Native Plants May Be To Blame…
If you have or are intending to have native plants, there are two very important things that no one will tell you. One, they will have your phone running out of storage, and two, they are very good at stealing you away from whatever daily grind you SHOULD be doing.
Symptoms include:
Distractions
Loss of phone storage
To-do list never done
The first of August is upon us and the summer is, as it often does, flying by. The days seem long yet the weeks scatter by in record time. Summer can be that time where you catch up on projects you want to complete, or a new hobby you were thinking about trying. Or perhaps it is just a long list of things to accomplish at work and at home before your booked vacation is right around the corner, or behind you. Or maybe it is just a good old fashioned Summer Bucketlist.
the flight of a butterfly is fleeting and it would very possibly be gone in a heartbeat, I grabbed the camera and galloped outside
me, most days in summer
Whatever the list, it always seems as long as the amount of daylight hours in summer.
Native plants really should come with a warning label.
Note: these plants are very distracting.
I have become increasingly aware that my list may never be done. And it was today at 10:34 am that I realized why. It was just like any other summer morning where I was mulling about my routine. Dishes from the night before and from breakfast were put dried and put away. A full load of wash was just finishing drying and a plan for dinner was already set. And I was about to tackle the next item on my list when I caught the flight of a butterfly out of the corner of my eye, just beyond our deck. It was a black butterfly which was excitement level factor 1. Factor 2 was that it had found a plant to nectar from, so I had perhaps 30 seconds to get on out there.
Fraught between tackling the next chore or grabbing my camera and running outside…It was the tense moment just like when you choose which grocery line to go in based on the quantity of items in the persons’s carts in the two open lanes you must choose. Knowing the flight of a butterfly is fleeting and it would very possibly be gone in a heartbeat, I grabbed the camera and galloped outside. I did not even change shoes. I don’t think I even closed the door all the way.
This Spicebush Swallowtail did not disappoint. It found a patch of Joe-Pye Weed in our meadow and for all I cared at that moment, my to-do list could have blown out that open door to the patio. For I was witnessing summer right in front of me. In the grand scheme of things for a pixel of a moment through a tiny viewfinder. Yet the image I was seeing in my head was not nearly as big as what I would come to discover once I came inside and took the time to look at the identifying markings on the wings of this delicate yet dynamic insect.
If you look closely at the ventral (underside) of the wing in the above photograph, you will see two rows of orange dots. Now look at the upper row, and note how one orange dot is replaced by a blue swatch. It almost looks like a comet to me, some call it a spire. That is one of the identifying marks of a Spicebush Swallowtail. Compare to the Black Tiger Swallowtail below, which has all orange dots accounted for.
A small backstory: two years ago, a native Spicebush volunteered itself in one of our shady beds near the house. It really just showed up. I know there are some nearby beyond our lot line in the woods, but this one decided near the window of our piano room, under the canopy of a river birch that it wanted to grow. And we willingly let it. Around the first week or so of April along creek sides or shady roadsides in rural areas, you may notice a low growing trub (I mean, is it a tree or a shrub? I don’t know, and I don’t think the butterfly cares). But it has the tiniest little yellow buds on a cool Spring day. It is the kind of flower that makes surviving winter and having to endure Spring all the more worthwhile.
And without a Spicebush nearby, the odds of me seeing a Spicebush Swallowtail in my yard are very slim.
*Per AI…I would need any of several host plants for this butterfly: Spicebush swallowtail butterflies (Papilio troilus) need spicebush (Lindera benzoin) because the caterpillars eat the leaves of the plant to grow. Spicebush is a host plant, which is a plant that only the caterpillars of certain butterflies and moths will eat. Female spicebush swallowtail butterflies also lay their eggs exclusively on plants in the Lauraceae family, which includes spicebush, sassafras, redbay, camphortree, sweet bay, and tulip tree.
For those of you who are new to reading my blog, WELCOME! This blog is a daily, a weekly, a monthly log of things I notice in my yard that keep me entertained. The native plants we put around our house (included some that ended up there on their own) offer me endless material. So this it what happens when you have native plants. You have birds, insects, and pollinators that keep you endlessly curious about the natural world.
I would love to try to make Spicebush tea one day. But, sigh…that is one more thing to add to the long to-do list that is never done.
“Hey, Google! How do you make Spicebush tea?”