Summertime Blues 2 - Blue Butterflies

More summertime blues - (although they fly all year) - are tiny butterflies. The Cassius Blue and Ceraunus Blue butterflies breed in the yard, and it's possible that we have had visits from Eastern Pygmy Blues, since we are not far from the salt marshes where they and their larval plants thrive.

Generally the Florida Blues fly very close to the ground. Their flight is fast and erratic, and they don't seem to perch long enough for me to id them. Blink and you'll miss them. Their underwings are drab, and they fold their wings when perching. But you glimpse flashes of startling blue when they flutter to another spot.

They are tiny butterflies. The Ceraunus Blue has a maximum wingspan of  0.7 - 1.2 inches. The Cassius Blue is the same size or a little larger at the bottom range. The Eastern Pygmy Blue, one of the tiniest butterflies in the world, maxes out at  0.7 -0.9 inches.

They are among the "Gossamer-Winged" butterflies, and the delicate iridiscent blue of their upper wings makes that a very apt description. Black and white banded antennae are another characteristic of butterflies in this family, Lycaenidae, which also contains the Hairstreaks.

Ceraunus Blues and Neptunia pubescens

The Ceraunus Blue is quite common in Florida. It breeds as far north as central Florida, west to Texas and California, and south to Central America and the West Indies. Both males and females have one eyespot on each hindwing. The eyespot is quite prominent on the underside of the wing because it is large in relation to the size of the butterfly, and partially ringed with bright orange. Males are a shimmery true blue on top, while females are darker and can appear almost black.

Garden abundance of Ceraunus Blues is said to be low, but we seem to have a resident population. One of its larval host plants is Neptunia pubescens, "Tropical Puff" or "Yellow Puff."  We have a large clump or colony on one side of the driveway. This prostrate spreading legume has a delicate fern-like appearance due to its bipinnately compound leaves and tiny leaflets. When it thrives it arches and tumbles all over itself, and from a distance looks dense. However its fine texture does allow grasses, sedges and other weeds to invade it, so it requires a little maintenance - no water.

When it gets ratty looking I cut it back to the ground, and it regenerates beautifully. Indeed, care should be used in introducing it into the garden because it can be difficult to eradicate. Surrounded by concrete and brick, ours is pretty well neutralized, but I do need to trim it periodically to keep it out of the roadway. Neptunia is a "sensitive" plant, and the leaflets collapse as soon as they are touched - that poses some problems in drawing it!

The butterflies lay their eggs on the flower buds. The eggs, larvae and pupae are so tiny I've never been able to find even one. Neptunia flowers occur in "powder puff" heads, with bright yellow petals and numerous stamens. It doesn't produce enough flowers at one time to be truly showy, but evidently it flowers enough to sustain the Blues.

Perching Cassius Blues can be identified by the "zebra" striping on their underwings. This may be hard to see in my photo, but I can't enlarge it more without losing even more detail. They have 2 eyespots on the hindwing. Both sexes are blue on their topwings, though the female is paler wiith more brown than the male. This species is common throughout Florida, excluding the panhandle. They also range from south Texas, the West Indies, and south to Argentina.

Cassius Blue on Plumbago scandens

They lay their eggs on various legume and leadwort species. I used to have more of them because I grew the Florida native Plumbago scandens. This plant is problematic in the yard because it  resists training and scrambles over anything and everything in its path. Its small white flowers are attractive, but the buds and seed pods are extremely sticky, and if you or your pet gets them tangled in hair/fur, the only solution is to cut them out. I took out most of it, but one plant somehow escaped my grim reaping, so I am going to try once again to train, or at least contain it, just for the butterflies.

Milkpea (see my Jan.8, 18 post), a plant I vainly try to eradicate in the yard, is another larval host for Cassius and Ceraunus Blues. I called a temporary truce until  they had a chance to bring up a brood or two, but the milkpea is getting totally out of control in some places, so that's going to end soon.

Blues like to nectar on Phyla nodiflora, "Fogfruit," among other flowers. Phyla is also a magnet for the beautiful White Peacock butterfly, which uses it as a larval host. This plant, another member of the Verbena family so popular with pollinators, can be trained into a beautiful hanging basket. One of my brothers had a trick of looping the flower stalk around itself and then sliding it up quickly to pop off the head. He used to shoot the heads at me while we waited for the school bus. I tried, but never managed the snap.

