Pale Swallowtail Eggs
My friend Eva watched a Pale Swallowtail (Pterourus eurymedon) lay eggs on her Peach Tree (Prunus) today, then she gave me the eggs! I’m not sure all 3 eggs will hatch, but I will keep you posted on their progress and let you know what the caterpillars decides to eat.
The “preferred” host plants for the Pale Swallowtails are plants in the buckthorn fmaily, including Mountain Lilac, Mountain Balm, California Lilac (Ceanothus), Holly-Leaf Cherry (Prunus ilicifolia) and Coffeeberry (Rhamnus californicus) and Alders (Alnus). This will be only the 3rd time I’ve had the pleasure of raising Pale Swallowtails and would love to hear from someone who has sucsessfully raised Pale Swallowtail Butterflies.
Your butterfly blog is without a doubt full of terrific facts and is actually rather pleasing to browse through.
Well done.
Pretty cool post. I wanted to say
that I have really liked reading your blog posts. Anyway
I’ll be subscribing to your blog and I hope you post again soon!
This was awsome! Now i need to go and look to see if i have eggs! Bye!!!!!
Update on the Pale Swallowtail Eggs…We found 4 eggs in all, 2 were empty, as I suspected, and two hatched but, neither of them would eat the leaves from the peach tree they were laid on. One refused to eat any of the pale swallowtail’s host plants and the other IS EATING the coffeeberry and so far, is doing fine. I welcome any advice or comments on these picky eaters.