lay another egg on the underside of another leaf. It repeated this about seven times. I look forward to seeing the caterpillars!

The caterpillars will stay on the underside of the leaf, and make a tent by pulling the sides of the leaf down, and together with silk, leaving the front half of the leaf open, and will feed from the tip of the leaf to the petiole, leaving a petiole with no blade when they are done, then go to a new leaf, and do the same. In the 4th photo someone has pulled open the tent, the caterpillar was hiding under, to expose the caterpillar.

My journal post of how the egg laying on these Stinging Nettles was my first observed success in 27 years of working to get butterflies to lay eggs on plants growing where I started them growing!

Roughly 7 generations growing in this spot, all self seeded since I brought three seeds here from the foothills of the Olympic Mountains 15 years ago. Thousands of plants here now. The ground is now covered with pappus hairs from this year’s seeds. As all of these plants are self-seeded it fits the iNaturalist definition of "wild", but I also thought people should know this is not part of a population that has persisted here since before European contact.

(Update 3/24 these thistles are no longer so dense here, but are still numerous.)

This species was on a list I found 21 years ago of those native species that hadn’t been recorded in Seattle in decades when I started studying how to identify them all, and just what habitats they naturally grew in, and looking for where I could find wild seed of the species on that list from sites physically and ecologically close to Seattle, to try planting in the most promising spots here.

I started with the goal of helping the recovery of butterfly species that had become rare in, or had disappeared from, Seattle, and knew thistles to be important as both butterfly nectar, and host (caterpillar food) plants, and had learned that all 4 of Seattle's native thistle species were on that list of our lost species. So I am pleased to see a bit of improved butterfly habitat in this spot where this native thistle species is thriving again!

I’ve since spent 15 years weeding this site and controlling the Artichoke Plume Moths https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/319034-Platyptilia-carduidactylus, the best I can, as the mother plants sent their offspring to occupy the growing patch of land vacated by my weeding around them. I also have a significant problem with non-viable seed, more later in the season, than with the initial crop, which I believe is due to predation of the receptacles, where the seeds develop, by the introduced Rhinocyllus conicus - the Nodding Thistle Receptacle Weevil https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/229899-Rhinocyllus-conicus .

Not 100 percent sure of the species of Hesperia. This was the only photo I could get, but before I got my camera, I saw what I call the "zig-zag" silvery spots on the ventral hind wing that I distinguish Hesperia genus Skippers by. My first Hesperia in Seattle in over 20 years of looking. I saw it nectar on Tellima grandiflora - Fringe Cups. Also a species of plant I don't know I have seen a butterfly nectar on before. Hesperia colorado - Western Branded Skipper seems the most likely. While it didn't seem any bigger than our other than our common local orange Skipper of the same size and shape, the Woodland Skipper, that species wouldn't fly until July, and wouldn't have the silvery zig-zag marks on the ventral hindwing that I saw. The size suggests that it would be too small for a Juba Skipper.

I'm adding an edit on a subsequent year of another observation of mine of a Juba Skipper, also in Lincoln Park, the following year, on May 18th 2021.

https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/79307501
A series of recent records in West Seattle and Vashon suggest they may have been breeding in this area.

Discovered while turning over wet leaves on the ground in an open area adjacent to a small pond and mixed coniferous-deciduous forest. Width of the shell was less than .5 cm. (I did not have a ruler with me, but the last photo shows my index finger for scale -- the width of my nail at the widest point is 1 cm.)