This pretty little zebra longwing butterfly (Heliconius charithonia) was very busy laying her eggs on various passion fruit vines. She would flit around from vine to vine, find a spot she liked, and then pose in this odd position to lay the egg. Once finished, she’d head on to another vine. If you look closely, you can actually see the small yellow egg on the newly emerging plant leaf near at the tip of her abdomen. I watched her do this over and over again. These pretty black and yellow butterflies, that happen to be the Florida state butterfly, love passion fruit vines and flowers. They like to lay their eggs on the vines since the caterpillars prefer to feed on passion fruit vines to pretty much any other plant. Fortunately, they don’t tend to get so numerous that they cause a lot of damage to the vines. The adults love the nectar of the passion fruit flowers, so when the flowers are blooming there are always plenty of butterflies around. Both the caterpillars and the butterflies will feed on other plants and flowers as well as passion fruit, so if there’s a bad year for passion fruit, the butterflies still do fine. I really do love everything about the passion fruit vines, including the fact that they attract these gorgeous butterflies.