Raising Orange Tip Butterflies (2026 edition)

Hey friends!

I’ve got another brand new Butterfly Tale for you this week which is exciting and has been a whole year in the making. When I planted my Honesty seeds last summer I did so in the hope that Orange tips would come and lay eggs in the garden – in 2024 I only found a single egg and cared for her as much as possible, so I was thrilled to find not one but eleven eggs in the spring of 2025!

They were spread across several plants, Orange tips do this because the caterpillars are cannibalistic when small although I’ve never worked out if that means they eat all caterpillars or just their brethren). I sleeved each egg in a mesh bag to keep them safe from predators and checked on them after about three weeks.

Eight of the eggs had hatched into tiny green caterpillars!

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