I thought they were adorable and couldn't bring myself to stop them from days of munching. They were joined by a third adult, a smaller one and what I later found out were newly hatched ones.
Swallowtail caterpillars on 2nd year parsley plants
Now that is cool! I am guessing that your plants will come back. This probably has the same effect as cutting them for your own use? This would make me plant more for the next year or two.
Hi Podster!
Parsley is very neat in that I found, from growing them, that the first year they form very pretty plants that make good edgers, and then year two they bloom. I put them around my roses. The ones the caterpillars are nibbling on are year two's. I don't quite know what happens in year three so I started new plants this year that will bloom next year.They are so pretty (and the swallowtails are so cool) that I intend to grow them every year.
Donna
The butterflies are cool and I'm thinking that would be a good idea to plant lots around other plants you want to keep them off of. Great idea!
Once I went to the site and saw how gorgeous the butterflies were, I had to do my part.
http://www.oznet.ksu.edu/johnson/hort/Butterfly/BlackSwallowtail.htm
See the funny little dark larvae? I had those too. When it was grass cutting time, I actually found myself putting bamboo poles around the area to protect them. They were out there for a couple of weeks. It was fun watching them nibble, then sleep, nibble, then sleep. I felt like I had pets. Now I'm watching for the butterflies.
Donna
They're just munching away aren't they lol I planted parsley around my butterfly bush this year that I put in the nectar garden and plan to plant more butterfly bushes with more parsley around them next year.
I'm with you Donna I think parsley makes a good border plant too! It's pretty, seems like my parsley died the third year or it looked kind of scragly looking so I pulled it up haven't planted it for a while until this year the butterfly quit laying eggs on them after I got so many butterflyweeds and milkweeds going and the fennel of course that's a pretty plant too. I set out about 15 parsley plants this year.
I found two swallowtail cats on some dill last year and got all excited as they were the first butterfly larvae I'd seen in my yard. Unfortunately they were gone the next day. I'm afraid that the birds got them.
This year I've seen some pretty little orange and black butterflies and some large yellow and black ones, but no black swallowtails. Rats!!
Hey LeBug! Is your computer being nicer to you?
Parsley is a biennial, isn't it?. The first year, as you know, you get foliage, the second the gorgeous cat food flowers, and the third, yech! I grow them from seed and put them primarily around my roses, so I start a plant on each side each year, even though it gives a bit of a lopsided look. It's a must have. You remind me that I haven't planted fennel in years. Great idea. I'm putting it on my seeding list.
Donna
The years I worked at Telly's greenhouse we found that besides parsley and fennel, curry plant (Helichrysum italicum) was a big favorite of swallowtails. Every year we would gather up the caterpillars on a few of the plants and several of us take them home. My grandchildren received on such plant last year and watched it every day as they went through their cycle, releasing the butterflies after they emerged. My friend Judy took one such plant home and they emerged the day her garden was on the local garden walk -- put on quite a show!
I have parsley all around my lilies. It reseeds each year and I do have lots of Swallowtails. I think I have several plants that attract them. We eat a lot of parsley so I have found the going to seed method to be the best for supplying our needs. I do the same with chervil. They are both lovely plants.
This is good to know. My parsley has lilies on one side and roses on the other. We're in the same zone, which means that if your parsley reseeds mine will too. I haven't grown chervil in years. It'll be parsley, fennel and chervil around my roses and lilies next year. Thanks for the guidance!
Donna
My computer is still the same just need a little patients with it and I’m a little short in that dept. lol I’m getting ready to get high speed so I’m just waiting to decide on who to go with. I won’t have to put up with it much longer lol I don’t think I can take much more!
I didn’t get any fennel out of my seeds this year but I dug some up that had reseeded from last year I found out they don’t like to be dug up, they must have a taproot, I planted 5 plants and only got two out of them and the ones that I had planted never came back from last year. Is fennel a biennial? If it is I didn’t realize this.
I didn’t know that parsley reseeded so I will just leave mine alone next time they go to flower that is good to know!
Very cool, Donna!
I am guessing the fennel is not the bulb kind? Or do they both work well.
