Praying Mantis in the Fleabane!

In August I planted a dwarf butterfly bush, a sterile cultivar called Pugster Blue Fragrant. While not a native plant, it cannot be invasive like its larger relatives. I got it locally at Halas Nursery and even there it was swarmed with pollinators: butterflies, moths and bees. It was pungent and had filled my car with its heavy sweetish smell on the ride home.

After all the digging and watering, I went in the house for some coffee. I looked back out the window and there was a black swallowtale on my new butterfly bush already!  For the next few days, there were always one or two butterflies enjoying the flowers.  But after a week I didn't see any. I figured they were enjoying a change of diet over in my neighbors cone flowers. I kept peeking about but no butterflies.

All summer I have been nurturing a few stands of wildflower weeds as a garden project. The weeds in question are four-foot tall forests of Daisy Fleabane and Queen Anne's Lace. While I was looking for the missing butterflies, I found three praying mantis

- mostly hanging from the stems of Fleabane by their back legs - looking a lot like dead leaves. They have a reputation as voracious indiscriminate predators, even cannibalistic. Mantises eat a lot of annoying insects. But I think they may have eaten the butterflies as well.

Nature is capricious and pragmatic. Next year I think I will let the Fleabane grow elsewhere in my yard - somewhere not in a direct line between the butterfly bush and the cone flowers down the road....