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You stroll to the herb bed and gather a bunch
of Italian parsley for tonight's potato salad. Back in the
kitchen, you rinse it, and right there, in your hand, clinging
to a stem is a huge green worm with black stripes and yellow
dots. On closer inspection this worm pokes two little orange
horns at you from his head!
What you just brought in the house for a visit
is the larva of a Black Swallowtail, one of the gems of the
insect family, Lepidoptera.
Butterfly larvae can be both startling and startlingly
beautiful. So don't reach for the insecticide or squash these
beauties; instead, take a closer look.
Each butterfly specie is very particular about
which plant, or "host plant" on which they will
lay their eggs. Certain plants provide specific nutrition
and camouflage for the young hatchlings. Only 10% of butterfly
eggs ever mature to the adult butterfly stage, so adult
butterflies hedge their bets on survival by finding host plants
that will assure a better survival rate for their young.
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The Black Swallowtail is one of the
gems of the insect family Lepidoptera. They prefer to
lay their eggs on plants with fine threadlike leaves such
as fennel and dill. |
Black swallowtails prefer to lay eggs on plants
in the umbelliferae [parsley-dill-carrot-fennel] family. The
fine threadlike leaves and tiny yellow blossoms of fennel
and dill provide a perfect foil for these larvae. Monarchs
lay eggs only on plants in the asclepia family. The hatchlings
ingest the milky substance, which contains an alkaline
cardioglycocide. This makes them distasteful and sometimes
fatal to birds who might consider them for lunch. Adult females
may spend hours depositing eggs, the size of a pinhead, one
by one on the host plant. The eggs hatch in about two weeks
and the very tiny hatchlings begin life by eating the egg
shell, then moving on to the host plant leaves. Their objective
is twofold: 1) to stay hidden from predators, and 2) to eat
until they have increased up to 30,000 times in size.
During this two-week feeding period, each larva
must stay hidden from marauding wrens, tachnid flies which
use the larva as a living host for their own eggs, and, of
course, bumbling gardeners.
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Gardeners never need to worry about
butterfly larvae decimating their plants. They will never
eat more than the food supply can support. |
You can help support butterfly populations in
your area by learning which species are common and adding
their favorite host plants to your garden. Following is a
short list of common butterflies and host plants:
Black Swallowtail: Fennel, dill and parsley
Monarch: Asclepias
Fritillaries: violet, violas and pansies
Painted Lady: Everlasting and helichrysum
Buckeye: Snapdragon
Nature has a marvelous way of balancing the
supply of host plants and the butterfly populations. Gardeners
never need to worry about butterfly larvae decimating their
plants. They will never eat more than the food supply can
support.
Now be brave and gently place that big striped
green worm back in the parsley bed. He has work to do.
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