Feeding time

Val looks at plants that provide food for caterpillars

- Val Bourne

I'M always on the lookout for caterpillars (although I can't always identify them) because I like to see what they're eating. I try to grow as many different caterpillar food plants in my Spring Cottage garden as I can. This isn't as tricky as it seems, because my areas of long grass are very good for all browns and some skipper butterflies. Wet summers, which most butterflies hate, can be beneficial to these butterflies because the grassy sword is lush and thick, so their caterpillars get plenty to eat.

It doesn't have to be a particularly refined grass, either, according to a 2003 booklet I own entitled Larval Foodplants of the Butterflies of Great Britain and Ireland by Peter R May. He examined all the published records and assembled the results in one place. A coarse grass named cock's foot (Dactylis glomerata) could theoretically feed the caterpillars of chequered skipper, small skipper, Essex skipper, large skipper, speckled wood, wall, Scotch argus, marbled white, gatekeeper, meadow brown, ringlet, and small heath. We haven't seen the Scotch argus in the garden because most occur in Scotland, and we haven't seen the chequered skipper or the wall, either, but we get the others.