Kia ora, ko Greer tōku ingoa.
For my PhD at Otago University I am researching admiral butterflies in NZ: kahukura (NZ red admiral), Rēkohu kahukura subspecies (Chatham Island red admiral), and kahukōwhai (yellow admiral).
I’ve been gathering parasitisation data in Ōtepoti (Dunedin) and the result from last year was concerning, with a 94.4% (68/72) wasp parasitisation rate of chrysalises!
Parasitisation data across the country would be so valuable. Can you help me with this project?
The aim is to create a map of parasitisation rates across different nettle species and nationwide. This data is important for conservation and funding for research in the future to focus on developing ways to get rid of the introduced wasps that attack our beautiful native butterflies. None of these wasps can hurt people so it’s also a fun activity and important citizen science project.
• Find an open place of any size. You need maximum sun, shelter, and an area which will not need intensive management.
• No pesticides allowed!
• Plant (or maintain) shelter on the SW side (or wherever the prevailing wind is coming from) but never on the northern side which might block the sun.
• Shelter trees such as Olearia spp, Houhere, Coprosma spp, Hebe/Veronica spp, Muehlenbeckia complexa (scrambling pohuehue) will protect the habitat. These might be used for overwintering, as host plants or as a nectar source.
• Shrubs such as Pimelea spp, Mahoe, Brachyglottis spp, Pseudopanax spp, and Helichrysum spp. support useful NZ moth species as well as other native insects.
• Plant Urtica ferox (Ongaonga) in places where the plants are generally inaccessible to humans and pets (to deter people from being stung), such as away from paths. This is the host plant for the red admiral butterfly.
• Plant Carmichaelia spp. and Tagasaste/tree lucerne (hosts for blue butterflies) as well as Pittosporum, Gahnia and Astelia, hosts for many moth species.
• Plant Muehlenbeckia spp. around the U. ferox to provide food for the copper butterflies as it can act as a barrier as well.
• Plant single (open face) dahlias and mature swan plants (at least six months old) if you are in a frost-free area or after the last frost on the sunny side of the "barrier". Add masses of annuals such as swan plants, tropical milkweed, cosmos, zinnias and Tithonia speciosa ‘Goldfinger’ on the sunniest side.
• Plant Muehlenbeckia axillaris (mat pohuehue) around stony ground and leave bare patches – talk to the MBNZT about a translocation of boulder coppers from a nearby location.
• Plant prostrate broom (Carmichaelia appressa) plus clover around the edges of paths. Also encourage medicago and lotus, generally seen as weeds. All these plants make excellent habitat for the blue butterflies.
• In nearby garden beds include annual dahlias, tropical milkweed, cosmos and zinnias and any other flowering plants you see pollinators visiting.
• Look for other plants locally where butterflies and moths are found. They could be added to your habitat. If buying plants, choose older varieties and not the new hybrids.
• Share details of what you’ve planted and why with visitors to your habitat and the MBNZT. We will be happy to spread the word.
• Enjoy!
Left to right: Martin Visser, Maurice Mehlhopt, Hugh Smith, Carol Stensness, His Excellency Dr Richard Davies, Jacqui Knight, Devangi Farah and Connal McLean at Government House, Wellington, 20 October 2025
On Monday, 20 October, we were honoured to celebrate a very special occasion at Government House, Wellington — recognising their beautiful gardens as a certified Butterfly-Friendly Habitat, and marking 20 years since the Moths and Butterflies of New Zealand Trust (MBNZT) was founded.
Yes, right in the middle of Wellington — just a stone’s throw from the Beehive — lies a 12-hectare private sanctuary where butterflies and moths are actively encouraged to flourish. It’s a wonderful example of how thoughtful garden care can make space for nature, even in our busiest cities.
“New Zealand’s beautiful butterflies and moths are struggling because of development, pesticide use and introduced wasps,” said Maurice Mehlhopt, Chair of MBNZT. “We are thrilled to be adding Government House to our list of gardens and habitats that foster flowers for nectar and host plants for Lepidoptera.”
His Excellency Dr Richard Davies expressed his delight at the recognition, pleased Government House grounds provide a safe environment for Lepidoptera.H He said that he hoped this recognition by MBNZT will encourage more people to create a similar haven in their own gardens.
For more than 25 years, Bark Ltd has maintained the gardens at Government House with a strong focus on sustainability and biodiversity.
