Go Wildscaping

It’s been an incredibly busy summer and early fall, so I need to catch up on some of the recent planting I’ve done. Here’s a quick post on one of the many plants that made it into the yard recently.

Fall is a great time to plant in Georgia because plants have the long, relatively mild winter to establish roots. With longer, stronger root systems, they’re better prepared for our very hot, humid summers.

In my last post, I featured a snowberry clearwing moth (Hemaris diffinis). Here’s a picture of it again (and a bumble bee):

(Yes, that a butterfly bush, which I removed this fall, too.)

Anyway, I found the clearwing so charming that I researched potential host plants for it. As you may remember from the post on monarch butterflies, host plants serve as nurseries for an insect species. Without host plants, there’s nowhere for the new generation to grow up. Since I want to see more clearwings, it makes sense to give them more habitat.

A host plant for the clearwing is our native coral honeysuckle (Lonicera sempervirens). This plant produces red, trumpet-shaped flowers favored by the clearwing, as well as by hummingbirds and many butterflies. This season is the first time I’ve tried planting a vine, and I decided to try training it to grow on a fence that divides our backyard. The vine is small now, but this plant can grow to 15 feet or more. It’s supposed to be low maintenance, too, which I call a win.

By the way, I learned that you shouldn’t rake up the leaves that fall from the vine, because clearwing moth larvae build their cocoons in the vine’s leaf litter. The moths overwinter and emerge the following spring. Deer appear to enjoy the plant, too, so it’s fortunate we have it within our fence line where the presence of multiple dogs keeps the deer (mostly) at bay.

I’m curious to see how it will take shape as it grows, and I’m looking forward to seeing it when it flowers. While I’m at it, I’ll hopefully get to see more adult clearwings and learn more (firsthand!) about the complete lifecycle of this amazing insect.