Mountain Oxeye and Red Bordered Satyrs, Oh My!

This show is all over the place. Fall gets me excited and fall color is a crazy combination of fall blooming plants and leaves changing color on other plant species as they prepare to go dormant; plants like Erythrina flabelliformis (coral bean), Gossypium thurberi (wild cotton) and a couple Rhus spp.(sumacs). Oh man I could go on, but like I said there are also plants flowering. Crazy fall!

Mountain oxeye is Heliopsis parviflora and it’s a real borderlands species, found from 4,000 to 8,000 feet in the mountains along the Arizona, New Mexico, Texas border and southward into Mexico.

I learned that the red bordered satyr (Gyrocheilus. patrobas) flies from mid August to November and can be found in the mountains of southeastern Arizona. Oh yeah, and I had a couple friends who also noticed large groups of them flying and puddling along creeks in the Chiricahua Mountains. I think it is so cool that the host plant for this beautiful butterfly is bull grass (Muhlenbergia emersleyi), a favorite bunch grass of mine that has tall purplish seed head plumes. Another good reason to head for this hills this fall. Mountain oxeye and red bordered satyrs await you. Oh my!

The photos of mountain oxeye are mine and photo of the satyr on the Ageratina herbacea blossoms …did I forget to mention Ageratina??…is courtesy of my friend Taylor Ann. Thanks Taylor.