A wild Black Swallowtail Butterfly laid a few eggs on my Common Rue plant in September 2018. While this species of butterfly can lay up to 430 eggs after mating, I found just a few eggs on my Rue plant and I housed the entire plant in a butterfly cage to protect the eggs from predators. It is estimated that only 1 out of every 100 eggs laid in the wild will successfully make it to a butterfly.

Since I found the eggs late in the year, and the caterpillars of this species usually take a month to eat before forming a chrysalis (the Monarch caterpillars take half this time), all of the chrysalises overwintered in the cage. My first butterfly emerged March 25, 2019, so it was a 6 month process and well worth the wait. The Black Swallowtail is a stunning butterfly, and a butterfly I rarely see. So, I am hoping the other chrysalises are viable and I will have more opportunities to photograph this species.