Subject: What type of flower?

From: user <user_addr>
Date: 13 Aug 1995 23:38:51 GMT

While looking at your page on Butterfly pictures 
(http://www-swiss.ai.mit.edu/~philg/photo/butterflies/)
we saw a picture of a flower we found growing on our ranch (77.jpg).

I found the flower interesting and so brought it home and put in a vase 
on our kitchen window sill. The next day I noticed a black, white and 
yellow striped catapillar. Within a few days he had eaten all of the 
leaves on the plant and so I went back to were I picked the first one and 
got another for him to eat. After eating a few leaves off of the second 
plant he immediately attached himself to the underside of one of the 
leaves, curling into a "j" shape. On the second morning he still 
looked much the same, but the upper portion of his body (where he was 
hooked to the leaf) seemed to becomming transparent. We left in the 
morning to go out, expecting to come back in the early evening to find 
the change had advanced, but we were completely suprised to find that he 
had totally transformed himself in that brief period into a chrysalis; he 
was about half his former size and totally green! We are following this 
all with much amazement and interest. 

Questions: Do you have any idea how we can find out more about what is 
happening and what type of lepidoptera this is. We thought that knowing 
more about the flower might help us, thus our letter.

Thank-you
Debbie Hansen-Bernard