“The gardens are managed to encourage and nurture plant and insect diversity while maintaining the high standard befitting Government House,” said Andrew Jensen, Regional Manager of Bark. “We’re proud that this recognition reinforces our commitment to those values.”
Since it began in 2009, our Butterfly-Friendly Habitat programme has celebrated landowners, schools, community groups, and councils who create and maintain high-quality environments for butterflies and moths. Certified sites display a distinctive plaque, are featured on our website, and inspire others to plant for pollinators.
To qualify, gardens must be well-established, provide shelter and sunshine, include host plants for at least three butterfly or moth species, offer nectar sources year-round, and use natural methods to manage pests.
This year marks two decades of the Moths and Butterflies of New Zealand Trust — twenty years of community engagement, advocacy, and hands-on conservation work. Our vision remains the same: that Aotearoa New Zealand’s ecosystems will always support thriving moth and butterfly populations.
We’re proud to see that vision reflected so beautifully in the grounds of Government House — a reminder that with care, collaboration and love for nature, even our most formal spaces can hum with life.
His Excellency's speech was particularly inspirational, and is reproduced here:
Thank you for formally recognising our beautiful grounds as a butterfly and moth-friendly environment, and I welcome this opportunity to highlight the work of the Trust.
I know our gardeners are thrilled to have their work recognised in this way, and they will have opportunities to spread the message during our garden tours.
In New Zealand we take it for granted that we can so easily get out into nature and connect with the natural world. Most of us are aware of the impact of climate change, but there is not the same level of awareness about biodiversity loss, and in particular the disappearance of insect life.
We are witnessing the devastating impact of human activity on our flora and fauna. Many of the Earth’s species are critically endangered, and some experts suggest up to 25 percent of our species will be lost in the next 25 years.
Over two hundred years ago the great English poet William Blake wrote about our responsibilities to protect the natural world, including the smallest of creatures, when he said:
Kill not the Moth nor Butterfly
For the Last Judgment draweth nigh
His words might seem prescient to us here in 21st century New Zealand where we are seeing the widespread disruption of delicate ecosystems, habitat loss, the effects of pesticide use, and the predations of introduced species.
But there are also reasons for hope, and after all, the butterfly is a symbol of rebirth and hope. We are blessed to have people in our communities, people like you, who are determined to put a halt to the degradation of natural environments – and restore healthy habitats – be they wetlands, forests, streams or rivers.
Last year Dame Cindy and I visited the Chatham Islands, where the community is fully engaged in implementing ambitious programmes of environmental restoration. The islands are home to 25 percent of Aotearoa’s threatened species, and scientists are undertaking research to better understand how to best manage their conservation.
Local nurseries are growing thousands of endemic trees, and landowners, who boast the highest proportion of conservation covenants in New Zealand, are undertaking massive reforestation programmes.
During our visit, we met Lois and Val Croon, whose Admiral Farm Garden is an enchanting haven for a stand of some of those rare trees, as well as the Chatham Islands’ own Admiral butterfly species.
Here on the mainland, while there are gaps in our knowledge about our thousands of moth and butterflies species, what we can be sure of is that their presence in a garden means that they have access to the appropriate food, water and shelter for the different stages in their life cycle.
Their presence indicates that a garden has flourishing insect and microbial life, which in turn contributes to more fertile soil and flourishing vegetation. And at various stages in their life cycle, our moths and butterflies are a welcome food source for other creatures in the food chain, such as birds.
We know that conservation efforts work much better when communities get behind them.
The more people who become involved in such projects, the more we can achieve.
I hope the recognition of Government House grounds will help you promote greater awareness and encourage people to purposefully create the right conditions in their gardens to support Lepidoptera species.
I will certainly be promoting your work during our vice-regal engagements, wherever we are in Aotearoa New Zealand, and I wish you all the very best with your projects in the future.
Some photos from the event are shown below:
Founding trustee Jacqui Knight presents the plaque to Dr Richard Davies
The plaque
George Hudson's 1928 "The Butterflies and Moths of NZ" presented as a koha
Beautiful presentation case made by Judi Ferguson
Some of the guests
Founding trustees Shelley McGonigle and Jacqui Knight
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Ehara taku toa i te toa takitahi engari taku toa he toa takitini
My success is not mine alone, but it is the strength of many
Jacqui came and spoke to members of the Coatesville Garden Club recently, and members were asking what to do about the wasps*.
I was happy to share what I do!
