Graphium philonoe, the Eastern White Lady, is found in much of eastern Africa, from Sudan to Mozambique, in Congo, Ethiopia, Kenya, Malawi, Tanzania, and Uganda. It is not especially large by tropical butterfly standards, with a wingspread of only three or four inches. Itn most of the countries where it's found, it is considered common and in no danger.
Photo by Wasinitourguide. This individual, found near the coast of Kenya in May, is typical of the subspecies Graphium philonoe philonoe.
This report, containing many photos of tropical wildlife (though not of Graphium philonoe) and confessions of how globalists do ecological studies (trapped animals that might have been released are invariably killed), explains how it's been possible for scientists and naturalists to pay as little attention to these great gaudy butterflies as they have done. There are just so many interesting lifeforms, most of them so new to people from the English-speaking countries...
So, even a book that has a lot to say about the even showier butterflies that share the Taita Hills nature reserve with Graphium philonoe has little to say about Graphium philonoe:
It is one of a group of butterflies that show about as much black as white, and may look more brown and tan than black and white. Presumably they are called Ladies because, though otherwise similar to Swordtails, they carry no "swords" on their hind wings. Some of the Swordtails are much whiter. The Eastern White Lady is also sometimes called Dappled Lady or Dappled Graphium. Many accepted names for butterflies are as arbitrary as the scientific names that identify them with literary characters.
In Greek literature, at least two princesses and a minor goddess were called Philonoe. As written in English the name seems to mean "lover of the intellect"; as written in Greek it meant "mind of the people." As a goddess Philonoe or Phylonoe may have represented public spirit, or even something like a democratic consensus of opinion. She was worshipped mainly in Sparta. Philonoe was also said to have been the name of Helen of Troy's little sister and of Bellerophon's wife.
The white patches on the Eastern White Lady's wings come closer to the body than those on other members of the White Lady family, and this species is much more a pollinator than a composter. Males sometimes join puddle parties but seem to need to spend less time sipping polluted water than some other Swallowtails do. Both sexes are often found flying around flowers, and females, more easily found in open areas at the edges of woods than some Swallowtails, are often photographed choosing host plants for their young.
Photo by Albert190, June, Kenya. Like most Swallowtails, they like nectar from a variety of relatively shallow, accessible flowers. Long as their tongues are, Swallowtails have proportionately shorter tongues than other butterflies.
There are two subspecies. Their ranges don't overlap, and some think they may be separate species that look alike. Graphium philonoe philonoe is found further east than G.p. whalleyi.
Photo by Thierrycordenos, July, Ethiopia. These males belong to the subspecies whalleyi. Sudheer Kommana photographed a puddle party of philonoe males in Tanzania; the photo is on page 82 of this PDF newsletter:
Sudheer Kommana has his own web site, and its page for Graphium philonoe is empty:
From a distance they look like another African butterfly, the Forest Queen, which on closer examination seems more "related to" our Monarchs than to the Swallowtails. As with our Monarchs and Viceroys, both species live on plants that make them distasteful to birds, and each species seems to get some survival benefit from its resemblance to the other. However, Forest Queens are probably more toxic to more birds than White Ladies.
A book by Congdon, 2009, is said to contain photos of the early stages of this butterfly. No photos seem to have been digitized.
Eggs are usually tucked into curled-up leaf buds, where it's hard to find an egg even after watching the butterfly lay it.
Caterpillars can eat the leaves of a few different plants in the custard-apple family. As with some other Swallowtails, the caterpillars are good-sized, creatively ugly, and greedy in the final instar, so they can seem likely to be destroying their host tree. Actually the butterflies are likely to be keeping the host tree alive. Not all of the Annonaceae live in such complete symbiosis with one Swallowtail species as North America's pawpaw trees have with our Zebra Swallowtails; Graphium philonoe can eat more than one kind of leaves and in some places their host plants are pollinated by more than one kind of butterfly, but the butterflies still pay for what they took when they were caterpillars.
https://kilifigarden.info.ke/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/026-Kilifi-plants-Annonaceae-butterflies.pdf
Photo of a pupal Graphium philonoe from the Reiman Gardns, where butterflies hatched from pupae were on display in 2019.
Adults fly for up to two weeks.
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