Zebra Swallowtail

Delightful Orange

Butterfly Weed (Asclepias tuberosa) is in bloom right now on my mountain, creating bright orange patches scattered here and there. It’s a flower that attracts bees, wasps, and butterflies. This bunch of orange attracted a Zebra Swallowtail (Eurytides marcellus) creating a scrumptious color combination of black, white, and orange.

Butterfly Weed has a wider native range than I would have expected, including eastern and southwestern North America. It is a larval food plant of Queen and Monarch butterflies.

This is one of so many native plants to enjoy!

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Swallowtail On Milkweed

A few days ago I published a post titled, A Milkweed Plant, about the Fourleaf Milkweed (Asclepias quadrifolia). And now I’ve come upon a couple butterflies enjoying the blooms of this same Fourleaf Milkweed.

These two butterflies are Zebra Swallowtails (Eurytides marcellus). Their host plant is the Pawpaw Tree. Adults feed on the nectar of Redbud, Verbena and, of course, Milkweed.

I love the coloring of the Zebra Swallowtails. Lots of black and white with tiny, beautiful accents of red and blue.

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The PawPaw Patch

PawPaw (Asimina triloba). An understory small tree or large bush. Native to eastern North America. There are patches of them here and there up here in the mountains. And for a few years I had three or four individual PawPaw trees growing in my yard. Ones that I had planted. I was thoroughly enjoying them. One had even bloomed for me. Then came the clippers. Not intentional clippers but they clipped nonetheless. All the PawPaw trees got cut down. Ack!

Since then I’ve planted three new, tiny, PawPaw trees. Two have survived. But I’ve had a surprise. Where the clippers did their accidental thing, where the trees were cut down, they are coming up again, from root suckers that under normal circumstances form colonies or thickets.

The reason for my fascination with PawPaws? They’re the host plant of one of my favorite butterflies, the Zebra Swallowtail (Eurytides marcellus). Plant them and these butterflies will come.

And all is well in the PawPaw Patch.

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Zebra Swallowtail

The larval host of Zebra Swallowtail (Protographium marcellus) is any of the eight species of the genus PawPaw (Asimina). I’m in the process of replacing three PawPaw trees that I recently lost. An important quest for me.

Exquisite Zebra Swallowtails depend entirely on PawPaw trees for their very existence. No PawPaw trees, no Zebra Swallowtails.

They’re native to eastern United States and southeast Canada, the state butterfly of Tennessee.

As adults these butterflies feed on the nectar of flowers such as blueberry and blackberry blossoms, lilac, milkweed, redbud, verbena, and dogbane. They also get minerals from moist sand and soil. But they need those PawPaw trees to get started. I’ve got them ordered. Soon to be put in the ground here at the cabin, and OH! Those blooms. I love ’em!