"Janet Baraclough" wrote in message
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"K" wrote in message
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Ragwort is a native UK plant which is a primary food plant for the
cinnabar moth, listed on the UK Biodiversity Action Plan as rapidly
declining.

In my childhood, every ragwort seemed to be crawling with handsome
stripey cinnabar caterpillars and later we saw clouds of moths.
but I hadn't seen any caterpillars for years . Last week, weeding the
drive, I found a very stunted ragwort with two tiny
cinnabar caterpillars on it. A couple of days later, no more had
appeared, and the two had almost exhausted their larder so I moved them
to a full-grown ragwort plant
where they are gobbling and growing fast. I walked up the lane
inspecting every ragwort I could find, not one caterpillar. Dunno why;
there's no chemical spraying here.

What luck to have them in my garden !

Over the last couple of weeks we have had a lot of a species of moth in our
garden that I haven't seen for a long time: Scarlet Tiger moths
(Callimorpha dominula). They seem to be everywhere. I looked up their food
plant, which is, among other things, comfrey, which we do grow. But I don't
know why there are so many, I'm just very pleased to see them.

mrscake