(Don't forget to click on the image to see in better resolution)
I collected ten OT ova yesterday on flower heads of Hedge Garlic. Ova are much easier to find when a few days old and the colour has changed from the initial pale yellow to a much more prominent orange. Experience over the years (and I am ready to be corrected by other observations) is that females prefer to lay on Hedge Garlic when it is not growing too densely. A really dense patch of plants often disappoints. The more isolated plants are often more productive when egg-searching. I cut off the stem to a length of some 15 – 20 cms, keep in water outside in the shade until about 3-4 weeks after hatching, the larvae are almost fully grown at which stage they are transferred to a plastic container together with a few small twigs on which they will pupate (often – annoyingly – they select the lid of the container). I have had some cannibalism when small but when large and put into the boxes, no problems. The cannibalism of the small larvae almost seems to be accidental; they much away at the seed pods and if a smaller larvae happens to be there, it might simply be eaten. I have never witnessed any actual “attacks”.
Orange Tips are very easy to breed, common so no harm can come in taking a few. Moreover – unlike more local species – they are so widespread that they don’t really need to be released in the locality they came from.
Give Orange Tip breeding a try. Great fun and with this abundant and widespread species, I don’t have any conservation concerns.
Jack
