Bordered Patch

"Bordered Patch" sounds like the name of a quilt pattern. Instead it's the name of our emerging butterflies. Bordered Patch (Chlosyne lacinia) is one of the most varied butterfly species, I'm learning. Bordered Patch has "gregarious caterpillars" who "skeletonize the leaves of sunflower plants". That certainly describes our class experience.

gregarious caterpillars skeletonize
skeletonize gregarious caterpillars
caterpillars skeletonize gregarious

I'm thinking a nine-patch quilt block!

I didn't take photos when the children released our butterflies this morning. There are many good "Bordered Patch" photos of adults and those gregarious teenage caterpillars hanging out playing billiards on Flickr. Feel like I lived with skeletonizing gregarious caterpillars and their sweaty socks in a small condo for most of the past decade. Loved nearly every minute, especially watching widely-varied teens emerge from their chrysalids and start pumping their wings.

From Texas A&M:

The bordered patch, Chlosyne lacinia (Geyer), is one of eight closely related "patch" butterflies on the family, Nymphalidae, called the "brush-footed" butterflies. Also found in southern Texas, this species is highly variable but characteristically marked above with a wide curved yellow-orange band and small orange spots on a dark-brown background and with white dots along the wing margins. Larvae feed on a variety of Compositae including sunflowers and cocklebur. The Janais patch, Chlosyne janais (Drury), also occurs in south Texas, but has distinctive large red patches on the bases of the upper hind wing surfaces on otherwise black-brown wings and with front wings and wing margins marked with white spots.



© 2007 Nancy L. Ruder