{"id":219,"date":"2009-04-05T17:17:18","date_gmt":"2009-04-05T23:17:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/?p=219"},"modified":"2009-04-05T22:11:48","modified_gmt":"2009-04-06T04:11:48","slug":"cactus-butterfly","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/?p=219","title":{"rendered":"Cactus &#038; butterfly"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Though our prickly pear cactus has been hit by a disease or parasite, as well as the drought, a beautiful lace cactus, <!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:WordDocument> <w:View>Normal<\/w:View> <w:Zoom>0<\/w:Zoom> <w:DoNotOptimizeForBrowser \/> <\/w:WordDocument> <\/xml><![endif]--> <em><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;\">Echinocereus reichenbachii<\/span><\/em><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;\">, <\/span> that a rancher lady gave me off her place is thriving.\u00a0 They used to be common on the gravelly-rocky hills around here, but they&#8217;re salable and have been pirated off some slopes where I used to see them every spring.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-220\" title=\"lace-cactus-4-bloom271\" src=\"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/04\/lace-cactus-4-bloom271.jpg\" alt=\"lace-cactus-4-bloom271\" width=\"326\" height=\"232\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/04\/lace-cactus-4-bloom271.jpg 326w, http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/04\/lace-cactus-4-bloom271-300x213.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 326px) 100vw, 326px\" \/><!--more-->We had a houseguest who had walked out with me, and this was our reward for making it across some hot, sunny rock.\u00a0\u00a0 She and I both spent some time photographing the flowers, then rested in the shade (the cactus, of course, was in full sun).\u00a0 I happened to glance back at the cactus, and saw a bright yellow butterfly land on one of the flowers.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-221\" title=\"sulfur-b-cactus283\" src=\"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/04\/sulfur-b-cactus283.jpg\" alt=\"sulfur-b-cactus283\" width=\"281\" height=\"322\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/04\/sulfur-b-cactus283.jpg 281w, http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/04\/sulfur-b-cactus283-261x300.jpg 261w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 281px) 100vw, 281px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>But, you say, it&#8217;s greenish, not bright yellow&#8230;aha&#8211;the top of the wings was bright yellow.\u00a0\u00a0 It&#8217;s a female Clouded Sulphur, <em>Phoebus sennae<\/em>, if I&#8217;m reading my butterfly field guide correctly.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 When it was through with this flower, it moved to the next.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-222\" title=\"sulfur-b-cactus290-b\" src=\"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/04\/sulfur-b-cactus290-b.jpg\" alt=\"sulfur-b-cactus290-b\" width=\"318\" height=\"263\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/04\/sulfur-b-cactus290-b.jpg 318w, http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/04\/sulfur-b-cactus290-b-300x248.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 318px) 100vw, 318px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Shortly after this it tired of having two eager photographers creeping up, and flew away, refreshed I hope, and perhaps returned when we weren&#8217;t there.\u00a0\u00a0 I hadn&#8217;t known that this butterfly nectared on cactus at all,\u00a0 let alone this one.\u00a0\u00a0 Cactus flowers usually teem with insects, though&#8211;beetles, true bugs, ants&#8211;and the packed stamens sometimes writhe in a sort of horror-movie way, since you can&#8217;t tell what&#8217;s going to emerge.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Though our prickly pear cactus has been hit by a disease or parasite, as well as the drought, a beautiful lace cactus, Echinocereus reichenbachii, that a rancher lady gave me off her place is thriving.\u00a0 They used to be common on the gravelly-rocky hills around here, but they&#8217;re salable and have been pirated off some [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21,7,4],"tags":[13,23,70],"class_list":["post-219","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-photography","category-plantlife","category-wildlife","tag-beauty","tag-observation","tag-photography"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=219"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":225,"href":"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219\/revisions\/225"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=219"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=219"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=219"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}