It’s clear that the declining population of our butterflies, particularly the monarch, is due to the increased number of wasps, both Vespula species and paper wasps (Polistes). By reducing the number of wasps in our gardens we can give bees and butterflies a chance to survive.
Having a shade house for your potted swan plants is an ideal solution to protect the eggs, and caterpillars, plus installing several wasp catchers around your garden (I have 14) draws the Vespula wasps away from the swan plants to drown in the wasp catcher.
Wasp catchers are cheap to buy at Bunnings, Mitre 10 and The Warehouse (or you can make your own, search the internet for instructions). The stores also have the lure which wasps love.
I always add a dessertspoon of cat biscuits (such as Friskies, Smitten or Whiskas) to the lure as wasps are looking for protein.
Hang your wasp traps in a sunny sheltered position on hedges, shrubs, trees. It may take a day or two for the wasps to find it. When the wasps are out in force towards November, December and January you may need to empty the traps almost every day, or I just add another one alongside. Make sure you drop the trap into a small rubbish bag, spray with fly spray to kill any live Wasps before you empty it into a bucket, wash and reset.
Sadly, paper wasps (Polistes spp.) are not interested in the lures: you need to find their nests and remove them.
Happy wasp trapping.
* By wasps, I mean the introduced pest species.
So you've now mastered NZ's approximately 600 macro-moths* and wondering where to go next? The obvious answer, probably, is to venture into studying NZ's much larger and diverse micro-moth fauna. To the beginner this presents a significant challenge as NZ's micro-moths have traditionally been little studied, hence there is a paucity of reference material available to professional and amateur alike. However, trust me the rewards can be well worth the effort.
Stigmella hoheriae, photo Olly Ball
Micro-moths exhibit a fascinating diversity of form and habits as their generally smaller size allows them to exploit a wider range of habitat niches. While many are associated in some way with the higher plants, in NZ a considerable number are found in the most unexpected places such as ferns and mosses, algae and fungi, and on decaying plant or animal materials.
Many, especially when viewed under some form of magnification, are simply exquisite, exhibiting inexplicable marking and adorned in a range of metallic hues – resulting in the obvious question, why? I'll leave the reader to answer that one. Of course, there are also 'little brown jobs' which fit the public's perception of nuisance or pest moths, but these are also essential to the efficient functioning of ecosystems.
Macarostola miniella, photo Olly Ball
As previously mentioned, while studying micro-moths can be a rewarding pastime, to the beginner it can seem quite daunting, not least due to the lack of modern and comprehensive identification field guides. Since Hudson's seminal publications: The Butterflies and Moths of New Zealand (1928, 1939), now inevitably out of date and definitely not a field guide, there has been little published on NZ's approximately 1200 micro-moth fauna. There are however a couple of on-line tools available on iNaturalist, which aim to provide the amateur some assistance with their identification.
When attempting to identify a particular micro-moth it is probably best to start at a higher taxonomic level, i.e. families, as they are defined by a range of characters. It should be noted that it may be impossible to identify on external characteristics alone. Features such as the resting position of the wings, antennae and body of a living adult may be sufficient to identify which family it belongs to. Labial palps, the moths’ mouthparts, are another distinguishing feature and easily observed with a hand lens or a low-powered microscope.
Today many who study moths do not wish to kill or set moths and use the medium of photography to record their observations. The advent of on-line 'citizen science' biodiversity recording platforms such as iNaturalist has certainly transformed the hobby. Images can be uploaded via a freely available app and the observation identified, initially by accepting the iNaturalist provided suggestion, or more frequently and probably more accurately by community experts in the respective field. To be accepted as 'research quality' identification needs to be supported by two or more.
However, for the serious enthusiast who seeks to extend knowledge of NZ's micro-moth fauna, with the potential of discovering a new species, a reference collection is essential. As Dr Robert Hoare states “To gain a knowledge of the smaller moths there is currently little alternative to forming a reference collection and periodically taking specimens into a museum or reference collection to identify them”. It should be noted that a digital image is no substitute for a voucher specimen as you can't dissect a photograph!
Many of the techniques and equipment for studying our macro-fauna are applicable to our smaller micro-moths. However, the effectiveness of a particular method applied to micros may be noticeably different and therefore could impact on where you should direct your efforts for maximum benefit.
