On Fennel

Late Instar of Black Swallowtail caterpillar

It's been an amazing few weeks for butterfly watching down at the community garden, today's caterpillar sightings included. If I'm lucky, I might get the chance to watch a chrysalis overwinter on some fennel volunteers (a pretty successful weed) in my garden or nearby. Today I saw a few different instars of the Black Swallowtail Butterfly in the caterpillar stage of its life cycle. While its unseasonably warm right now, I'm thinking that this must be the last generation of this species before our first frost here in New York. We'll see.

An earlier instar, methinks