Black Swallowtails in the Butterfly Garden
Last week I used a photo of a Black Swallowtail Butterfly in a post, which prompted one of my favorite Ecosystem Gardeners, Cindy Brown Ahern, to post this comment on Facebook:
This is such a beautiful creature, and YOU can do something as simple as planting parsley, dill, fennel, carrots in your garden to provide a food source for the caterpillars in addition to flowers to provide nectar for the adult butterfly!
Carrots, Parsley, Dill, Fennel, Queen Anne’s Lace: not native
And this is a very true statement, Black Swallowtail caterpillars do, indeed, use all of these as host plants. But I started to wonder what these caterpillars ate BEFORE the European settlement when none of those plants were present in this country.
So I started to research this question. I paged through all of my butterfly gardening books, but each and every one of them said the same thing: “Black Swallowtails use members of the carrot family (Apiaceae) including parsley, fennel, dill, Queen Anne’s Lace, and carrots.”
Same story online, even at native plant society pages.
So, What IS Native?
Now I am nothing if not determined, so several hours later I FINALLY found the answer at the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center. They have an amazing plants database which is searchable by plant family.
I searched on Apiaceae and discovered that there are 82 native members of this family, many of them endangered.
But, not all of them stated that they were a host plant for the Black Swallowtail. So I entered “Black Swallowtail host plant” into the search box and ended up with three species:
- Zizia aurea (Golden Alexander)
- Polytaenia texana (Texas Prairie Parsley)
- Polytaenia nutallii (Nuttall’s Prairie Parsley)
This is a great start!
What to do now?
I am not suggesting that you stop planting parsley, dill, or carrots for the Black Swallowtails in your butterfly garden, but fennel can be a little aggressive in the garden, and Queen Anne’s Lace is invasive in many areas (but is a main ingredient in many wildflower mixes which I call “meadow in a can”), so I’d avoid both of those.
AND, if any of the above native plants are appropriate to your site, add them to your garden.
ALSO, plant some of the other 82 native Apiaceae species and watch them diligently. If you notice Black Swallowtail caterpillars on any of those plants, take a photograph and send it to the Lady Bird Johnson Wildlflower Center. It may very well be that we have lost some knowledge of host plants for this butterfly.
And please let me know here if you notice Black Swallowtails using any of these plants. It would be so exciting if we could regain the knowledge we have lost in this area.
Go to the Native Plants directory to see if you can find a local supplier of these natives to add to your garden in the spring. Now is a great time to plan for this addition to your butterfly garden.
If you can, please support the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center. They do amazing work.
Here’s some natural history information on Black Swallowtails with a range map so you can see if you could have these beautiful butterflies in your garden.
Do you have any of these plants already in your garden? Please let us know if the caterpillars are using them.
© 2009 – 2010, Carole Brown. All rights reserved.
{ 17 comments… read them below or add one }
This is great information. I’m pleased to see that black swallowtails have been seen in my part of Kansas. I do have parsley in my garden but I’ve not seen any black swallowtails. I’ll have to check whether any of the host plants are native to my area and see if I can add them when I’m putting new perennials in the garden.
Alison Kerr´s last post ..Foiling Squirrels At Your Feeders
I have only ever seen Black Swallowtails on dill in my MA garden, but my Caterpillars of E. North America (Wagner) book says that they also feed on Rue and other members of the Rutaceae family. Good point though, asking ‘what did they eat before colonists brought carrots, parsley, dill, etc to this country’? Many of our butterflies have adapted to human settlement and succeeded because we’ve given them lots of what they need to survive. Brings up a philosophical question whether it’s a good idea to remove all non-natives from our gardens and stick with strictly natives. We’ve enabled these butterflies to prosper, is it fair to take away what they are used to?
Ellen Sousa´s last post ..Guest Posting at ConservationGardening.com
Thanks so much for looking into this, I was wondering myself what the native host plant was for this gorgeous butterfly. I’ve got some Zizia aurea stratifying in my fridge already, so I’m doubly pleased!
Rosemary´s last post ..Does growing invasive plants help birds?
