July 29, 2010

Black Swallowtail In the Caterpillar Stage




Today as I was watering my parsley I found this interesting caterpillar. I did a little research on the web and found out that it's a black swallowtail butterfly in the full grown caterpillar stage. There are about 5 of these caterpillars on one small parsley plant. I've never seen them on any of my parsley plants before. I don't even mind if they eat the whole parsley plant. What a gorgeous creature and it will only be more beautiful when it morphs into the black swallowtail butterfly. Here's a link to the metamorphosis of a black swallowtail. Hopefully in a few weeks I'll see the caterpillar turn into a butterfly that will look like this.

1 comment:

Pat Burke said...

I've had seven on my parsley for the past days. Now, in the nearby Mexican petunia, I have the first chrysalis with several more to come. Yippie.