Light trapping: Many micro-moth families, e.g. Crambidae, Tortricidae and Pyralidae can be regularly attracted, sometimes in large numbers, to UV and other types of lamp. Other moth families are less inclined to do so: indeed some seem to avoid them altogether and must be sought out by other means. Micro-moths are also more likely to be damaged by larger and more active moths while residing in the trap, adding to the difficulty of their subsequent identification. However, be aware that caddisflies and other potential micro-moth 'impersonators' are likely to comprise a proportion of visitors and can be difficult to separate for the beginner.
By torchlight: Adult micro-moths will seek nectar on similar flower species as the larger moths, hence an examination of using a torch accompanied by a butterfly net should reward the intrepid hunter. Also, when walking through the bush keep your eyes open for micros quietly sat on vegetation and those that take off when accidentally disturbed.
Daylight hunting: A surprising number of micro-moths can be recorded during daylight hours. There are those specialists which are best sought out during the day and those usually active at night that can be 'swept' from their daytime roosting sites. Most micro-moths are not fast flying and do not fly far if disturbed so all that is required to secure the specimen is a good netting technique.
Pheromones: A number of artificial pheromone lures have been developed for monitoring and control of pest species, and in micro-moths for species in the Tortricidae and Pyralidae. However, other 'desirable' species are sometimes attracted.
Early stages: For some moth enthusiasts a real treat is in store if they elect to extend their identification skills in the search for larvae and rearing them on to adulthood. In NZ there are many species that have never been reared and their biology totally unknown. For some species, apart from employing dissection techniques, it's the only reliable method via plant association, for distinguishing a particular species from another.
*Micro-moths make up around 64% of NZ's fauna. While there are about 680 macro-moths the key difference between the two groups lies in their evolutionary history and the families they belong to. Micro-moths mainly represent earlier evolved families.
Moths and butterflies are insects which together form the order called Lepidoptera, meaning 'scaly-winged'. The patterns and colours of their wings are formed by thousands of tiny scales, overlapping like tiles on a roof. These scales have been magnified 300 times.
At the last count there are around 1,880 named species of Lepidoptera found in NZ, including around 30 butterflies, while the UK with a similar land area includes over 2,500 species of moth though fewer than 70 butterflies. An important difference between the two regions is that in NZ over 85% are endemic, occurring nowhere else. Also, there are possibly over 200 species in NZ still to be named.
There are no simple rules for telling moths from butterflies and most of the differences are minor. Moths and butterflies share the same basic biology and have far more similarities than differences. According to Robert Hoare, entomologist at Manaaki Whenua - Landcare Research “butterflies are simply a group of specialised, day-flying Lepidoptera”, i.e. modified moths since they evolved from moth ancestors. However, in general the swollen tips of butterfly antennae distinguish them from day-flying moths. Also, commonly we associate moths with night flying.
As there are so many more species of moths than butterflies, experts split them into two groups, the larger or macro-moths and the smaller, or micro-moths.
There are around 680 macro-moths in NZ (900 in Great Britain), whilst micro-moths make up around 64% of NZ's fauna. Many micro-moths are very small indeed with a forewing length less than 4 mm, although confusingly a few of them are larger than the smallest macro-moths!
Moths vary greatly in appearance as well as size. For example, NZ's largest and best known puriri moth comes in a range of colours, from the typical pale green through yellow, blue to salmon pink. They also come in a range of sizes with small males having a forewing length of less than 27 mm while large females are up to 70 mm.
Other shapes are characteristic of different moth families, i.e. plume moths having delicate feathery wings. Colours and patterns also vary, some very bright and bold while others have wonderful camouflage.
Moths are very diverse in their ecology too, and can be found in surprising habitats, not just native forests, gardens, and farmland but also wetlands, coastlines and even mountain tops! You can also see moths at any time of the year, including mid-winter, although summer months are generally more productive.
EcoFest is a month-long Auckland-wide festival celebrating the environment of Tāmaki Makaurau and promoting sustainable living, featuring events, activities, and workshops for all ages, with the goal of making sustainability fun and accessible. As part of EcoFest this event in Blockhouse Bay involves the whole community - it's a Treasure Hunt around the Blockhouse Bay shops.
Blockhouse Bay shops and businesses will be displaying an image of one of 16 different NZ butterfly species, similar to the one below.
Entry forms (see below) can be downloaded from this page and throughout the school holidays (11-21 April) children/families will be looking out for one of the butterflies on display and identifying the store/business where that butterfly is on display.
They will bring their completed entry form along to our fun celebration for Earth Day in the Blockhouse Bay Recreational Reserve on Tuesday 22 April between 1-3pm. Find the Rathlin Street entrance and look for the flags! There will be crafts (make your own butterfly!), facepainting and more fun, fun, fun!
