Art by Mindy Lighthipe,Swallowtail butterflies are in the United States as well as in Central America. The Polydamus Butterfly is in the Swallowtail family and is found in Florida as well as in Central America. It feeds on the very peculiar plant family of pipevines. The plant depicted here has a flower the size of a baseball glove, thus the latin name- gigantea. The flowers act as a trap for unsuspecting small insects which fly into the "mouth" of the flower, travel down the throat of the flower and then are trapped at the bottom of the chamber. Here they are dissolved into the plants membrane. Once the flower is dead, a huge seed pod is formed which splits open spraying the seeds to the ground. Once the seeds germinate more shoots will climb in a profusion of intermingling vines. The female Polydamus lays her eggs on this plant and the caterpillars eat the leaves as well as the flowers. The caterpillar pupates and uses a thin filament or support to attach itself to a stem. The chrysalis looks like a twig or a rock climber attaching himself to the side of a cliff!
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