Maypops

At the Irmo Middle School, maypops, Passiflora incarnata, found their way to the pollinator garden without being planted. Probably they started when a songbird, many of which love maypop seeds, flipped its tail and deposited that seed when it landed in a shrub growing there. Many birds eat the ripe seeds when the fruits mature and open, once you have one maypop, you’ll have many as they have persistent rhizomes that give rise to new plants each year. Curiously, maypop is the larval food source for the Viceroy butterfly which closely resembles the monarch butterfly, both easy to spot with their brilliant orange color. What a fortuitous event as students learn about mimicry, one animal’s resembling another to avoid being eaten. Monarchs are poisonous due to compounds in milkweed compounds, birds avoid them and by association avoid Viceroys.