From egg to adult: the pipevine swallowtail

LEAH CONWAY
Seasonal Naturalist, Blacklick Woods

Life begins for the rich black and metallic blue pipevine swallowtail as a round, orange and pumpkin-like egg roughly one-quarter the size of a pencil eraser. Females typically deposit their eggs in clusters on the stems of pipevine plants, where they’ll develop for four to 10 days. After hatching, their first act of caterpillarhood is consuming their egg casing.

As larvae, they’ll munch away for up to four weeks while trying to avoid the attention of hungry birds. Fortunately, all of the host plants for pipevine swallowtails contain some concentration of aristolochic acids, which make them toxic to predators. After growing to be about the size of your pinky finger, they’ll wander from their host plant to find a suitable site to build their chrysalis and pupate.

Pupation will last anywhere from 10-20 days, until the chrysalis changes in color, cracks open, and the adult butterfly emerges! It will spend several hours stretching and drying its wings, and then finally begin the final stage of its life, adulthood, which will last anywhere from six to 30 days.

Adulthood looks different for males and females – males will spend most of their time searching for females to mate with, while females will use their time to feed until mating and reproducing occurs. However, for both, their bright orange spots serve to tell predators that they don’t taste good – a trait many other butterflies mimic to avoid predation!

If you’d like to witness any or all of this marvelous metamorphic process, consider planting Virginia snakeroot or pipevine to provide a food source for caterpillars. Additionally, a number of native flowering plants like butterfly weed (a hardy, easy to grow, native perennial that will also attract monarch caterpillars and other pollinators), wild bergamot or ironweed (more easy to grow native perennials which are sure to attract pollinators of all kinds), thistles, or non-native lantana will provide nectar for adults.