Want to spread the word? Feel free to display this poster.
Entry Forms:
On 16 March I found this monstrous caterpillar on a nettle leaf inside the admiral caterpillar enclosure. It was at least 4cm long.
It was identified as being the common green garden looper, Chrysodeixis eriosoma, which had been parasitised by a wasp. Vegetable crops attacked include basil, cabbage, celery, Chinese pea, corn, eggplant, green beans, lettuce, mint, parsley, peas, potato, spinach, sweet potato, and tomato. I isolated it to see what would eventuate - I didn't want parasitic wasps anywhere near my caterpillar enclosure!
Twelve days later there must have been somewhere in excess of 700 tiny, black wasps came out of the cocoon! It made my skin crawl looking at such a large number of them milling around. They have taken around 12 days to hatch.
Luckily if they had they managed to remain hidden in my butterfly house there is only one chrysalis left that they could have infected, but in the outdoors, they would have been ready to parasitise the caterpillars of the next generation of butterflies that would have overwintered.
Of course, it was a bald, thin-skinned looper that was attacked. I have never captive raised monarchs, but I have brought in plenty of chrysalises to hatch indoors - particularly at the end of the season when the weather turns bad. I have never seen any that were parasitised. I would have thought the hairs on the admiral caterpillars would have given them some protection, but evidently they do have a major problem with parasitism.
Caterpillars shedding their skin may help to dislodge eggs laid on the outside by parasitic flies - or so I would have thought. I am just thankful that over 75 of my butterflies have hatched successfully and been released (around 50 reds and more than 25 yellows) - just one tail ender to go.
I put the container of parasitic wasps in my freezer. We are working on getting them identified and here are some close-up photos of the dead wasps.
I have real concerns for the monarch butterfly in NZ (and of course we already know it’s in real trouble in North America).
There are pockets around our country where people see plenty of eggs being laid early in the season, and those people of course say, “there are lots here in my garden” (or similar). But most monarch-lovers are concerned: their swan plants are devoid of eggs.
Firstly, some facts:
• Monarchs do not mate until they are three to eight days old. When they mate, they remain together from one afternoon until early the next morning – often up to 16 hours.
• Male monarchs tend to stake out the milkweed patch (swan plants), waiting for females to come by, whereupon mating will take place.
• Females begin laying eggs immediately after their first mating. Both sexes usually mate several times during their lifetime.
• Female monarchs can smell a milkweed from 2 km away. After laying eggs at one spot, she will move on to find more places to lay eggs.
• A female monarch typically lays 300-400 eggs. In a lab study, one monarch laid 1,179.
• It takes about 28 days for a monarch to go through its metamorphosis and become an adult. Typically, eggs hatch after about five days. The caterpillars go through five instars and form a chrysalis (pupate) after about two weeks. The butterfly ecloses (or emerges, but never "hatches") about ten days later.
Depending on your region, overwintering monarchs return to your garden in the latter half of the year for the summer (Month 1).
In Month 1, let’s say three female monarchs return from overwintering and lay eggs. Each lays 300 eggs (300 x 3 = 900), but let’s imagine that 90% are lost to predators/parasites/disease. We would now have 90 butterflies, half of which might be female and are laying eggs.
Month 2, 300 eggs from 45 butterflies, 10% survive would give us 1350 adults, 675 females.
Month 3, following this exponential increase might mean we have over 10,000 of each sex.
Month 4, we would have almost 152,000 females, 152,000 males.
My figures are conservative. You can see that the number of monarchs increase exponentially as the season progresses… or rather should increase. But over the past 10-20 years, the social wasps and other factors may have modified our ecosystem(s) so much that Month 1, for me, is now the equivalent of February. There is hardly time for the butterflies to build up numbers before winter. Instead of there being tens of thousands of monarchs flying around Auckland, it could be closer to a thousand. No wonder I’m not seeing them in historical overwintering sites!
Not all of the butterflies survive the winter. There are hardly enough to sustain the population, and not enough to grow the population! And we hear of overwintering colonies that are being devoured by rats – and with the vagaries in our weather these days...
