Butterfly of the Week: Black Swallowtail

Black Swallowtail

Papilio polyxenes (Fabricius 1775)

Status: Breeding resident.

Flight: Multiple brooded, with flights from April through early June, mid June through mid July, late July through August, and September through early October.

Distinguishing features: This easily recognized swallowtail is black, with two rows of submarginal yellow spots. The hind wing has a blue band between the yellow rows of spots, which are more extensive in females. The hind wing has a red spot at the anal angle and always has a black center. Wingspan: 6.7 - 11 cm.

Distribution and habitat: Map 294. Found commonly throughout the state in a variety of open habitats.

Natural history: Larvae of this species are particularly fond of cultivated and naturalized members of the carrot family, including parsley, dill, and carrots (including Queen Anne's lace), often decimating garden plantings of these vegetables. Because of the abundance of its host plants, it is often the most commonly observed swallowtail. Larval appearance changes across each of its four instar stages: the first two are bird-dropping mimics, the third is mostly black, and the fourth is green.

Questions: How often does this species use native members of the carrot family as a larval host? What are the selective advantages of having each larval stage appear different? What factors account for the marked size differences between populations often observed?

The Butterflies of Iowa, by Dennis W. Schlicht, John C. Downey, and Jeffrey C. Nekola

Midwest Nature Quote of the Week

The creature called the turkey buzzard hovers over the land like a fallen angel. A great carrion bird with a naked, raddled head and plumage like an old shroud, watching for death with his amazing eyes.

Other birds and animals do not fear him, for unlike his raptor cousins he does not bring death; he only attends it. Somewhere along the antediluvian track he specialized, losing his raptorial talons and the killing power of his feet. When the buzzard lost his ability to kill and embraced a postmortem cuisine, he became the most despised of birds.

He is certainly the ugliest. Not just homely, but repugnant in an epic, classic way. He’s the Ugly Champ of America, hands down. His feathers are a rusty black edged with brown and his only color is in the naked atrocity of a head.

John Madson, Stories from Under the Sky.

This day in Iowa history

March 13, 1961

The Iowa General Assembly designated the oak as the state tree.

From The Iowa Nature Calendar by Jean C. Prior and James Sandrock, illustrated by Claudia McGehee.

Excerpt from Esther's Town

Scandinavian immigrants found Emmet winters more severe, the snow deeper, the wind more violent, the thunder and lightning more terrifying, the dew wetter, and the countryside more desolate than their native lands. They thought their old-world clothing of wool much warmer than American-made garments, largely of cotton. Moreover, they choked easily on a strange language. The name of the Des Moines River, close to their homes, was often pronounced by the newcomers from Scandinavia as "DisMines" River. Such words as "slough," "Sioux," and "Dubuque" were also twisters. My father often amused me when I was a boy by telling of the Norwegian who reported that on a trip across the state his wagon "got stuck in the slutch, halfway between SI-ox City and DUB-kwee."

Deemer Lee, Esther's Town.

Plant of the Week: Gumweed

Gumweed
Grindelia squarrosa (Pursh) Dunal.
Other common names: curly cup, rosinweed, sticky heads, tar weed
Grindelia: in honor of David Hieronymus Grindel, a Russian botanist at the beginning of the 19th century
Squarrosa: from the botanical term squarrose, meaning “having stiff spreading bracts,” in reference to the many bracts surrounding the base of each flower
Daisy family: Asteraceae (Compositae)

Photograph by Thomas Rosburg, Wildflowers of the Tallgrass Prairie: The Upper Midwest, Second Edition

Excerpt from Esther's Town

A fireplace provided the heat and was the stove to bake bread and prepare the meals. No family intentionally allowed the fire to go out, even in the heat of summer, when a bed of coals was kept outdoors for use when needed for cooking. There were no matches. A trestle-like table and a cupboard supported on one wall were provinces of the housewife. On another wall a rifle, bullet pouch, and a powder horn hung from pegs. The luxury of kerosene lamps was to come later and electric light much later yet. A shallow dish of lard or other grease with a loosely twisted cotton rag in it for a wick provided illumination of a sort. More sophisticated and somewhat scarce were candles fashioned from a mold that was shared by the settlement--an improvement upon dishes of grease. But often an open fireplace provided the family's only lighting on winter evenings.


Deemer Lee, Esther's Town.

Midwest Nature Quote of the Week

We spent our tallgrass prairie with a prodigal hand, and it probably had to be that way, for these are the richest farm soils in the world. There were certain wilderness things that were fated to be spent almost to the vanishing point: bison in shortgrass plains, lobos and grizzlies in settled cattle country—and the vistas of true prairie.

But spending is one thing; bankruptcy is another.

John Madson, Out Home.