In the back of my garden , I have a minor plot of ground of fennel(Foeniculum vulgare)that produce twelvemonth - round of golf and stands five feet tall . Sometimes I ’ll glean the frond for a salad or a bulb for my favorite seafood stew , or even thepollen or seedsfor my cooking , but for the most part , I let the fennel spring up “ wild ” here as part of anatural butterfly garden .
apart from being edible and beautiful with wisps of anise fragrance wafting through the air , it also happens to be a beneficial plant that function as a trap crop .
What does it snare ? Parsleyworms , the striking caterpillars that eventually turn into swallowtail butterflies .
West of the Rockies , parsleyworms are the root of the anise swallow-tailed coat butterfly . Its easterly adaptation is the fatal swallow-tailed coat butterfly , and while the butterflies look distinctly different , their caterpillar and chrysalises are nearly identical .
Read more : Caterpillar recognition : A Visual Guide to 32 Types of Green Caterpillars in Your Garden
Parsleyworms are so list because they bung on members of the parsley phratry , Apiaceae , including parsley , dill , carrot , Queen Anne ’s lacing , and of course , fennel .
They can be found in all stages of life sentence on these host plants , and it ’s truly fascinating to revisit your plants each week to see their innate transformation . As the parsleyworm use up and grows , it sheds an exoskeleton and emerges with a completely different appearing . In total , it become through five instars ( stagecoach ) of lifetime .
Here ’s the first ( or peradventure second ) instar …
The third instar …
The fourth instar ( where it turns into the chubby black - and - greenstriped caterpillarthat you may be most familiar with ) …
And the fifth and net instar , also known as the chrysalis stage . It ’s from here that the parsleyworm pupates and emerges as an adult butterfly .
Since swallow-tailed coat butterfly lay their eggs on any member of theApiaceaefamily , you might now and again get hold them on your carrots or Petroselinum crispum as well . They have large appetency , so unless you planted enough for yourself and the butterfly , it can be a depressing sight to see your food crop munched down to its root word by an regular army of athirst Caterpillar .
engraft a disjoined crop of common fennel ( or any related member ) can avail preserve the butterfly stroke in your garden . I specially like Florence finocchio , or finocchio , a bulbing variety that gives you a vegetable , an herb , andtwo spicesover its lifespan . It ’s a coolheaded - weather harvest that can be embed after the last hoarfrost for a spring harvest , or mid to previous summer for an autumn harvesting .
If you find a parsleyworm feed in where it should n’t be feeding , you’re able to merely relocate it to your fennel plot and at the end of the season , you ’ll still have some bulbs to glean . A win all around .
