Family Erebidae   Hodges # 8228

Caterpillar foods:  certain milkweeds including Butterfly Weed and Whorled Milkweed (personal observation)

Formerly Cycnia inopinatus

Cycnia tenera adults look similar, but the yellow border on the edge of the forewing goes past the midpoint of the wing.  On Cycnia collaris, it stops before the midpoint.

(Formerly Cycnia inopinatus)

Information on this species from Massachusetts

5/6/2016

I find these caterpillars every summer, almost all of them on Whorled Milkweed (Asclepias verticillata) plants on remnant bluff prairies.

8/28/2011  Caterpillars on Whorled Milkweed

I took several of the caterpillars home, and fed them on Butterfly Weed (Asclepias tuberosa) and Whorled Milkweed (Asclepias verticillata).  I offered Common Milkweed (Asclepias syriaca) but they didn’t eat it.

9/8/2011  One of the pupae

3 pupae were kept over the winter wrapped in a paper towel, then placed in a clay flowerpot buried in the ground up to the rim, and covered with a clay saucer.  They were removed from the flowerpot at the end of March 2012, and put into a jar on my screened porch.

5/24/2012  Adult emerged

5/24/2012

5/25/2012 – Released into one of our remnant prairies.