A dark swallowtail that loves the herb garden because it uses dill & fennel as host plants. If you start growing some of the native perennials they use as host plants you won’t have to keep going to the big box store to buy more dill to feed the caterpillars!
A black swallowtail’s native host plants are in the
Apiaceae
(celery family)
The plants in this family that occur naturally in central Florida are:
Chaerophyllum tainturieri (hairyfruit chervil)
Cicuta maculata (spotted water hemlock)
Cryptotaenia canadensis (Canadian honewort)
Daucus pusillus (American wild carrot)
Eryngium aquaticum (rattlesnakemaster)
Eryngium aromaticum (fragrant eryngo)
Eryngium baldwinii (Baldwin’s eryngo)
Eryngium prostratum (creeping eryngo)
Eryngium yuccifolium (button rattlesnakemaster)
Lilaeopsis carolinensis (Carolina grasswort)
Lilaeopsis chinensis (eastern grasswort)
Ptilimnium capillaceum (mock Bishop’s weed)
Sanicula canadensis (Canadian blacksnakeroot)
Spermolepis divaricata (roughfruit scaleseed)
Spermolepis echinata (bristly scaleseed)
Tiedemannia filiformis (water cowbane)
Trepocarpus aethusae (white nymph)
Zizia aurea (golden alexanders)
Zizia trifoliate (meadow alexanders)