Submitted by Jill Audrey Hancock
Any sunny day now, the long cold wait will be over for our tiger swallowtail butterflies, and they will emerge in all their bright golden and black banded glory to grace our meadows and chosen gardens.
Every good gardener knows the benefits of inviting pollinators over to visit, but what about their young? The difference between a habitat and a rest area is baby food.
Female butterflies mate only once, and she will carry her fertilized eggs until she finds the proper host plant for her newly emerging larvae to eat. Newborn caterpillars must begin eating immediately, as they are not born with the strength to commute for their first meal. Their first bite is their own egg casing, fortified with vitamins and minerals, and then they begin to eat the leaf they stand on. The adult butterfly knows that without the right host plant for her babies, no eggs will be laid, and the quest continues for the perfect spot with an abundant food supply.
Our tiger swallowtails will soon be seeking (with ravenous intent) a short but hardy list of greens you may already have growing in your garden. The tiger caterpillars love to eat the tops off of your carrots, cilantro, parsley, dill and fennel. A newly emerged caterpillar is a greenish grey, and within days will plump into a jade-green bulbous-headed eating machine with thick antennae. They are often mistaken for a tomato worm, but you won’t find them on your tomatoes. They might look a bit menacing to some, but they have no defensive tactics other than rearing up cobra-like and swaying back and forth in an adorable attempt to look big and scary and not a juicy dill-filled bite to its many predators, top of the list being birds.
It rarely works. This is the most vulnerable time in the butterfly life-cycle, no wings yet and caterpillars are not fast at anything except eating. After a few days of nearly nonstop leaf consumption the mature caterpillar climbs a nearby tree, (their favorite is cherry) and forms a cleverly disguised pupae that looks like bark and tucks into a protected nook to morph away the winter and emerge when the sun shines in the spring, to spread its new golden wings and begin the search for the ideal landing zone again. How convenient it would be for them if all their food was already there.
Over the past several years, I have distributed over 26 pounds of butterfly garden seeds to Lopezians and beyond, and I believe our local tiger swallowtail population is increasing, thanks to all of the food plants growing in distant meadows and gardens planted by other butterfly loving folks like you. On behalf of the butterflies, thank you (and please plant more).
