Last week I had a picture of a dark form of the eastern tiger swallowtail with my column. The obvious question about any species with more than one color form is: What is the advantage? The advantage ...

If the Garden State were to gather together its official plants and animals, what an incredible assemblage it would be. Eastern goldfinches flitting in the branches of a red oak tree, violets growing ...

About 170 butterfly species occur in North Carolina as permanent residents, regular visitors, or rare strays. Some of these are restricted to either the coastal or mountain regions. I'd estimate that ...

The female spicebush swallowtail butterfly was fluttering down, landing for a moment or two on a leaf on my sassafras tree and moving on to do the same thing on other leaves over and over again. It ...

We have a large patch of bronze fennel growing out back — this is unfortunate because it can be an aggressive invasive plant and is currently attempting to overrun my blueberry patch, but, on the ...

An eastern tiger swallowtail butterfly sips nectar from John Fanick phlox. The swallowtail butterfly family contains up to 700 species in the world, most of them tropical. More than two dozen are ...

On a wooded hillside along the banks of the Allegheny River, Gabrielle Marsden brushed up against an oblong leaf: Asimina triloba—the American pawpaw. The deciduous tree bears North America's largest ...

Michigan is one of the only states in the country without an official state insect, but that could soon change. The black swallowtail butterfly, scientifically known as the papilio polyxenes, would be ...

While hopscotching between Sabine Pass and Freeport over the past several weeks to enjoy the annual spectacle of migratory birds, I also enjoyed the sight of giant swallowtail butterflies. The big ...

Flitting among the cool slopes of the Appalachian Mountains is a tiger swallowtail butterfly species that evolved when two other species of swallowtails hybridized long ago, a rarity in the animal ...

The first time I saw a giant swallowtail butterfly years ago, I just happened to walk out to get the mail and saw it nectaring on lantana in my flower bed by the road. What a surprise! This huge pale ...