Just to give you butterfly folks a jolt… I bet you haven’t seen this butterfly on goldenrod in Pennsylvania.

Canada goldenrod (Solidago canadensis) is native to North America but the butterfly is not.  It’s a Common Bluebottle (Graphium sarpedon) found in Asia and Australia.

It’s nice to know that goldenrod attracts such beautiful butterflies but how did these two get together?

The photo was taken in Japan. The goldenrod was imported.

Unfortunately Canada goldenrod went wild when it got overseas and is now an invasive species in Asia.  It’s such a problem in China that they have eradication programs for it just as we do for Japanese knotweed.

If we could only trade our Japanese knotweed for their goldenrod, we’d all be happy.

(photo by Isaka Yogi on Wikimedia Commons.  Click on the image to see the original.)