Nature: Metamorphoses
By: Rani Marx
Tags: Bay Area, Nature Writing, Monarch Butterfly, Swallowtail Butterfly, Garden

Monarch caterpillar on my butterfly weed (Rani Marx, 2018)

I am enthralled by the comings and goings of caterpillars and butterflies in my garden, the daily small-scale dramas that unfold, the mysterious appearances and disappearances. I wonder if the variations I witness on my patch of earth reflect what is happening in the world, whether the butterflies are a barometer auguring hope or devastation.

In mid-summer last year I found a monarch caterpillar chewing on some butterfly weed (Asclepias tuberosa, a species of milkweed) in the back forty. I was thrilled. He was quite steady with his progress. At some point, perhaps for a change of scenery, or perhaps because of my obsessive checking on him, he moved to a neighboring butterfly weed. After a time, he disappeared and I worried that some unfortunate fate had befallen him. Was this a sign of the Monarch butterfly collapse?

Not long thereafter, in August, still fretting about the disappearance of the mid-summer Monarch caterpillar, I discovered what I thought was a new Monarch caterpillar feasting on the parsley in the back raised bed. I was curious about the caterpillar’s taste because I thought Monarchs consumed only milkweed. Indeed, the caterpillar was a Swallowtail masquerading as a Monarch. He ate steadily, fattened, and disappeared. Again, I worried and wondered if he was eaten, had sickened, or went off to pupate.

Swallowtail caterpillars on my parsley (Rani Marx, 2018)

Weeks later, as I pushed aside an immense stand of blossoming purple basil in the back raised bed, five Swallowtail caterpillars came into view on a nearby parsley plant. One was a bruiser, much larger than the others; two looked like twins and were moderate size; one was small; and the last was tiny… the runt of the litter. They put the Monarch caterpillar to shame, consuming the parsley ravenously and growing at astonishing speed. I doubted the parsley plant could continue to support the clan. I fretted over the runt, who seemed to suffer from failure to thrive, moved slowly, and was never on the healthiest of parsley sprigs. I checked on them obsessively, inspecting the curly recesses of the parsley daily until I found all five.

One day, I counted only four caterpillars. I searched all over. The bruiser had jumped ship. I was relieved that the four remaining sibs would not have to compete for sustenance with him, especially as there were very few intact parsley sprigs remaining. Still, I wondered where the bruiser had gone.

Several days later, I located him on the neighboring raised bed, a considerable journey from his previous home: over the wood walls of the back raised bed, across a sea of pebbles, and up the wood walls of the front bed. How did he know there was more parsley to be had? Did he smell it? Or see it? Or sense some moisture? Or just take a chance? The plant he had selected was immense, big enough for several caterpillar families. And he had it all to himself.

In short order the twins moved to the front bed, to a parsley plant that was not quite as luxurious as the bruiser’s, but more than sufficient to satisfy their hunger. The runt and his larger sib remained in the back bed with almost nothing left to consume. I picked a sprig of parsley and stood it next to the almost denuded plant as an offering to the two remaining caterpillars. They weren’t interested.

When I checked on the bruiser and the twins in the front bed and moved the parsley sprigs too much, they extruded their yellow feelers and looked amusingly fierce. Once I mistakenly watered the bruiser’s parsley plant from above and he vacated for a day.

The penultimate caterpillar moved to the front bed, joining the twins on their plant. The bruiser vanished. The runt did not make much progress in the back bed. One by one, the trio on the front bed fattened up admirably and then vamoosed. The runt disappeared. I searched in the bed and the dirt around the parsley plant to no avail. I brooded over whether the caterpillars would make the transition to butterflies and even if they did, whether they would have a chance against industrial pollutants, habitat loss, and global warming.

Toward the end of August, a freshly minted monarch butterfly appeared on the butterfly weed, the wing colors as vibrant as if drawn by an artist, not a tear or blemish visible, the black and white spotted body echoing the spots on the wings, a Carnaval-like wonder. Several times since that first apparition, I’ve spied a monarch revisiting the butterfly weed from its previous incarnation.

On a hot, dry, and slightly windy afternoon in early autumn, a monarch lit on the Meyer Lemon tree blossoms. When I tried to get a closer look, he flitted over to the nearby Abelia bush, and then the butterfly weed. He was somewhat faded, but as whimsical in his flight as a hatchling.

Later in autumn, days before Halloween, on my walk to the shops, three young siblings bedecked in costumes were visiting a neighbor’s home with their father. Perhaps they were practicing for the real event. The youngest, a toddler, caught my eye, sporting the lovely wings of a Monarch.

In early November I was in San Francisco, overwhelmed as I often am by the cacophony of vehicles and humanity and the expanses of concrete, glass, and asphalt. Quite unexpectedly, I spied a Swallowtail butterfly tracing curlicues by a weeping willow at the base of a skyscraper.

Images of Monarchs have cropped up all over recently. A close-up of a breathtakingly gorgeous monarch adorned my calendar for a month. Monarchs appear on countless items at our local stationer’s. The free address labels I receive are replete with images of Monarchs. But in my garden, the Monarchs have been scarce this year and the Swallowtails came and went in such a hurry I was barely able to track them. Predictably, I swung between carping on whether this was foreboding or simply random variation.

In April, just before the sunshine baked the last of the winter moisture from the soil, a regal swallowtail looped past me, dipping low over the yellow azalea blooms, the deep pink scented geraniums, and the early butterfly weed blossoms, before moving on. I wondered whether he was one of last year’s parsley eaters who had imprinted on the garden and perhaps on me.

I was eager to welcome a new brood of caterpillars so I was taken aback when only two Swallowtail caterpillars took up residence on my parsley in May. After just a few weeks, they were gone. In early summer a new gaggle of caterpillars paid the briefest of visits to the parsley. The Monarchs have, likewise, been in a hurry, visiting the garden only fleetingly.

Will the Monarchs and Swallowtails in my garden become a distant memory? How much can I nurture on my tiny refuge in this vast unspooling world? I will plant more parsley and milkweed and eagerly await next year’s legions of caterpillars and butterflies.

Note: Both Monarch and Swallowtail caterpillars are striped. Swallowtails have alternating green and black stripes; the black stripes are thin and then thick with yellow tick marks. Monarch caterpillars sport yellow, black, and white stripes.