Parnassius Apollonius

Hi,

they feed on Aristolochia only, and do not accept Sedum.

Regards,

I guess Aristolochia is definitely wrong. Wikipedia states the following:

Parnassius apollonius is a member of the snow Apollo genus Parnassius of the swallowtail family, Papilionidae. It is found in central and south Kazakhstan, the south Altai, Saur, Tarbagatai, Dzhungarsky Alatau, Tian-Shan, Ghissar-Darvaz, the Pamirs-Alai and west China.^[2]

This species is found from a broad altitudinal zone (500 to 3,000 m). Adults fly over dry mountain slopes in May, June and July depending on the altitude.^[2]

Larval host plants include Pseudosedum, and Rosularia species.^[2]

Sorry - I confused this species with Archon appolinus !

Regards

My apollonius just hatched. Material from Serge offering here previous year with emerging rate highly over 80% what is fantastic number when we understood how much those eggs travelled previous year.

On several breeding sites both Sedum album and Hylotelephium maximum are mentioned as foodplants. I started with maximum ( be cautious as several hylotelephium hybrids sold in garden centrum are not good except you are lucky and you hit cultivar which both father and mather is telephium or maximum - usually white flowering ones).

I have proven from breeding that from cultivars Hylotelephium " Gooseberry Fool " is unproblematic as both parents of cultivar are H.maximum ( according to plant patent ).

So far, larvae accepted to eat Hylotelephium maximum, but to be true many Parnassius eating almost anything in early instars are dying in L4 or especially L5 if food is not exactly what they need.