Eastern Black Swallowtails

Eastern Black Swallowtails (Papilio polyxenes) are one of my favorite butterflies. They are large and shimmering black with beautiful yellow and orange spots on their wings. I think they are interesting in all their lifecycle stages. The female lays single eggs on the upper leaves of the host plants, which can include fennel, dill, parsley, Queen Anne's lace, and members of the carrot family. When the caterpillar is young, it resembles a bird dropping, with a white saddle in the middle. This is for protection against predators. As it grows, it becomes striped with green and black stripes or bands. The caterpillar can travel quite a distance before finding a suitable place to pupate, usually on a stick. It then spins a silken girdle to hold it in place. After about a day or so, the chrysalis turns shades of brown or green. If it is fall, they go into diapause until the weather warms in the spring. In Virginia, the black swallowtails start showing up in April. Many times, I raise the caterpillars in the fall on fennel and keep the chrysalises in the refrigerator during the winter. In April I begin taking them out to emerge. When they are adults, they flitter around flowers and favor daylilies and other garden flowers. They have an extra-long proboscis that allows them to nectar from long-necked flowers. When they are being released at a special occasion, it is an extraordinary sight to see all of these beautiful black creatures emerge from a release container or individually from release envelopes. It is stunning!