Queen butterfly. Note the two black spots on the wings that show it is a male.
The Grounds Committee plans to recommend a flower and butterfly garden for Wildewood IIA. It looks like we already have a few butterfly friends in the neighborhood.
Today I noticed two caterpillars are munching on the same milkweed plant in my inner garden. I recognize one as the usual Monarch. The other is slightly different. The familiar Monarch looks like this:
And becomes the Monarch butterfly:
And, here is the slightly different Queen caterpillar sharing the same plant. The Queen has one set of antennae for sensing and two sets of filaments, one in the middle and one at the rear. (More about filaments and purpose here.) The extra set is for show to scare off predators. I read that the Queen eats slower than the Monarch and can be out-paced by its Monarch cousin for food. The Queen is also a bit smaller in size. Here is the Queen:
The Queen caterpillar becomes the Queen butterfly:
The Monarch and Queen caterpillar chrysalis' also look similar. The middle one is the Monarch chrysalis:
Photo credits and information.
