Jun 2, 2018

Hairy Quickweed flower and Towny Coster

With plenty of open space, hills and rock formation there's lot of flora and fauna at Hampi. if you are watchful you get to see varieties of lovely wild-flowers, butterflies and birds. Early morning is the right time to watch butterflies because they are less active and slow. Good time to capture them.. in your lens.

August 13, 2017
It was afternoon around 2-30, lucky few minutes, I got to capture a series of shots of this orange-white-black butterfly, a plain tiger Towny Coster gathering nectar from Hairy Quickweed, a ground creeper commonly seen these parts of Karnataka. A slight breeze made the long stalked flowers sway back-n-forth but the butterfly held on.



Hairy Quickweed is also known as Shaggy Soldier, Peruvian daisy, Hairy galinsoga and Fringed quickweed. Its botanical name is Galinsoga quadriradiata.





Wasn't it fun to see this beautiful play of Nature with so many artists.. a plant, an insect and the invisible air.

Mother Earth provides us everything we need, we just need to respect it.
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5 comments:

  1. Wow! !! Wonderful photographs Sid. Here we have Monarch butterflies they migrate to Mexico in summer from Canada (north America). They are very good polinetors. Good work.

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  2. Nice! Intimate nature. Experiencing a place means appreciating and breathing in the beauty at all scales. Glad to learn of the name of this common plant, I always wondered about it. How did you learn of its name? For the butterfly, I can tell it is Towny Coster ( Acraea violae) "It is apparently poisonous and is rarely attacked by predators. African members of the genus contain prussic acid (hydrogen cynaide) in their body tissue."

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  3. Refreshing post, lovely captures. Feeling that breeze, invisible air:)

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  4. Thank you, Srinath, Raj, Nikhil and Manjula.

    @Nikhil - thanks for correct name of this fluttering beauty, I've made changes to the post title. Even this creature with short life span has such a deadly self-defense mechanism. This commonly found plant is said to have medicinal properties. As a 7 or 8 year old, I remember a kid from our neighborhood had crushed the leaves and applied its juice over a small cut. I spent few hours searching through plant websites to find the closest match and hoping its the correct name.

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