Garden Centre

Thursday, May 17, 2007

Yet another 'what is this?' moment ....

Except I’ve managed to find this one out. It’s odd really, I think of myself as being a pretty competent gardener – I can do Latin names and all that stuff and plant identification is an absolute doddle for me, but when it comes to the birds and the bees (and the butterflies and the moths) I’m actually pretty useless. I can tell blackbirds from other birds by their call, and I can just about tell the various forms of tit apart (don’t giggle) blue-tits, coal-tits, great-tits (I said don’t giggle) etc. Neglected education I suppose, which makes me wonder – I grew up in the country and if I can’t name common butterflies what hope is their for our urban young people to be able to recognise and appreciate such beautiful creatures?

Anyway, this is a Holly Blue – ‘The larvae of the Holly Blue have two preferred food plants. In spring, the larvae feed on the flower buds and berries of Holly while in late Summer, the buds and young berries of Ivy are preferred (odd, as this picture shows it making itself comfortable on my bay tree, another evergreen but not one of the preferred food plants, both of which grow all over my garden). The larvae are up to 15mm in length and are generally green in colour with a pale yellow line along each side and a small jet black head which is generally unseen because it spends much of its time deep within a flower bud or berry feeding. The adult Holly Blue emerges early in spring. Unlike other blues, the Holly Blue tends to fly high up around trees and bushes in full sunlight. The males can sometimes be found at ground level taking salts from dried up puddles in summer.’

An excellent site for butterfly novices or nuts is British Butterflies from which I cribbed the butterfly description above.

And this is one baby I can feel completely happy about – it can eat ivy and holly to its heart’s content – as far as I’m concerned they are both just wallpaper plants that provide a background to the garden, and to get this gorgeous blue beauties flitting about, a few nibbled ivy leaves is a small price to pay.

Labels: General, Wildlife Gardening

The All Seasons Gardener at 8:42 AM

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