New Caterpillar

Cindy found a beautiful new Asclepia plant growing in her tomato bed the other day and then noticed two caterpillars nearby with coloring very similar to that of the Monarch caterpillar, but with a few differences.

The colors were the same dark blue, yellow-green and light green or white, but the Monarch caterpillar has solid stripes, where these had yellow dots on the dark blue instead of solid stripes of color.

Monarch Caterpillar on Asclepia

So we dug out the butterfly identification guide we had just bought, and identified them as the caterpillars of the Anise Swallowtail butterfly.

Anise Swallowtail Caterpillar

We've seen the yellow Swallowtail butterflies flittering through our veggie garden, so we know they're around.

The clincher, though, was that these caterpillars were completely ignoring the very handsome Asclepia nearby that Monarchs would be devouring, and instead were chowing down heartily on the parsley and dill, which, according to the guide, is what they prefer to eat.  

Eating That Parsley

These caterpillars should be ready to form their chrysalises soon; if we can find them, we may be able to follow their hatching as we did the Monarchs last year.