I recently had the opportunity to witness one of Mother Nature’s wonders in my own yard: a caterpillar growing to full size and transforming into a butterfly, specifically an anise swallowtail. How can anyone ever be bored when nature provides us with spectacular curiosities all around us? This miracle took place in our lemon tree. Michael and I were lucky enough to notice and be available to watch the show.
What’s Eating Our Lemon Tree?
The caterpillar could have easily gone undetected. However, as a new homeowner and caretaker of a lemon tree, I was anxiously inspecting my tree one day in late July, wondering if I needed to take any action to rescue it from all the sap-sucking and leaf-eating insects on it. This tree seemed to have some of everything: scale, aphids, mealybugs, leaf miners. As a biologist and someone who appreciates what Planet Earth provides, I research the heck out of everything and try to make sure I don’t use harmful chemicals, but I was considering taking some action against these lemon tree-eating insects. Then I spotted an unusual caterpillar, one that looked like a bit of bird poop. I had the feeling it was something special, so I grabbed my modern encyclopedia – my phone – and opened the iNaturalist App. There was some uncertainty, but one of the potential identifications iNaturalist produced for my snapshot was an anise swallowtail larva. After further research I was convinced that this funny blob of bird poop was going to become a beautiful butterfly if it survived long enough. Suddenly my perspective flipped. I realized that I was willing to share some of my lemon tree with this caterpillar if it was going to become a gorgeous anise swallowtail!
Our Lemon Tree is an Ecosystem
I felt a bit ashamed by my initial instincts to view everything that was eating our lemon tree as an enemy. I’m a biologist after all, a tree-hugger even, a nature lover for goodness sakes! But I’m also a human, raised in a society that expects to be able to control nature with the bizarre goals of having bright green shiny grass and trees and the right to eat every bit of fruit my tree provides. Sometimes I uncover unconscious conditioning in my mind, and I am grateful to be able to step back and question it. Thanks to the anise swallowtail caterpillar, I looked a little closer at the not-so-pretty critters eating my tree. There were the aphids sucking sap, and the ants feeding on the honeydew produced by the aphids. There were also ladybugs waiting to chow down on the aphids! Upon closer inspection, there seemed to be a balance. There were some pests, but there were also predators of those pests. Overall, our lemon tree was a healthy ecosystem that was also doing just fine providing us with lemons.
The Caterpillar
After that day, July 29th of this year to be exact, we checked on our caterpillar daily. It got a bit bigger, and then one day, it looked entirely different. It had bands of black and yellow, similar to a monarch caterpillar. There were times when it sat on the same leaf for hours and did not appear to be eating as voraciously as the monarch caterpillars we had watched on our milkweed. We worried that it wasn’t going to survive. However, it must have been molting or resting or doing exactly what it was supposed to be doing, because eventually it grew to a mature size and developed a green hue. Finally, it found a protected branch and assumed its position to become a chrysalis. Approximately twenty-four hours later, it was a bright green chrysalis hidden so well among the lemon leaves that it took us some time to find it each day.
The Butterfly
The magical moment arrived on the morning of September 3rd, two weeks after the chrysalis had formed. I was on my way back inside the house after watering and inspecting some new plantings in our garden when I decided to swing by the lemon tree and check on the chrysalis. There it was: a bright and colorful swallowtail fresh out of the chrysalis!!! I ran inside and grabbed Michael. He was surprised because he had just walked by the lemon tree about thirty minutes before, and the chrysalis appeared darkened, but no butterfly. The swallowtail had emerged sometime in the past thirty minutes. Michael scooped up his camera and hurried outside to watch the show with me. We stood outside of our garage in the front yard, and eventually sat in our camping chairs, staring up at our lemon tree for about two hours. We watched in awe as this perfectly patterned, brilliantly colored insect slowly got its bearings, began to move out into the open, and expanded its wings little by little.
Ready to Fly
Tired and hungry but unwilling to tear ourselves away from this dazzling display of one of nature’s most beautiful organisms, we waited patiently. And then it was time. The swallowtail was ready. It scrambled over the leaves and took flight, out into the open and north toward the hills. We smiled, grateful to have had the time to take a break and witness nature. We also felt a bit of pride, having provided the food necessary to send another anise swallowtail off into the world.
