can anyone tell me the best way to destroy gulf fritilary pests on my passion vine. thank you.

It is well known that this is the host plant for this caterpillar. I think that most of the people that frequent this board will tell you that you should live with the "pests" then enjoy the beautiful orange butterflies they become. They don't kill the vine, and yes it does get a little ratty looking but that's the way it is. My opinion of course, and hopefully the opinion of most others.

While I do agree with the prior post that you should leave this "pest" alone, I must say that I am less than thrilled with these caterpillars. My passion vine is new this year & not very large. I really expected it to become quite large this season. However, the caterpillars are consuming the leaves as fast as new ones emerge.

In my case, I have resorted to manually removing the caterpillars from the vine. This must be done daily though since it seems a new batch is born every minute. I would also add that this particular bed is designed as a butterfly garden with plants for both butterflies and caterpillars. Unfortunately, it seems the passion vine is taking most of the caterpillars as the other plants are doing quite well.

Kevin

The Gulf Fritillary does like the passion vine. Plant enough to share! At Texas Discovery Gardens, there was a bit of damage on some of the passion vine, but there was enough growing that much of it went unscathed. These are beautiful butterflies!