Hey ~ Le Bug I haven't forgotten you. Am trying to figure out what I have growing first. I will dmail you soon. : )
Fennel forms a bulb ( if you are lucky) then goes to seed. Kind of like celery. It isn't that celery forms a bulb but it forms fat stems just as fennel does. Eventually they both go to seed. I attempted to grow fennel here, but our growing season is too short. It likes a long cool growing season from spring to summer or summer to winter. I got them to make small bulbs in the summer to winter season ( post solstice) but they don't make much of a bulb. But they always grow and go to seed. I don't know where fennel bulbs grow in the US, but it is probably in the Pacific northwest, somewhere with a long cool growing season.
I had fennel for maybe three years it flowered and went to seed at the end of the season but it kept coming back I had 3 or 4 plants out there but guess they were just done or the freezes got them for this year it is a pretty plant it's a shame you can't grow it pajaritomt mine didn't reseed in the sun but it reseeded in my shade garden compliments from the birds I'm sure I didn't have any planted down there, it is a bulb podster it's bronze fennel.
Podster take your time I'm in no hurry :-)
pajaritomt, does the parsley help keep the grass and weeds out of your lilies lol Maybe I should plant some with my daylilies. Seems every year I find another spot I can plant the parsley :-)
Parsley does keep some of the weeds down by shading them. Not all. I have some dandy dandelions growing there right now, but only a couple. The thing about parsley is that it seeds itself wherever there is an empty space. I usually just let it live wherever it goes, even out of place. Mostly it just stays where I water it.
I can grow fennel here. It is just that it never makes a bulb. But I don't think bronze fennel ever makes a bulb, does it? I can grow that. It's just that the white stemmed fennel bolts and doesn't make a bulb and it should make a bulb.
I do find that parsley is good at "holding its own" against other plants. It won't be overridden. It can be neglected and take quite a bit of abuse and come back nicely. I did not get to see bloom for a couple of years on two plants because the rabbits kept "pruning" them for me, so I got no blooms. The only good thing about that is that the plants got bigger and bigger over a couple of years and when they did bloom (year three?) it was gorgeous!.
Donna
Yes, I find parsley blooms lovely as well, I was surprised to discover.
You know I have young rabbits that hide/eat in my host garden but never have missed anything out of it strange I see them run out of it everytime I go and check the cats out, knock on wood, I'll get up tomorrow morning and everything will be gone lol
I'll have to check the bronze fennel out later and see if there is a bulb I thought they did make bulbs maybe I'm wrong, just can't imagine that lol
I'l put some parsley in my daylilies next year and see how that goes I have so many problems with crabgrass I just can't keep it out of my plants, if I didn't have crabgrass I wouldn't have any grass lol I am working on NOT having ANY grass!
No grass -- a noble goal. What good does it do if you don't have sheep or cows?
Ah, LeBug, there IS a fennel bulb. It's finocchio, or Florence fennel, an annual or biennial. I found it in "Herbs for Dummies". The bulb is actually the swollen base of the stem, and its leaves can be used the same way as those of common fennel.
See how smart you are?
Donna
Fennel does have a bulb -- Florence fennel, that is. In fact, I put it in salads like you might do with celery. But I have never seen a bulb on Bronze Fennel. It is very beautiful, though. It may have a bulb, but when I grew it, it didn't. On the other hand, neither did Florence fennel when I tried to grow it. It takes a long growing season for fennel to bulb.
Hi, everybody--couldn't resist reading about your parslies and the swallowtail caterpillers! Sounds like fun!! And that's a really pretty caterpiller picture, Donnamack.
I put in a lot of parsley edging this year around the flower garden, too, but haven't seen any swallowtail cats yet. (And some dill and fennel.)
I do have a lot of Monarch butterfly caterpillers on my milkweeds, though. That is another pretty garden plant that I plant with my daylilies, verbena bonarienses and daisies and the monarchs love the milkweeds both for laying eggs and for nectaring. Easy to grow from seed, too.
http://davesgarden.com/pf/adv_search.php?searcher%5Bcommon%5D=milkweed&searcher%5Bfamily%5D=&searcher%5Bgenus%5D=&searcher%5Bspecies%5D=&searcher%5Bcultivar%5D=&searcher%5Bhybridizer%5D=&search_prefs%5Bblank_cultivar%5D=&search_prefs%5Bsort_by%5D=rating&images_prefs=both&Search=Search
Good luck with all of your baby butterflies! t.
