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Vegetable Gardening

What to do

14 years ago

Pulled up a bunch of gone to seed parsley (I dont know if you remember but I posted before that I had oodles of the catepillar on there that are so pretty and green striped)

anyway at first glance, there appeared to no longer be catepillars remaining. BUT after pulling the plants up I was surprised to see many in a strange transforming stage. they are not completely inside cacoons, but they are not the regular looking catepillar's either and they are secured to the plant with thread like material. AND there were some still in the catepillar stage *but much smaller* catepillars. So the question

Will they stay? I put the plants back in where they were, of course they will eventually dry up and die, but at least the ones attached in cacoons will remain intact there. Do they require the plant to be alive? there are virtually no leaves left on these plants, so I'm not sure what the ones that have not changed yet are eating?

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Comments (5)

jean001
14 years ago
The cocoons will be fine. They'd survive even if attached to sticks.
jean001
14 years ago
You might want to go to the Butterfly Forum for info
http://forums.gardenweb.com/forums/butterfly/

Those folks know a lot about raising them.

Here is a link that might be useful: Butterfly Forum
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bejay9_10
14 years ago
Caterpiller cocoons attached to parsley, fennel and dill - may very well be the beautiful butterfly - swallowtail. I purposely leave some anise and fennel re-seed in a vacant spot behind our place, so that they can reproduce there.

However, as the poster above mentions, good idea to check out the link, but I can't believe it to be the dreaded tomato horn worm - although green and ugly, it prefers tomato leaves - it is the sphinx moth larvae.

Bejay
rjinga
Original Author
14 years ago
no it's definitely not the horn worm, and I'm almost 100% sure it is the swallowtail. I guess then my next question would be about the ones that have not morphed yet. Will they simply move along to another feeding source? there is other parsley in the same bed, that I left alone for them.

I swear there must have been 100 catepillars all over this and the other parsley plants I had, the plants were HUGE and they were literally covered with them, when I saw them they were all quite large, so after they were no longer visible, I assumed that was it, and then comes the next batch! I have lots of flowers for butterflies in this area, it's the bed that borders my greenhouse and there are butterflies everywhere out there, so neat to see them all.
justaguy2
14 years ago
Your problem is one I have never had. I get all sorts of swallow tail caterpillars on dill, but the birds inevitably eat them before they can get to the stage where they make a cocoon.

I have never seen a swallow tail in my yard so how they all get there is a mystery to me.

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