What a beautiful dragonfly and beautiful photos of it! The one resting on a stick is my favorite photo. Glad to see that you planted butterfly weed. You won't be able to keep the butterflies away with that stuff. That "winged critter" is a Skipper butterfly. I really enjoyed your photos Mike and thanks for using #insectpub tag! : )
The butterfly weed has grown there on its own ..They have very deep extensive roots.. Impossible to transplant I think. Got to get a real small one.
Right you are, Mike - the roots can go sixteen feet deep - hence my horror and outrage when some poacher tried to dig up my mature plants and succeeded only in killing them. I planted seeds along the roadside by our mailbox to grow these; I even wheeled buckets of water to keep the alive one dry summer when even the natives were shriveling up. This is my favorite prairie flower, or one of my favorites (how can I pick just one?). The seeds have only a 20% rate of taking hold, but once they do, wow, they really hold on! Tornados, buffalo stampedes, anything but the poacher's spade. :(
The ones I have here came up from the roots after the originals where back-hoed to death putting in a trench for a cesspool line. I tried to save the originals, put them in a bucket of water but they died right away.