Hi Tabasco,
This thread has been fun. I rarely start them but this has been a blast. I envy you your monarchs! The adults flutter around by verbena bonariensis (isn't it a wonderful plant!) and I get hummingbirds too but I've never gotten monarch cats. I didn't know milkweed was easy from seed. Another must have.
Donna
I need to try milkweed as well. A friend of mine who is really into Monarch butterflies says it is pathetic how few places still have the foods that Monarchs like to eat. Planting milkweed would be doing the whole world a favor!
If you go on the butterfly and hummingbird forum there are loads of DGers with appropriate milkweed and other Butterfly seeds for your garden and/or part of the country.
I can send you a pod of milkweed asclepias tuberosa (perennial in zone 6) or a. curassavica (treated as an annual here) so you can get it started this winter for next summer, if you like. Just d-mail me your addresses.
I have verbena bonarienses seeds, too, if anyone wants them. A real butterfly magnet for our yard. If you wintersow it's a snap to grow them (even I can do it!)
Let's see....what other herbs are known as butterfly magnets?? Anybody know?
I have a lilac with very small leaves ( Korean?) that the swallowtails hover over whenever it is blooming and sometimes even when it isn't. I grow anise hyssop, another aguastache and it is always covered with bees and little orange and black butterflies. I notice they always visit my lilies, too, when they are in bloom.
The Echinacea ~ coneflowers have been the big attraction this year. I think that may fit in the herbal category? pod
and more Echinacea fans...
Great flower & butterfly pictures, pod.
Pod, how gorgeous! If you have more please keep them coming.
Donna
This message was edited Aug 22, 2007 6:00 AM
Beautiful shots of your swallowtail!
No, I only have more of the same and those two were the better ones. I love them and would love to be in the west central Tx area for the annual migration. Maybe when I am older and greyer... lol
I don't know much about Swallowtail migration, but I sure have a lot of them here -- right now and most of the warm weather. Where do they migrate ?
I don't know enough about the various butterflies to know if the swallowtail migrates. I know they head south (I would gladly join them ~lol) A friend witnessed the migration in the San Angelo Tx area. He said they had just had a rain and there were puddles on the dirt roads. The butterflies landed in the evening and were covering the trees and puddling for moisture. The sight must have been magnificent!
I know Monarch butterflies migrate, but I have no idea about Swallowtails.
I googled and found out the monarch does a full migration down to Mexico (or on the west coast the monarchs go to certain other wintering areas), overwinters there in a certain mountain area, and then they start returning to the States in early spring.
This first overwintering Monarch generation wakes up in late February and flies as far as our very southern states and lays eggs which turn into butterflies in a few weeks. This second generation heads further north and lays eggs, and by July or so, we begin to see Monarchs around here (Ohio). Ours are maybe the third generation. By August and September, the monarchs start heading back south. Monarchs generally live a few weeks, except for the last ones of summer who migrate south and overwinter. After the monarchs reach Mexico they live a several months (in the overwintering phase).
The monarch has some favorite 'flyways' for their southern migration and certainly Texas seems to be on the southern most part of the route that comes down from Canada through Iowa . There is another big flyway down the eastern seaboard that joins up.
Most of the different swallowtails, on the other hand, overwinter in the cold climates as pupa or chrysalids. They hide on the ground, in bark, garden rubbish, woodpiles, barns, etc. Some kinds of swallowtails head farther south in the fall but don't do a full migration like the monarchs.
I'm no expert, on this though. The above is just a summary of my googling about swallowtails and overwintering. Very interesting.
If you want the monarchs to stop in your garden milkweed will attract them. Also tall zinnias, butterfly bush, and verbena bonarienses. There are many other nectar flowers for them, but those four are the favorites in our Ohio garden. Monarchs probably have other favorites in TX and NM.
Anyway, a lot of this butterfly gardening info is available on the Butterfly forum and I have found it very interesting and fun.
I have a friend who went to Mexico for the Monarch migration. Apparently it is spectacular, but they are quite endangered. Their favorite foods, are under attack, I hear.
Yes, I think the lumbering in the mountainous area where they overwinter is disturbing their habitat.
During the terrible hurricanes in the gulf several years ago many of them had a bad time too and perished. One reason why I like to plant some milkweed to help them along on their journeys.... being so small and travelling that far really boggles my mind! And I like to have them get all their 'vitamins' on the way!