Orange Tip Ova

[Piers]

While searching for Orange Tip ova on Garlic Mustard (Alliaria petiolata) around my local patch this year, I noticed one or two which had been laid not upon the flowers or developing seed pods, but on the under surface of the leaves of the plant. This prompted me to search the leaves of the Garlic Mustard plants more thoroughly and in doing so I discovered almost twenty ova laid on the under surface of the leaves.

This ties in quite neatly with an experiment I conducted last Spring where I successfully reared Orange Tips from ova, feeding them exclusively on Garlic Mustard leaves and not the seed pods. All of the adults emerged successfully this Spring and were duly released.
This implies that Orange Tips do not lay exclusively upon the developing seed pods as most literature suggests, and will survive quite successfully on the leaves of the food plant alone.

The majority of the plants that I examined already bore Orange Tip ova upon the flowers and/or seed pods. This implies that with larvae feeding upon both the seed pods and the leaves, more Orange Tips are able to develop on limited quantities of food plant than perhaps previously considered.

Has anyone else noticed Orange Tip ova laid upon anything other than the flower heads and developing seed pods?

Felix.

[Pete Eeles]

Has anyone else noticed Orange Tip ova laid upon anything other than the flower heads and developing seed pods?

Hi Piers - see my personal diary (for April 30th): viewtopic.php?f=29&t=3977&start=0

I was presuming that the reason for laying on the leaves was that, at the time, the seed pods were nowhere to be seen! I also assume that the larvae are better-camouflaged against the seed pods than the leaves, so that would also be a factor, potentially, with arguably heavier losses for leaf-based larvae! I've never found a larva on a leaf in the wild myself - perhaps the migrate as soon as they are able?

Cheers,

- Pete

[Gibster]

Hi Felix,

I found Orange-tip eggs on the underside of Garlic Mustard leaves this year too, although I've never searched for them there before. And quite a few looking lost halfway along bare stems. What surprised me most though was commonly finding three or four eggs on the same floret when many plants other plants (in seemingly similar conditions) appeared free of even a single egg. With their reputedly strong cannibalistic tendancies there must be an awful lot of 'doomed' larva before predators/parasites come into play. One smallish plant held twelve eggs! Only singletons noted on Cuckooflower though.

All the very best,

Seth.

Follow my quest to clear up on the UK's butterflies this year on my website!!!