I grew bronze fennel once ... it wasn't populated. Parsley has been popular among the caterpillars the past few years.

This is Italian or flat-leaf parsley. (We don't bother with curly-leaf parsley because it's basically only good for garnish culinarily ... though given that I'd just buy parsley to cook right now, rather than take some from these plants, maybe that doesn't matter, haha.)

I missed growing parsley this year and I have had caterpillars on it in the past. Nice that you have a couple there even on a small plant in a pot...lol.

Blueberry, I'm surprised you have swallowtail caterpillars this late! I get them, but always much earlier - May and June. As a matter of fact, at that time this year I posted photos because I had these tiny caterpillars I had never seen before, and I was informed they were instars. I had never heard that term, and oddly in all my years of growing parsley, I had never seen them!

I've mentioned this before on other threads, but I used to work on an organic farm, and when we harvested the parsley we always cut around the swallowtail caterpillars so as not to disturb them. The farmer's attitude was that we grew enough to share, and that is the attitude I take in my own garden with these too. I had two small plants I bought and before I could plant them out those instars demolished them. My husband was worried but I said it's okay, they'll grow back. They did and now it's OUR turn to enjoy our parsley lol.

Yours look fat and happy! So glad to see a fellow gardener who appreciates them and knows that we can all share!

:)

Dee

Three of the four have gone off to form chrysalises. The fourth is still probably a third instar, though it might be up to fourth instar. (So past bird poop stage, but still smaller with the black stripes more prominent than the green.)

Editing to confirm the remaining caterpillar is at fourth instar (little smoother and a little less black.) Also, we know where one of the chrysalises is ... it's on the side of the house; others have not been spotted.

Here's the chrysalis ...

Not a caterpillar, but another cool insect that I spotted when I went out take a picture of the chrysalis ...

Check out this mantis!

(Yes, I'm aware that it is a Chinese Mantis and not native. It's still cool.)

And an awesome yellow garden spider while I'm at it:

I am highly concerned about the 4th caterpillar ... when I took the dog out early this morning, I saw it hanging off by its prolegs, which was weird ...

I looked again when I took the dog out again later, and it was still hanging but just by its anal clasper. Then an hour or so later it had fallen and was in the pot (not sure when, and it is possible the plant was bumped.)

It was still responsive, though on its side, and was able to grasp an offered stem or leaf for extraction.

I have moved it into a bug jar with some of its parsley plant because I was running out the door and it was the best I could do in a couple minutes.

What happened? Is it ill? What do I do?

I think it may have died, but I have no idea what happened to it. I'll leave it in the jar, but I think it was likely already too late when I found it dangling off the parsley stem.

Sorry it didn't make it. : ( You could keep it in your bug jar for a few days and see if anything hatches out of it like a tachinid fly larva or wasp larva.

I'm wondering if it might be a disease or genetic malady. It seemed to be kind-of slow in its growth and was nibbling on bare stems rather than moving to new leaves more often than the others.

On 8/27, it was 1st instar, one of the others was 2nd instar, and the others were 3rd or 4th instar.

Here it is:

And the others:

By the 31st, two were 5th instar, one was either 4th or 5th instar, and this one was 3rd instar ... that bigger three are in the picture in the first post ...

And here's the little one:

It got to 4th instar maybe a week ago ... and I guess it might have achieved 5th instar a couple days ago, as it got smoother, but it definitely didn't get nice and fat like the others that left to chrysalise. It just seems ... slow ... culminating in the picture above.

We'll keep it in the jar for a bit to see if anything happens.