TAKING WING
Female black swallowtail It’s fascinating to follow the growth of an individual cat-
erpillar, as they literally change their spots. The youngest cat- erpillars wear a white band that encircles the middle of their black body like a belt. They are doing their best impression of mimicking bird poop. As they age and molt, the caterpil- lars turn green and develop black bands highlighted by yellow spots across the body, looking more like a miniature snake. Spotting them when they pupate is tricky. You’ll either
raise a caterpillar in a safe spot to see the chrysalis (pupa). Before a larva forms its chrysalis, it leaves its host plant and on a silken pad attached to a plant stem, while the front end arches away from the stem, held in place by a strand of silk. - alis can be green or brown, depending on the season and the environment. If it’s formed late in the season, so that the chrysalis overwinters and the adult emerges the following spring, it resembles a dried, brown leaf. But a chrysalis that ecloses to produce adults in the summer can be either brown or green, depending on the surrounding vegetation.
Egg-Laying Females are Good Botanists “Do they lay eggs on all the plants in your garden?” my neighbor queried. -
tively small group of plants when choosing where to lay eggs. They’re good botanists. Actually, it would be more accurate to say egg-laying females are good chemists. The plants they use as nurseries are generally quite similar chemically.” “taste” them with their feet. If the female senses the right chemicals, she deposits an egg. In the vegetable garden, fe- male black swallowtails most often lay eggs on parsley, dill, and fennel. Outside the vegetable garden, females lay eggs on rue and Queen Anne’s lace. But European settlers brought all of these plants to North America from Europe. So what did black swallowtails eat before Europeans in- troduced parsley and other plants to North America? To this day, black swallowtails lay eggs on a variety of native plants. If you don’t plant parsley, fennel, and dill, you can still have
Male black swallowtail
black swallowtails. Instead, try golden Alexanders (Zizia au- rea America and good for the native garden. They are pretty, have small geographic ranges.
My neighbor’s curiosity kept her poised at the edge of my garden. Unlike caterpillars, which eat a very limited variety of
Black swallowtails collect nectar from milkweeds, thistles, many other plants. If you watch closely, you can see the but- -
Enemies and Defenses We watched and a bird swooped down, hungry to catch a
observed. “How can they escape predators?”
escape and you can spot evidence of “beak marks” on the wings, usually a v-shaped scar or missing part on the wing’s - tails have a clever defense mechanism against birds. They mimic the coloration of the pipevine swallowtail (Battus philenor entirely to the caterpillar’s munching on pipevine plants and absorbing the potent chemicals from this plant. Birds that catch a pipevine swallowtail end up with a distasteful beakful
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© Janet Lanza
© Janet Lanza
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