Swallowtail Caterpillar: Symptoms, Causes & Control

What it looks like

Leaves are eaten away from the base leaving only bare stalks. A single large caterpillar can strip an entire plant bare.

Causal organisms: Papilio machaon

What other growers did about it

A page like this one can tell you what swallowtail caterpillar is and what to try. What it cannot tell you is what actually happened to someone who had it on the same plant, at the same point in the season, and what they did next.

Gadenin is a free garden journal built around that. You photograph the plant, tag what you are seeing, and the entries line up by date for each plant you grow.

• Tag the problem and the app tells you how many other growers have logged the same thing on the same plant.
• Growers who make their records public can be followed, so you can read what they did and how it turned out.
• Next season your own entries come back at the same point in the year, so you check the plant before it starts.

Affected plants (5)

Plants with this problem on record.

Written byYasuGrowing vegetables and fruit in Chiba, Japan, and building Gadenin. Corrections are welcome. 15 years of growing.