Sounds amazing! I would love to know what they like, I'm in South Jersey and would like to lure them down here!

-Sandy.

GSTs eat plants/trees in the citrus family, or Rutaceae. There are 160 different genus in the family and then those genus break down to species/subspecies. So, there are a lot of different citrus plants out there.

Wafer ash and prickly ash are two from that family which are native to NJ.

Ruta graveolens is a non-native citrus which will grow in NJ.

They much prefer wafer ash/Ptelea trifoliata to citrus. I have a big orange tree and a smaller satsuma, and they ignore it, lay their eggs on the Ptelea.

I've released 3 giant swallowtails recently. 'Sure hope I get some more eggs on my rue or wafer ash. The wafer ashes are just now making new leaves - I used all their leaves to feed the previous caterpillars.

Sherry

I am just now seeing a few GSTs flitting through my yard. I also found one lonely cat on my rue plants & am raising it...the rue is really tempremental here in North Texas!!! It always seems to start dying when it gets hot even in the shade!
I have several tiny hop ash trees started for them as well as a prickly ash that seems to have been defoliated by grasshoppers!!! It is hiding in some flowers so I don't think the GSTs have found it this year.
I think we have a bushy kind of prickly ash locally but whatever is native to your area is the best plant to have for them! I bought a Key Lime because they are thornless but haven't seen a single cat on it!
Lila

I'm in the NJ Highlands in northern NJ and saw my first Giant Swallowtail today (I've been watching nature in this area for over 30 years). I've read that it is rarely seen in my area although its host plant, prickly ash, grows here. I also read this in Butterflies of New Jersey by Michael Gochfeld - "The larvae and pupae of this species are sold commercially and the resulting adults are often released, rendering suspect any sighting of this species in New Jersey."

Banner year for Giant Swallowtails for me here in Central Florida. I have a very large Hercules-club (Zanthoxylum clava-hercules L.)-- and a number of small ones that have sprouted up-- a fairly large wild lime tree and a bunch of other citrus trees in the neighborhood. I see them pretty much every day almost all day long. It's the best it has ever been for me.

I just saw a Giant Swallowtail in my garden earlier this week, here in eastern Massachusetts! (See thread below "Rare visitor to my Garden" for pics). It is an extremely rare butterfly in this state, so I reported my sighting to Mass Audubon. Apparently there have been other scattered sightings this year. The naturalist said that it could be a "big flight year" in the state, which she said hasn't happened the 1800s!

I have a theory that the severe drought in other parts of the country has pushed the butterflies into more hospitable regions, where they might not normally frequent.

I grow Rue for the Black Swallowtails, got the seeds from another poster here - very easy to start from seed. I've looked over the plants, but haven't found any eggs.

Ooops that should say "which she said hasn't happened SINCE the 1800s!"

Could be the drought, could be the heat, could be a number of things. I read on CNN that a major forecaster from NASA, I believe, said that global warming was responsible for the extreme heat and drought that many areas are experiencing. I think that this summer is one of, if not the warmest on record.

We had one of the warmest winters ever here in Florida. One direct result is an increase in butterflies that die off with freezes. I have perhaps thirty or forty or so Zebra Longwings flittering around my property. This is way more than I have every had. They are killed off by freezes and usually don't start coming around in any numbers until late June. This year they were here in March and are multiplying like crazy now.