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| I found three more swallowtail eggs on my asparagus yesterday and brought them in to raise for a total of five this summer. It's really odd.
I searched all over my huge patch of Bronze Fennel and didn't find a single egg or cat but for some reason, a swallowtail decided to leave three eggs on the foliage of a single asparagus plant a couple feet away from the closest fennel and almost completely hidden under the leaves of a gray dogwood. I wonder why there weren't any eggs on the fennel which should've been much easier for the mama swallowtail to find.
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Follow-Up Postings:
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- Posted by imabirdnut 7b (My Page) on Sat, Aug 18, 12 at 19:09
| Christie, That is very interesting! I recently lost all my bronze fennel to the heat again...I tried it in a raised bed in semi-shade & it still died! I recently found tiny cats on a couple of Zizia plants that I started from seeds. I only have a few leaves left so I've been offering them some rue. They have ignored the Zizia leaves but are eating the rue...thankfully! I've lost several rue plants as well to heat! Parsley & dill do well in the early spring but won't make it through the summers for me...even in the shade! I had a friend that posted that she had BST eggs & cats on cilantro & I thought she was crazy but I understand that at least cilantro is in the same family! I guess your BST ladies can't tell the difference between their host plants & other green leaves! LOL Keep us posted! Lila |
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- Posted by christie_sw_mo Z6 (My Page) on Sun, Aug 19, 12 at 8:12
| My bronze fennel looks terrible but none of it has completely died. Lots of dried out looking foliage. I've been trying to keep it watered but we had too many triple digit days. I have quite a few rue plants too, at least a dozen, and the foliage on those looks more fresh. I haven't been finding any eggs or cats on that either. The three new eggs I found on asparagus all hatched yesterday morning. This morning they had left the aparagus. There's one on the bronze fennel that I put in the container, and three on some rue, a total of four. lol They're all the same size so I don't know which one was the stowaway or how I missed it. I always inspect leaves very closely to look for tiny spiders. Maybe time for an eye exam. |
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- Posted by christie_sw_mo Z6 (My Page) on Tue, Aug 21, 12 at 12:50
| Here's the first one. It emerged and was fluttering around in the container when I came home from shopping yesterday afternoon. Looks like a normal Black Swallowtail I guess. If it happened to be an Ozark Swallowtail, I don't think I would be able to tell the difference. |
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- Posted by misssherry Z8/9MS (My Page) on Tue, Aug 21, 12 at 16:37
| She's gorgeous! I've never raised asparagus, and I don't know what plant family they're in, but I guess they're in the celery/carrot family that black swallowtails use. Your butterfly looks just like female black swallowtails look here - again, she's a real beauty! Sherry |
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- Posted by christie_sw_mo Z6 (My Page) on Tue, Aug 21, 12 at 22:08
| Thank you Sherry! Even the plants in my yard that have been getting supplemental water are drying up from our drought so I'm sure there must be a lot of dried up host plants in fields and wooded areas where the butterflies would normally find host plants. That might make asparagus look more appealing. |
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- Posted by bananasinohio (My Page) on Fri, Aug 24, 12 at 7:16
| Hmmm...interesting. Asparagus is not in the Apiaceae (carrot familiy). It is in its own family, Asparagales, now. Most female butterflies use chemical cues to find host plants. I suspect that they use a variety of chemical signatures to find the correct plant. Black Swallowtails use many hosts in the Apiaceae. Primarily they use the furanocoumarins as a signal but they probably use a host of other chemicals as well. It may be that regionally they have adapted to other chemicals in addition. Interestingly, asparagus contains rutin. Sound familiar? Yes, it is found in rue. It is also found in citrus plants (of which the family is ruteacea). So perhaps your lady was focusing on that. -Elisabeth |
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