I get very excited when the first flower blooms of spring emerge, even if they are weeds like dandelions. It means warm weather is coming. It also means that more bugs start to come around again. As of late, I’ve seen ants, beetles, grasshoppers, caterpillars, butterflies, and moths. The butterflies I spotted this past week were all very small ones. The Melissa blue is the most common of the gossamer wing family, they are less than an inch in size, and are attracted to damp areas. The field crescent of the brush-foot family of butterflies are about an inch in size. Brush-foots use only their four hind legs for walking and their front feet are half the size and covered with hairs, thus looking like small brushes.  The orange sulphur is about an inch and half in size and can be found from mountains to deserts. Most in the sulphur family are shades of white, yellow, or orange.

In defense of dandelions, yellow salisfy, or other flowers considered weeds, I just want to say they are not all bad. Weeds are really nothing more than plants that are not wanted in an area or undesirable to the eye of the beholder. The weed haters may say that they are invasive and deplete the soil of nutrients and water that other plants need. But in this early growth time of year, they do some good in an ecosystem. They are the first source of food for bees and butterflies by bringing up water and nutrients from the soil. In the right area, they can keep the land from eroding. Also, remember when you were a kid and you picked a big poof ball out of the ground? Then you blew it into the wind and it disappeared? That was a pretty cool kid memory for me, truly, I thought IT WAS AMAZING.

Read more about butterflies and flowers…THE DIVERSE LEPIDOPTERA INSECT & WHAT ARE ALL THOSE YELLOW FLOWERS?