Fall gets me excited and fall color is a crazy combination of blooming plants and plants with leaves changing color as they prepare to go dormant. Crazy fall!
Mountain oxeye (Heliopsis parviflora) is 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. 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. The red bordered satyr on Ageratina is courtesy of my friend Taylor Anne. Thank you Taylor.
Sweet acacia is Vachellia farnesiana (Acacia farnesiana) and is in the pea family Fabaceae. I have never seen it in habitat, though as I...
The photos are mine of the Mirabilis longiflora flowers and Manduca sexta, the Carolina sphinx moth and tobacco hornworm. Note the seven streamline white...
Twenty-five or thirty years ago I learned the scientific name of this butterfly as Adelpha bredowii. Then the sister butterfly of the Arizona woodlands...