The stunning Pipevine Swallowtail that you see in the video is depositing a clutch of several dozen eggs. Her gift represents a success for me of sorts. Years ago, we had a Pipevine Swallowtail in our garden, a male, and he was investigating the heart shaped leaves of our Moonvine. I made a promise to the Pipevine Butterflies that the next time they made it this far north, I would have a Pipevine growing in the garden on which a traveling female could deposit her eggs. I can’t resist but to add – not a “pipe dream after all!”
You see, Dutchman’s Pipevine is one of the few caterpillar food plants of the Pipevine Swallowtail that grows well in northern climates. Like the Moonvine, the leaves of the Dutchman’s Pipevine are large and heart-shaped.
A hundred years or so ago, Pipevine Swallowtails regularly occurred in New England because people planted Dutchman’s Pipevine to embower their porches. In one season, the vine can grow two stories high and equally as wide, providing lush green cooling shade on a hot summer afternoon. When you look at old photographs of porches in New England, most often it’s Pipevine climbing up the porch pillars and along the roof. With the advent of air conditioning, folks no longer needed to plant Dutchman’s Pipevine to cool their homes The vine, and the butterflies, were forgotten.
Julia Lane, later Julia Wheeler, posed for Alice M. Curtis on August 12th, 1915, in Gloucester. Photo courtesy Fred Bodin.
Our visiting Mama Pipevine cautiously investigated the entire plant from top to bottom, fluttering in and out of the large leaves before deciding on this tiny tender leaf to deposit her treasure trove. We had a female come to our garden about ten years after the vine was planted. She deposited a clutch of eggs however, a tiny spider ate them all, every single one. I am not taking any chances this time and placed the stem with the eggs in a terrarium, covering the terrarium with several layers of cheesecloth, and a wire screen, in hopes of keeping the spiders out.
If you would like to attract the exquisite Pipevine Swallowtail to your garden, plant Dutchman’s Pipevine. It’s an enthusiastic grower, but no need to worry, you can cut it all down to the bare ground after the first frost and it will come back just as beautifully and plush the following spring.
From an older post – Plant! and They Will Come
Nearly five years ago, in late September 2007, I photographed a male Pipevine Swallowtail Butterfly (Battus philenor) nectaring in my garden. I found mesmerizing its dark beauty, with black wings punctuated by brilliant orange spots and shimmering iridescence. The wings flashed electric blue in the fading late day sunlight and I became completely captivated!
Although the Pipevine Swallowtail is not rare in its southern range, this exotic looking butterfly is an unusual occurrence in the northeast, and even more rarely found on the eastern outer reaches of Cape Ann. Mine was a stray, carried in on a southerly breeze. I imagined that if a male can drift into our garden, so can a female. And if a visiting female found in my garden her caterpillar food plant, she would deposit her eggs. The following spring we planted the Dutchman’s Pipevine (Aristolochia macrophylla) Read more here
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