Mountain Mint, Ol' Buddy Ol' Pal

Although I like to think I don't have any botanical enemies, I tend to divide the plants I encounter into categories of friends and...let's say acquaintances. The friends are those I love and look forward to seeing every year: the Ratibida pinnata, the Pineapple Weed, assorted Violets, the funny little rockets of flowering Narrowleaf Plantain. Usually they are entwined with a fond memory or something unique about their appearance or life that strikes me as appealing. 

Others--the rest--are enjoyable enough to spend time with, and while appreciate them in a general sense they don't inspire the same joy as those friends do. Until recently, Common Mountain Mint (Pycnanthemum virginianum) was among these. I've noticed it occasionally, its small, purple-spotted flowers often crawling with a variety of pollinators, but it never stood out among its taller, more robustly-flowered, or otherwise more interesting neighbors.

That is, until I discovered we had a friend in common. Hold on, what's that? 

There, a petal out of place, next to more browning petals. Moving in jerky starts and stops across the small cluster of flowers. A Camouflaged Looper (Synchlora aerata)! I've been enchanted by these sharp-dressed caterpillars from the moment I saw them, and finding them in my garden is always a treat. Because they make use of the petals of the flower on which they are foraging as camouflage, they use a variety of different flowers as hosts--though I spot them most often on the R. pinnata (maybe because it is easy to notice them on the smooth, rounded flowerhead?).

Not just one Looper, though. A whole armada of them, each in varying states of dress scattered around the stand of Mountain Mint! Some had just a few brown petals adorning their pastel bodies; others seemed to fully decked out, dried anthers dangling over their backs as they inched along. One unfortunate individual, camouflage working perhaps a bit too well, found a bee upon its back. 

Suddenly, with the discovery that we have a friend in common, the Mountain Mint has found a place in the always-growing circle of friends out along the Greenway.