Where is “Month 1” in your corner of NZ, your street... your community? You might have a thriving population of monarchs in your garden… but for the population to be stable, there needs to be more safe butterfly habitat around/less social wasps. When someone says to me “there are lots here (monarchs) in my garden”, I know what they mean, but I have a nationwide focus:
My experience:
1. I have been driving a car for 60 years. I have memories of driving from A to B and seeing monarchs flying across a street in front of me. These are individual monarchs, and I later learned from Professor Myron Zalucki (at a MBNZT conference) that these were more than likely females, flying off to find the next milkweed to lay more eggs. I hardly ever see monarchs flying from garden to garden now.
2. In the 20th Century everyone who went to school in NZ learned about monarchs, as it was a simple and captivating way to teach about metamorphosis. Today, a high number of children and adults have never experienced the monarch at school – some of these people have migrated from densely populated urban areas where there is no "wilderness", and English is their second language. There are other people are only interested in indigenous species. And again, many (younger) people spend more time on digital devices than experience nature and the outdoors.
3. Do you remember when it was the norm to run out of swan plant – we would be desperate to find more swan plants to feed the hungry caterpillars? Today, because the earlier generations of monarchs become food (protein) for juvenile wasps, the swan plant is becoming unmanageable in some areas. “It’s a noxious weed,” some people are saying. Could it become listed as a pest plant?
4. I have had WWOOFers staying with me for 30-something years. Ten years ago, when they looked for monarch eggs it was not surprising to find leaves with three eggs on. The WWOOFer would get so excited! Now, we are lucky if we find any eggs at all.
Rowena Algar-Magee in Australia found one leaf this summer with SEVEN eggs on it!
5. People from close to overwintering sites typically say there are less monarchs each year – but since a report and map published in 2004 of Christchurch overwintering sites there are no official records – this is all anecdotal evidence.
1. Tag monarch butterflies. If you can do so, please join our tagging project. More information here.
2. SHARE! If there are teachers in your immediate network, please share this blog post with them. If you’re on social media, could you post something on your Facebook page? Do you post on Neighbourly? There is a suggested message* below – feel free to copy any images of tagged butterflies from our site.
3. Plant! Plant swan plant seed, or if you see plants at the garden centre, take home three and plant them around your house. Plant nectar flowers in spots around the garden too.
4. Don't remove swan plants growing in the wrong place (if that's possible). By late summer they will make excellent food for the monarchs which will be needing food for the caterpillars.
5. If you are raising monarchs, or covering swan plants, be careful about HYGIENE. Don't raise monarch diseases - keep everything sanitised and clean.
6. Please monitor known overwintering sites and share your observations with us. There is a special page on iNaturalist.
7. The majority of our work is funded by our financial memberships or donations. If you are not a financial member, we would welcome you – more information here. If you would like to make a donation, there is a green button at the top of this page.
8. Even if you're not interested in monarchs, remember that the monarch is an indicator species: with its large wings and bright colours it is much easier to see than other invertebrates. Are our native invertebrates likewise under threat? Are you not seeing them because you don't know about them, because you don't look for them - or because they've disappeared?
9. If you would like to do more, or have a suggestion, please add your comment below, or feel free to email me, .
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* Read this to understand why the monarch butterfly is under threat in NZ : https://www.nzbutterflies.org.nz/monarchs-and-maths-jacqui-knight/ .
When you have a beautiful swan plant but it's "top heavy" with all the new growth, it's at risk of storm damage when the wind gets up. Here's something you can do and you actually DOUBLE the amount of food you have for hungry caterpillars.
1. Use sharp secateurs, and have a bucket of water and a hammer at the ready.
2. Cut just above a node* and cut on an angle as indicated by the scissors in the photo. The reason for this is that if you cut straight across, rainwater can sit there and rot the stem. With an angled cut and the water is more likely to run off.
(* a node is where the petiole attaches to the stem. A great deal of metabolic activity happens here, promoting the growth of leaves, secondary stems and flowers)
You cut just above the node so that the two shoots from the node will then turn into branches of gorgeous, healthy leaves. You've doubled your food supply! The original stem above the node will die and if you leave it there, it may attract disease, hence cutting close to the node.
![Img 1183[1]](https://www.nzbutterflies.org.nz/wp-content/uploads/IMG_11831-217x290.jpg)
3. With the branch you've cut off IMMEDIATELY use the hammer to break up the cut end (about 1cm above the cut) and plunge it into the bucket of water. This will prevent the sap from sealing off the cut and the plant will be able to continue to ingest water. Some pieces even strike roots and you can plant them out later!
When you get caterpillars you can let them feed on the cuttings first. Make sure the caterpillars can't fall into the water though.
There are more swan plant hacks on our YouTube channel.
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