Jim Fowler's photos with the keyword: butterfly

Note the tiny yellow pollinium attached to the compound eye of this butterfly. These are some images from a half-day revisit to the Francis Marion National Forest in search of local, native orchids... For the trip report, please go to Jim's Blog ...

A day trip to the Blue Ridge Parkway in North Carolina. I was lucky enough to find a nice bed of Spiranthes cernua beside the road. So, I stopped to photograph it and was soon joined by a Bee and a Butterfly. What a great day... I cannot verify that this butterfly is a valid pollinator for this orchid species, since I did not see pollinia attached to its proboscis. But, it spent a lot of time on the flowers, taking nectar from each flower on the inflorescence.

A day trip to the Blue Ridge Parkway in North Carolina. I was lucky enough to find a nice bed of Spiranthes cernua beside the road. So, I stopped to photograph it and was soon joined by a Bee and a Butterfly. What a great day... I cannot verify that this butterfly is a valid pollinator for this orchid species, since I did not see pollinia attached to its proboscis. But, it spent a lot of time on the flowers, taking nectar from each flower on the inflorescence.

We had just stopped the truck on a forest service road in the Pisgah National Forest, near Brevard, North Carolina when we saw a pipevine swallowtail butterfly showing really intense interest in the flowers of a yellow fringed orchid plant. We grabbed our cameras, jumped out of the truck and raced to the flower, but in doing so, we scared it away. However, these butterflies have a short memory, and in no time it was back to finish probing the flowers for nectar. Here's how pollination works for this combination of flower and butterfly: The butterfly finds the flowers and lands on one of them. It attaches its feet to the flower parts and sticks it proboscis (tongue) into the flower's long nectar tube. The nectar is at the bottom of the exceedingly thin tube, so that no other prospective pollinators but butterflies can reach the sweet nectar. In order to get the last drop, the butterfly has to stick his head into the flower, thereby touching its head against the sticky pads on the tips of the pair of pollinia set on either side of the nectar tube. When it pulls out, the pollinia are firmly attached directly below those huge butterfly eyes! It doesn't appear to be painful or even annyoing to the butterfly, because it spends no time trying to scrape them off. When it visits the next flower for more nectar, the pollinia are naturally positioned to brush against the stigma (female part) of the flower, thereby completing the act of pollination. Sometimes, in the process, the butterfly will pick up another set of pollinia -- soon it will look like it is sprouting yellow horns on the front of its face! I'm always interested in the different pollination mechanisms that orchid flowers employ. This one was fun to watch, and I'm certainly glad that we were at the right time and the right place to capture its beauty...

On the way to Pisgah Nationa Forest where I went to photograph the Three-birds Orchids, I stopped along the road to photograph the groups of wild, Yellow fringed Orchids. It's so nice to see them blooming on that mountain road, but since they grow in the ditches, I fear that they will succumb to mowing or ditch expansion. Anyway, while I was photographing the orchids, some butterflies came looking for a sip of nectar. I couldn't pass up this photographic opportunity...

On the way to Pisgah Nationa Forest where I went to photograph the Three-birds Orchids, I stopped along the road to photograph the groups of wild, Yellow fringed Orchids. It's so nice to see them blooming on that mountain road, but since they grow in the ditches, I fear that they will succumb to mowing or ditch expansion. Anyway, while I was photographing the orchids, some butterflies came looking for a sip of nectar. I couldn't pass up this photographic opportunity...