Know Your Caterpillars

 Depending on your geographic location, this post might be a bit late for some people. I took the above photo almost a month ago. (Don’t know where the summer went, but it seems like I should have gotten a lot more accomplished.)

Why caterpillars as a subject? If you garden, or even keep a few container plants outside, you probably understand. Sooner or later, you will find the many-legged creepy-crawlies on your leafy babies. Let’s be honest here. Mankind has a love-hate relationship with caterpillars. The nature of the relationship depends on your age and interests. (Play with wooly caterpillars as child? I did.)

When it comes to dealing with these “pests” you find devouring your favorite plants, the first thing you need to do is identify them. I am not going to make any moral judgments here about how anyone decides which of nature’s creatures have value or not. I will say this however. Most creatures we label as pests have remarkable survival skills and don’t require any help from us. But in the insect world, some creatures are truly fragile, as well as beneficial (pollinators). Butterflies are a prime example. Why not give them all the assistance we can?

I first noticed these caterpillars when I went to cut some herbs in my raised bed. It had only been a few days since I had last visited, so imagine my surprise when I discovered the bronze fennel and flat leaf parsley were covered with the same larvae in varying sizes. It made me a little sad to see my plants practically eaten to the ground, but I was pretty sure my visitors were butterfly babies. Before doing anything about the uninvited dinner guests, I did some research to identify them. I suspected they were Black Swallowtails. A few weeks prior to the caterpillar explosion, I noticed several butterflies visiting my yard. I wasn’t sure what was attracting them since I didn’t have many blooming plants at the time. (Unless a plant is a true heat lover, things either die or go dormant during a Texas summer.)

My research confirmed my suspicions and taught me something I didn’t know. Fennel and parsley are much loved by Black Swallowtail caterpillars. I wasn’t intentionally planning a butterfly garden by including those plants. This brings up an important point for those of you who want to plant a butterfly garden. Educate yourself on the butterfly species that visit your area, and make sure you include food for the caterpillars. Yes, the adults are beautiful, but you can’t have them without the voracious babies. If you have those favorite food plants mixed in with things they won’t bother, the damage won’t be as obvious. In my case, the fennel and parsley were starting to feel the heat anyway, meaning I would need to cut them back. The caterpillars just beat me to them. In any event, they won’t be in your garden very long. Within a week of my noticing them, they were suddenly gone. I’m hoping most of them got to make a chrysalis. I haven’t made an effort to find any of them, but once fall finally arrives, we have plans to upgrade the raised bed with masonry products. Perhaps, I’ll discover a few then.

The Project Queen