Forests From Farms FR

Life cycle of the Painted Lady butterfly

"Madame Butterfly", as we called the Painted Lady butterfly I injured a few weeks ago and took in, laid eggs, as you know. The butterfly died after living for a few more weeks.

The eggs hatched and the caterpillars are now in a terrarium/old aquarium. They are growing fast day feeding on thistles! 

At some point, they will turn into chrysalises, from which butterflies will emerge once again, thus completing the life cycle of this little creature. 

Below are some photos of this cycle. 

I hope I  will dispel some misconceptions I hear about butterflies:

1/ We often hear that butterflies only live for one day. This is not true. Some butterflies can live for several months, such as the swallowtail butterfly. Others live for a few weeks. And some hibernate during the winter, which allows them to survive longer until conditions are favourable.

2/ Caterpillars are dangerous! They cause allergies if you touch them. Yes, some are, but most are not. You should never touch a caterpillar with your bare hands. Automatically assuming that all caterpillars are dangerous and must be eliminated is bad for biodiversity and therefore for butterflies. 

3/ Never kill a caterpillar! Caterpillars are also food for birds; it's sad, but it's true. By making sure you have lots of caterpillars, you will have lots of birds in your garden. If you have problems with caterpillars, for example on your cabbage plants, there are other ways to avoid them or reduce their numbers. But please don't kill them. 

4/ This brings me to the following question: how can we ensure that we have caterpillars of different species in the garden? By letting wild plants, bushes and trees grow. I see a lot of messages about the fact that we need to have lots of flowers for insects. This is true, of course. But butterflies emerge from a chrysalis, which was once a caterpillar. And so caterpillars need to eat too. Some caterpillars eat nettles (like those of the Peacock butterfly) and others, such as the caterpillar of the painted lady, eat thistles. Fortunately, thistles are not the only plant these caterpillars feed on. They also like soy plants, for example.

But ‘our caterpillars’ only eat thistles. I give them new branches every day. Thistles are also very important for butterflies, which feed on flower nectar in the summer. Other caterpillars eat grasses and herbs. 

Each caterpillar, each animal has its own preferences, which means that to have a diversity of butterflies, you need to have a diversity of plants. This diversity occurs naturally in nature, thanks to other animals such as wild boars (also known as nature's engineers) and birds, among others, which disperse seeds. 

5/ Some species of butterflies lay all their eggs in the same place, such as the Peacock butterfly. Others, such as the Painted lady and the Red admiral, lay them in a scattered manner. This is of course preferable, because if a plant on which an egg is laid disappears (or is eaten by another insect), there will still be others on other plants. 

But this means that these plants must be left alone as much as possible.

Where does the problem lie in terms of biodiversity balance? Farmers only plant one species of plant/grains  in a field (=monoculture) and, generally speaking, this is not very useful for insects. Birds, on the other hand, benefit from it. In addition, most land is  used for livestock farming (animals need these monocultures). Furthermore, people and local councils (a mower has just passed in front of the house to mow the verge of the raod) mow their gardens/verges too much and too sone. By mowing too much, you eliminate all useful plants and their seeds. In the end, only a few plant species remain, which means less diversity, fewer species of caterpillars, fewer species of butterflies, fewer species of birds... It's all very simple! But you have to know it.

I was able to take these photos with an old macro camera belonging to my brother-in-law. I am very grateful to him for letting me keep it. 😉 

I hope to show how incredibly vulnerable nature is. If you remove part of the cycle, everything that comes after disappears.