Host and Guests – Texas Dandelion
While gathering flowers for dye, I found a lot of different insects using the Texas Dandelion as a host plant. You can click on the images to see them larger.
Texas Dandelion, Pyrrhopappus paucifloris
A bee thigh deep in pollen.
Twelve-spotted cucumber beetle, Diabrotica undecimpunctuata howardi.
Syrphid fly — also known as flower fly or hover fly.
Veined Ctenucha moth, Ctenucha venosa. I followed it from the dandelion over to this grass seed head stalk.
A skipper butterfly but I don’t know which one.
American Painted Lady, Vanessa virgiensis.
I believe this is in the May beetle and Junebug family.
A tiny moth about 1/4 of an inch long.
Eastern Black Swallowtail female, Papilio polyxenes.
If you would like to see the yarns I dyed with dandelion dye, you can click here.
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Very nice photos. That bee will have a hard time flying back to the hive so heavily laden with pollen. The Painted Lady is a dazzler. You can see the scales on the wings.
Thank you! I have set my Powershot to Program mode instead of Automatic — I think the shutter speed and aperture and ISO are all still be set automatically, but it seems to be focusing better. Although I still get plenty of shots where the background is in focus better than the subject. I really need to send it away for repair because the zoom doesn’t want to work sometimes, but I can’t “picture” being without it for a while!