Black Swallowtail at cardinal flower
Papilio polyxenes
Black Swallowtail · Brooklyn Botanic Garden · 13 August 2026
A Black Swallowtail working a spike of cardinal flower stem by stem in the August border at the Botanic Garden. It is the swallowtail of open country and gardens across the eastern United States, and cardinal flower, a native of wet ground, is one of its August stops.
Black Swallowtail caterpillars famously feed on carrot-family plants - dill, parsley, fennel, Queen Anne's lace - which makes a vegetable patch with any of those in it one of the easiest ways to attract the species without meaning to. The adult, with its rows of yellow spots and the blue on the hindwing, is a mimic of the poisonous Pipevine Swallowtail, which is why so many eastern swallowtails have converged on the same dark look.
Birds, insects, plants and other wildlife, mostly from Brooklyn, with some from further afield.
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