Remember when I shared with you the capture and destruction of the tomato worm on the parsley plant? I’ve since learned — to my great distress — that it was actually the larva of a Western Swallowtail Butterfly! I can hear my friends Belle and Jennifer sighing “Oh, Franki!”
I’m sharing this publicly in the hope that others can learn through my ignorance and not make the same fatal error. Hover your cursor over the banner above for more details.
Here is an image of an actual tomato hornworm thanks to Wikipedia
And here is the image of the larva found on my parsley
It really is something beautiful here and would have been something beautiful if it had survived another couple of weeks. I won’t make this mistake again. Here is more detail on the Swallowtail Butterfly. The next one I see will be left to enjoy as much parsley as it wishes.
Wishing you and all your friendly garden creatures a safe summer!
Last summer I found the same worms (pupa actually) on my parsley and dill weed. I suspected they were butterflies and left them to do their thing. They ate the plants down to the stems and then formed three chrysalis. I watched them and actually saw all of them hatch into the most beautiful Black Swallowtail butterflies, two males and one female.
How wonderful that your timing was so perfect. It feels great to support these beautiful creatures.