Garden Club of Cape Coral | Attracting the giant swallowtail butterfly to your home garden
By SHERIE BLEILER
news@breezenewspapers.com
My heart races when I notice one of these huge, beautiful, giant swallowtail butterflies. With a wingspan of 6-7 inches, they are larger than a monarch. In fact, they are the largest butterfly in North America. Striking on the topside, with a bold yellow triangle stripe against a black wing, the underside is almost the reverse. It is a beautiful contrast of yellow edged in black with spots of blue and orange.
Giant swallowtails lay eggs mostly on citrus trees. With fewer citrus fields in Florida these days, we see fewer butterflies. The caterpillars are called “orange dogs” and resemble bird droppings, bumpy and brown with creamy patches.
To encourage giant swallowtails to your yard, plant a wild lime tree or other citrus and do not spray it for bugs. You could also plant a torchwood tree on which they also will lay eggs. Growing only 15 feet tall, it has fragrant clusters of white flowers in the spring. This small sized, beautiful, thornless tree would fit nicely on our Cape Coral lots. Unless it is a very young tree, both trees will be able to handle the leaf loss from a few caterpillars.
You can also attract them by providing food for the adult butterflies. Favorite flowers with nectar are pentas, lantana, zinnia, milkweed and honeysuckle.
In addition to attracting butterflies with the plants they prefer, we need to pay attention to the habitat we are providing. To have the natural world around us, we need to tolerate bugs, as they are the base of our food chain. When we spray every living inch of our yards, we are eliminating butterflies and birds. Butterflies are bugs and are killed by pesticides. Birds primarily eat bugs, especially when feeding their young. This is one of the reasons our North American bird populations have declined by nearly 3 billion, or over 25%, since 1970, according to Audubon.
If you would like to see these graceful creatures for yourself, they are usually at the Tom Allen butterfly house at Rotary Park in southwest Cape. It is open for tours on Monday, Friday and Saturday at 10:30 a.m. After butterflies emerge from their chrysalis and lay eggs, they are released into the park. You might also see them close to their host plant, wild lime, laying eggs for the next generation. A couple of wild lime trees can be found next to the back of the main building.
If you would prefer to travel northwest, visit the large butterfly house right off Burnt Store Road at CHEC, Charlotte Harbor Environmental Center. Tours are generally Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday, from 9:30 am to 1 p.m., and Friday, from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Visit their website checflorida.org.
Wherever you find them, I hope you enjoy seeing our Florida butterflies!
Sherie Bleiler volunteers at the Cape Coral Library butterfly garden and Sands Park butterfly garden. She was the first president of the Garden Club of Cape Coral. Visit gardenclubofcapecoral.com.