Phyla nodiflora and Ceraunus Blue

Sources: Butterflies through Binoculars: A Field, Finding and Gardening Guide to Butterflies in Florida. Glassberg, Minno & Calhoun. Oxford U. Press, 2000. Plate 16 and facing page, pp. 78-81.

Florida Butterfly Gardening. Minno & Minno. U. Press of Florida, 1999. pp. 75-77.

Florida's Fabulous Butterflies. Emmel & Kenney. World Publications, 1997. pp. 18-19.

Another Weed from Hell

Not all noxious weeds are exotics. Native species can be just as unwelcome! You'd think I'd have learned by now to be suspicious of any new plant popping up in the yard, because so many have turned out to be pests. No, I wait until I've got an infestation before I decide they are unwelcome. 

 I first noticed Galactia, or Milk Pea, twining around some Pink Muhly Grass. It didn't seem to amount to much, and it  had a rather sweet little pink flower. I forgot all about it. Big mistake. They may seem delicate and innocuous, but they become a menace in a very short time due to their robust production of mostly-viable seeds. They twine around any and all support, blocking sunshine, and wrapping so tightly around stems that in some cases they start cutting off circulation. A good healthy vine has no trouble pulling a small-to-medium woody branch downwards.

Stems with the diameter of large thread prove surprisingly strong.  Over time the vine develops a relatively deep, carrot-like taproot, a series of taproots, or even a kind of colony of roots. Even in sandy soil it isn’t easy to dig them out.( Because of the long taproot, milkpea species would likely regenerate quickly after brush fires). It gets even more complicated when you want to avoid too much damage to the infested plant you want to save. Digging and pulling hurt the plants you want to save. Herbicide will kill the leaves, but the plant regenerates from the deep roots. And it is very difficult to avoid getting any herbicide on the "good" plant.

 After reading Guy L. Nesom's, Taxonomy of Galactia (Fabaceae) in the USA, (link below), I've concluded that the milk peas in my yard are either Galactia regularis, Galactia volubilis, or both. According to Nesom the taxonomy of Galactia is somewhat confused, even controversial, especially so when it comes to these 2 species. Both have alternate, 3-foliate leaves, with fruits and stems displaying varying degrees of hairiness. (A 3 foliate leaf looks like a cluster of 3 leaves, but actually is only 1. Lots of species in the "Bean" family have this characteristic).

The weed(s) show great variation in size in my yard, depending on exposure to sunlight and general growing conditions, and I made all  my drawings and sketches from different plants at different times before I realized I might be dealing with more than 1 species. However, the species in the drawing most closely resembles G. volubilis, due to its long flowering stalk, size of flower, and mostly oblong-to-lanceolate leaf shape. The seedpod as drawn may not be typical.

 According to Nesom's article, Milkpeas are widespread in Florida and much of the United States. The genus occurs mainly in the Americas, especially the southeast and south-central US, West Indies and Mexico. Four species are native to Asia, Africa and Australia. The genus name is derived from the Greek galaktos, “milk,” due to the milky sap in some species. (The Florida species do not have milky sap).  Nesom lists 21 species for the US, with 13 represented in Florida.

 Several plants of in a pot with a trellis could make an attractive display, and the flowers attract numerous small pollinators. However, great care would be necessary to keep it from spreading, given the  high germination rate of the seeds.  Birds and possibly insects eat the seeds. Grubbing animals like skunks might be able to  eat the smaller taproots, but it would take some "chompers" and cast-iron digestive system to get anything from the taproots once they become woody.

Milkpea is a legume, and most legumes are associated with nitrogen-fixing bacteria in their roots. So far I haven't been able to ascertain whether local species of Galactia are associated with such bacteria, though I haven’t seen any typical root nodules.

Minno and Minno (1999) list the milkpeas vouchered for Collier County as larval host plants for Ceraunus and Cassius Blues, the Gray Hairstreak, Silver Spotted Skipper, Zarucco Dusky Wing Skipper and the Long-Tailed Skipper. 


 Apart from personal observations or as otherwise noted, the information in this article is derived from Guy L. Nesom, (Fabaceae) in the USA. Phytoneuron 2015-42: 1-54. Published 15 Jul 2015. ISSN 2153 733X.  

Marc and Maria Minno. Florida Butterfly Gardening. University Press of Florida. 1999.