Your help with identification please

Daisymaisy

Hi everyone,

Can anyone help me identify this plant (photo not great but hopefully good enough for identification):

https://www.flickr.com/photos/49851826@N06/14416560118/

and these caterpillars which were happily munching my pepper plants:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/49851826@N06/14599891431/

Thanks

Davesnave

The flower is Verbena hastata.

I don't identify caterpillars; I leave that job to my chickens.

Daisymaisy

Thanks for putting me out of my 'need to know' misery, I did think the leaves reminded me of verbena bonariensis. It is so pretty, it is growing through a clump of monarda and delicate as it is really catches the eye. I haven't seen the lady who tends this fabulously floral allotment recently so haven't been able to ask her. I can name almost everything she grows but this stumped me.
Sadly we are not allowed chickens at the allotment or they would have had a few treats by now... In the hope they would turn into something beautiful I threw them into the wilderness on the otherside of the allotment boundary which is alongside my plot, but the chances are they will metamorphose into the next batch of cabbage whites :-(
Off to Hampton Court RHS show tomorrow :j and it looks like the weather is just about going to behave

Elsewhere

Those caterpillars looked like Small Whites to me.

BTW there is no such thing as an actual Cabbage White - there are four common butterflies found in gardens which are white - Small Whites, Large Whites (which have obvious black wing tips), Green-veined Whites and the female Brimstone (the male is a lovely lemon yellow).

The first three all eat cabbage type plants, also rocket, radish etc. and get lumped together as "Cabbage Whites".

You might also see Orange-tips - again the female is white but the male has bright orange blobs on its forewings.

http://butterfly-conservation.org/48-4135/how-to-identify-white-butterflies.html