That’s great to know. I can tell Samuel that the Black Swallowtail caterpillars will enjoy next years carrots too!
Thanks for sharing.
Marghanita Hughes´s last post ..Recycled Art – Ice Fun with Nature
Thank you for this excellent information. I have always sacrificed my dill to the swallowtails, but never noticed them on any other plants – and I do grow carrots and parsley. There is lots of Queen Anne’s Lace around so maybe that’s where they are.
We get caterpillars on our parsley and carrots all the time, but I’ve never noticed them on our golden alexander. The parsley and carrots are for us, not the caterpillars, but we plant enough to share…and we plant way more of those than the golden alexander, so that may explain the difference.
Elizabeth @the Natural Capital´s last post ..Natural Places in the DC Area To Take Your Out-of-Town Visitors
Funny story: I stopped at a farm stand over the summer and was thrilled to find caterpillars on some of the parsley. So I carefully selected all of the plants with caterpillars but when I set them in front of the cashier she about had a coronary then offered to pick out new plants that didn’t have “those worms” on them. She was totally confused when I said that I really, REALLY wanted those specific plants because of the caterpillars. Education happens at many levels……
That’s a fantastic story!
Michelle Clay´s last post ..". . .a better place to direct development aid. . ."
I did that too at my local Home Depot! They had Milkweed plants on sale. Monarchs were flying around all over them. I started searching for plants with caterpillars. Someone came over to help me find a “good plant”, with no bugs! I explained I was actually looking for the biggest caterpillars I could find. He was really confused but let me pick all the caterpillars I wanted. That was a fun day.
Hi Carole! I recently attended a lecture on invasive plants by a horticulturist and invasive plant specialist from the New England Wildflower Society. (I can dig up his name if you like, but don’t have it on hand.) He said Queen Anne’s Lace isn’t invasive (here in MA, at least), because “it doesn’t persist in the landscape”.
Cheers, and thanks as always for maintaining this wonderful blog!
Michelle, I’m glad it doesn’t persist in New England. Queen Anne’s Lace is a mess here in Pennsylvania and also in Cape May, NJ. But I like the idea of adding the original host plants back to our landscapes!
The only plant I have ever seen my Eastern Black Swallowtail Larvae on is Florida Native WATER COWBANE (Oxypolis filiformis) which is naturally occuring in my Central Florida ecosystem. The again, I don’t offer exotics so they wouldn’t have a choice. The URL above will show a nice specimen of the caterpillar
Loret, Kudos to you for having a completely native Ecosystem Garden! You are an inspiration to us all.
wellll, can’t say that it is COMPLETELY native. I only really found out about the importance of native plants in 2008 so going forward I stick to my ecosystem. I’m lucky enough to have the type of property to “go wild” with. There are non-natives there but most are naturalize. I removed all the Category I invasives and even cried since some were rather pretty…nandina was a personal favorite of mine. Alas, the rewards of seeing a passing snake, butterfly or bird knowing I was no longer being party to the demise of their habitats was well worth a few tears! Thanks for all you do and share!
This is great, Carole. I’ve never given this a thought. I know they eat Rue, which I have, and I’ve seen them on that, but usually it’s parsley and most of all, the dill. So far, I haven’t seen any on the bronze fennel and we have a huge clump of that. I’m kind of surprised.
I did find another cute furry caterpillar (2 of them, actually) on the Asclepias. I’ve seen them once before and will have to look up what they are, but we don’t see them often. The only other time I saw them was in a nature preserve near here and I got all excited that I saw them. I’ll let you know what it was in Twitter.
Kylee from Our Little Acre´s last blog ..Imperial Moth Caterpillars – Eat- Sleep- Poop
Kylee, the cute furry cats on your milkweed, are they orange and black striped and very fuzzy? I bet they are Milkweed Tussock Moths. I have them too, they usually seem to eat the older milkweed leaves, whereas the Monarch cats seem to prefer the fresh milkweed….
ellen´s last blog ..Raising Herbert
Yes Ellen, they are Milkweed Tussock Moths. Kylee showed them off on twitter last night. It’s so amazing just how many critters can eat milkweed!
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