Bluevine to feed my caterpillars

[Stripe]

I have 6 caterpillars in chrysalis form, 5 week or so old cats and two eggs (just an hour or so old). I have only a half dozen plants of common milkweed so I have been supplementing their diet with leaves from honeyvine (also called bluevine or sandvine). All cats have done fine on these leaves which I have a ton of. My question is: Has anyone ever found an egg on the vine plant?

[Keith Petrosky]

Not me. They may do fine now but i'm not sure if they will turn to butterflys, I know milkweed makes them poisonous so birds cant eat them. If they do turn to monarchs let us know, this is really interesting information you have given us.

[Pat]

Well bluevine is a climbing asclepias, right? Grows like a morning glory but gets pods like other milkweed family members do? It sounds like it should be OK to me if the cats ate it. Do you get any seeds from your pods?

[Stripe]

I have answered two of the questions regarding the vine milkweed. Two of my butterflies (both females) emerged this morning. They looked great. I gave away three of the chrysalises and have one that will probably come out tomorrow. Their diet was approximately 1/2 common and 1/2 vine milkweed. Also, I saw a female monarch, who was just passing by, lay eggs on the vine. Yes, the honeyvine gets seed follicles (or pods) just like the common does. I haven't actually saved or tried to plant the seeds. We have so much of it as it is.

[Stripe]

Just before my husband was going to mow the lawn, my son and I saw a female laying egs on vine that is just growing in our lawn. We went out and pulled as much vine as we could and ended up with 5 caterpillars and 30 eggs. This vine is invasive and grows on our chainlink and bushes as well as creeps into the lawn. We only mow as much as we need to, but the stuff on the chainlink, we keep to feed our brood. The last few butterflys I have released had eaten vine almost exclusively as caterpillars and have done beautifully.

[Jim]

Blue Vine (or Sand Vine) is indeed a milkweed, but is not in the Asclepias genus...its scientific name is Cynanchum laeve and it is a useful milkweed for late-season larvae. This vine milkweed has heart-shaped leaves with white flowers and can be used as a source of fresh milkweed leaves much later in the season as many other milkweed species begin to die off.

Blue Vine Milkweed:


Over the years we have received many reports from around the country of eggs being found on Blue Vine Milkweed, especially in August and September.

This species is often confused with bindweed (which is NOT a milkweed and is therefore not a suitable food source for monarch caterpillars) - though there is really only a superficial resemblance: bindweed leaves are more triangular and bindweed flowers are funnel shaped.

USDA PLANTS Profile (bindweed):
http://plants.usda.gov/cgi_bin/topics.c ... mbol=COAR4

[Keith Petrosky]

I have flowers like that growing all over my lawn in patches of clover, but the leaves are not like this, and the flower is the size of my thumbnail.

[psi_chemie]

Hi! I got all my larvae from this vine plant. It's all over the field where I go to collect. I notice that it is far less infested with other nasty insects than the few broad leaved milkweeds that grow in this field. The female monarchs are all over it. I picked a couple bunches that had a few larvae I saw. When I got home, these larvae started growing and I put them on a clean broad leaved milkweed (I'll try and identify).

Then, I noticed I had more little larvae on the sand vine! There must have been a lot of eggs hidden there. It has surprised me with new larvae twice now.

BTW it seems like peak mating season in this field. I don't know if this is normal. This last Thursday I was in this field, and I estimate that one third of the monarchs I saw consisted of mating pairs flying around or sitting on leaves.

Yet, I have not seen any mature larvae in this field. Just very young larvae and eggs on the sand vine. I don't know if they are maturing off the vine in this field, or flying in from elsewhere. Maybe both. I wish I could find a chrysalis in this field. Otherwise it looks like none of these vine larvae are making it.

[aphid]

The following information I found here, note the reference is to HoneyVine Milkweed, which is another common name for Blue Vine or Sand Vine:
http://apt.allenpress.com/aptonline/?re ... &page=0247

Two species of milkweed (Asclepiadaceae) are especially abundant in
portions of eastern North America. Common milkweed, Asclepias syriaca
L., is most abundant in the northern United States and southeastern
Canada, while honeyvine milkweed, Cynanchum laeve (Michaux), is most
abundant at central latitudes in the eastern half of the United
States. The former is frequently cited as an important host plant for
larvae of the monarch butterfly, Danaus plexippus L. (Lepidoptera:
Nymphalidae), while the latter is rarely mentioned in this regard. We
compared the performance of monarch larvae on these two plant species.
Larvae developed significantly faster on honeyvine milkweed than on
common milkweed. Average pupal fresh weights appeared to be slightly
greater for individuals reared on common milkweed than those reared on
honeyvine milkweed, but the difference was not statistically
significant. Similarly, larval survival was about 14% higher on common
milkweed, but the difference was not significant. Our results indicate that both common milkweed and honeyvine milkweed are suitable hosts for monarch larvae. Given the abundance of honeyvine milkweed in the east-central United States, this species may be a more important host plant for the monarch than has been generally recognized.