Eastern Black Swallowtail Caterpillar Food

It is the state butterfly of oklahoma and new jersey.
Eastern black swallowtail caterpillar food. Black swallowtail caterpillars eat much and grow very quickly. Black swallowtail butterflies are great to raise indoors for several reasons including abundance plentiful food source attractive and interesting caterpillars and of course beautiful butterflies. These eastern black swallowtail caterpillars are dining on curly parsley. Eastern black swallowtail caterpillars are native to the eastern and midwestern united states canada and mexico.
Black swallowtail life cycle. Eastern black swallowtail fifth instar caterpillar. Black swallowtail caterpillars will eat parsley dill fennel and rue so if you have plenty of these in your garden your caterpillars won t starve unless you have too many caterpillars. Once black swallowtail caterpillars come out of eggs they start chewing leaves but as they grow they may eat off all the flowers and if they.
The eggs will turn a dark gray just before hatching which takes about 10 13 days. An extremely similar appearing species papilio joanae occurs in the ozark mountains region but it appears to be closely related to papilio machaon rather than p. Papilio polyxenes the eastern black swallowtail american swallowtail or parsnip swallowtail is a butterfly found throughout much of north america. The eggs are laid.
They can also be found as far west as arizona. Raising a black swallowtail butterfly indoors is fun easy and educational. Female black swallowtail butterfly on milkweed. If you live in these areas it s possible to adopt a black swallowtail caterpillar as a temporary pet.
The female will lay up from 200 430 pale yellow eggs at a rate of about 30 50 per day. Monarch butterflies get all the press but the eastern or black swallowtail papillio polyxenes a large blue black and gold and cream specked beauty flies in our neck of the world from april through november. When a fourth instar caterpillar molts to fifth instar it loses its dark coloratino and is a green and black striped caterpillar with orange dots against the black stripes. A few holes punched in the top with a push pin complete the project.