Smarty Plants

Well, not unusual, but I learned something new about one of my favorite plants…the passion flower!  As Jon was teaching me how to look for butterfly eggs on the leaves of the passion vine (which are small and yellow), I thought I was seeing a lot of them.  There were these little yellow dots all over the leaves!

He explained that the plant has ‘learned’ that the butterflies don’t like to lay their eggs next to other eggs.  So the plant started making these yellow dots on itself to fool the butterflies into thinking they were eggs so they wouldn’t lay them.

The reason it doesn’t want them is because the larvae (caterpillars) eat those leaves.  So in order to ‘save itself’, it has evolved in this manner.  How freeking amazing is THAT?  And how long did it take for the plant to do this?  And HOW did the plant know that the eggs were YELLOW!?!?  I think that’s what is really baffling.  So we often find eggs laid on the tendrils of the vine where the yellow spots haven’t formed and it’s nice and tender.  We also find them on the ends of brand new leaves.  So I wonder if the plant will evolve further to keep the eggs off of it somehow.

The citrus fruit just gets weirder.  Remember the orange limes and green oranges in Costa Rica?

Well here the lemons can be orange inside, the limes inside are either green or yellow and I just noticed these striped oranges in the yard today. STRIPED ORANGES!?!?

It’s like Willy Wonka lives here.  Next thing I’ll find are snozberries!

Some of the Caligo’s have emerged from their chrysalis and I got picture of them before they left their box.  Pretty neat looking butterflies.  One edge of them looks like a lizard/snake face and when fully opened, looks like an owl.  I’ll add some pictures of the Caligo and Blue Mexican butterflies.  One hung onto my shorts for a while today!