Butterfly gardening is a hot commodity these days with more and more gardeners planting milkweed plants
for monarchs and parsley, fennel and dill for swallowtail butterflies. Butterflies are a common sight in our gardens right now, and that means the adult female is looking for a plant to lay her eggs.
Monarchs always lay their eggs on milkweed plants and the black swallowtail looks for parsley, dill and fennel. The pipevine swallowtail looks for Dutchman's Pipe, the Tiger Swallowtail searches for wild cherry, tulip trees and sweetbay magnolia trees and the spicebush swallowtail looks for spicebush and sassafras.
Some gardeners get confused when they see their plants being eaten, but if you are planting for the butterflies, you expect your plants to be eaten. The monarch caterpillars look similar to swallowtails, but there is a difference. Here is the monarch caterpillar
and here is the black swallowtail caterpillar (actually 4 of them on my son's parsley plant.
Caterpillars are voracious eaters and soon will move to their next stage--the chrysalis.
The next stage is when the butterfly emerges. Watching their first maiden flight is pretty amazing.
While we all enjoy having these caterpillars and butterflies in the garden, some are not as welcome. We had an unwelcome visit from a tomato hornworm, who decimated some pepper and tomato plants before we spotted him.
The adult of this caterpillar is one of the sphinx or hummingbird moths, which look like a hummingbird as they feed.
Do your homework and learn to recognize the good from the bad.