I am watching our butterfly bush daily....watching as the tiny caterpillars have grown fat and large.....I have watched the leaves on our butterfly bush disappear as they have munched their way to their largeness.
And I have watched monarch butterflies flitting and flying in twos and threes all around the bush........
But here is the mystery...... I can not find one chrysalis! Not one! Where are they????
The process is that the caterpillar eats the leaves and when large and fat, they attach themselves head down to a convenient twig ( convenient is a key word here ).
They then shed their outer skin and begin the transformation into a pupa ( or chrysalis ), a process which is completed in a matter of hours.
The pupa resembles a waxy, jade vase and becomes increasingly transparent as the process progresses. The caterpillar completes the miraculous transformation into a beautiful butterfly in about two weeks.
It's just such a mystery to me as to where these pupas could be! Remember the key word was
"convenient". They hang from a convenient twig.
Okay...I'm heading out again to look. They have to be there somewhere!!
No comments:
Post a Comment