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Eastern Black Swallowtail and Dill


One benefit of our mild winter is dill growing from seed in the herb bed. I let things go wild over the winter. In an earlier post, I mentioned using chervil which likes cool weather as a cover crop for the herb bed. It has protected the dill as well as the soil. I was pinching some dill for salmon dinner tonight, and discovered tiny caterpillars. I'm confident that these are future Eastern black swallowtails. I saw the female hovering over the dill in the herb bed about a week ago. I also have a lot of parsely, but I'm not seeing any caterpillars yet. I didn't know it until today, but chervil is also a host plant for black swallowtails.

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