I was so overcome by the spectacular beauty of a trio of lluvia de oro flowering cascades one morning I nearly gathered them in my arms for a grateful hug — until I was unceremoniously halted by horizontal black stipes right before my nose!
A caterpillar!
One of the most beautiful trees in the world, lluvia de oro (Cassia fistula), is a non-native tree that offers more than aesthetic value for humans. It’s a host plant for cloudless sulphur butterflies, which use cassia and senna plants — pea family species.
I found seven more yellow caterpillars. A photo to https://www.iNaturalist.org confirmed them as cloudless sulphur butterfly larvae. According to butterfly-fun-facts.com, when cloudless sulphur caterpillars eat the yellow blooms, their body is yellow. When they eat the green leaves, they change to the color of the leaves.
After marveling at my great luck, I continued my early morning ritual of strolling around the yard photographing interesting finds with my phone’s iNaturalist app.
Next I found holes in leaves on a vine a friend had given me more than a year ago. I’d babied the original start, seemingly to no avail, where I’d planted it near a fence in full sun. I moved the dead twigs to my arbor in February. I was excited to find a new shoot from the roots and a few healthy leaves. And then to my dismay, I saw holes in the lower leaves.
I turned the leaves over one by one until I found the culprit. iNaturalist identified the small black and orange caterpillar as a the larvae of a giant leopard moth. I wanted to save my precious vine, so I went indoors to research what other plants a giant leopard moth might use as larval plants. My intent was to move the caterpillar to a plant that had plenty of leaves to spare.
Interestingly, there are many plants that would be acceptable, and a few I could find easily in our yard. I went out to move the cat to a nice tasty sunflower but the caterpillar was nowhere to be found.
A week later, I quite had a fright! Sprawled across a couple of branches of a Berlandier’s fiddlewood (Citharexylum berlandieri) was the largest caterpillar I’d ever seen. My first reaction was that it was some sort of aberration, and that I should flee to the house immediately.
I quickly came to my senses, tapped the camera app on my phone and began taking photos. It was identified as a giant leopard moth — the caterpillar of which is called giant woolly bear. The woolly bear was as long as my index finger and more than an inch in diameter.
The giant leopard moth itself is beautiful. I’d love to see one to photograph. The female moth is larger than the male and would fit comfortably in an adult hand; the wingspan is about three inches. The moth is pure white and adorned with black spots, some hollow, some solid and some solid blue.
The larvae, however, is wily. I went back a couple hours later when the lighting was better for photos, and the huge black fuzzy caterpillar was nowhere to be found.
The giant leopard moth is our largest eastern tiger moth, found from Ontario to Florida, west to Minnesota and Texas.
I did a little Internet research and discovered that “many tiger moth larvae feed briefly on a plant and then move to a different plant, often of a different species. It is likely that the giant leopard moth has the same feeding behavior,” according to the following link:
https://entnemdept.ufl.edu/creatures/MISC/MOTHS/Hypercompe_scribonia.htm
“The giant woolly bear is polyphagous” — able to feed on various types of plants — “and feeds on a variety of low-growing forbs and woody plants. . . . There is little doubt the giant woolly bear will feed on many other species of plants in addition to those listed in Table 1,” at the mentioned link.
The leaves of the vine where I discovered the small giant leopard moth caterpillar were those of a non-native purple bleeding heart.
Following are a few plants where I could have moved that first caterpillar, had I been able to find it.
- Bougainvillea
- Cabbage (perhaps kale)
- Citrus – lemon, orange
- Poinsettia (Mexican fireplant)
- Sunflower
- Banana (perhaps plantain — Musa paradisiaca))
- Avocado
- Plantain (Plantago species)
In an unplanned project, as our self-isolation stretched into June, I happened upon so many caterpillars that I started hunting for them.
Two clues for finding caterpillars:
- A leaf that looks like it has been chewed at the edges or has holes in it. Look underneath the leaves and on the branches and stems.
- Frass — caterpillar waste — generally on the topside of a leaf. Look above that area to see if a caterpillar is munching away.
Fun larvae to look for in citrus trees are the caterpillars of the giant swallowtail butterfly. These are easily overlooked because, in displaying a brilliant guise of camouflage, these caterpillars resemble what could be mistaken as a large, splotchy bird dropping.
I found half a dozen caterpillars on two of our year-old citrus trees. The phone app identified them as common swallowtail butterfly caterpillars. These caterpillars are easily found just after sunrise while still in their night-time resting mode. As the caterpillars go through their growth stages, the markings change.
Other local host plants for the giant swallowtail caterpillar are in the rue family, Rutaceae. They are the herb called rue, and a native tree, colima, (Zanthoxylum fagara) also called lime prickly ash. Citrus also is in the Rutaceae family.
One day I was eradicating a vine that was over-powering a huge Berlandier’s fiddlewood shrub (Citharexylum berlandieri). The vine was what most locals call possum grape (Cissus incisa). It had travelled up through the shrub, draped itself over the crown, and covered one side of the bush.
Also called marine ivy, it has light green fleshy leaves that are sturdy and crisp. Greenish umbrella-shaped clusters of flowers bloom in late spring and summer that attract butterflies. Black, shiny berries mature in fall and are eaten by birds. The vine stinks when any part of it is crushed or bruised; some say the odor is reminiscent of burnt rubber.
The vine can cling or trail some 30 feet, hooking on to plants, trees, fences and structures with curling tendrils. However, it pulls away easily, coming down in great clumps when tugged.
One such clump carried down a huge caterpillar which was voraciously eating away on a leaf. With a clear photo, I identified it as a vine sphinx moth caterpillar.
The adult of this caterpillar is gorgeous. It’s a large moth shaped like a stealth bomber aircraft and painted in an Art Deco-esque geometric design of cream and tan on a dark brown body.
After identifying the caterpillar, I gathered a large amount of vine around it and put it in a secure place. The caterpillar was of a size that indicated it would soon quit eating and begin its cocoon stage.
The Gulf fritillary butterflies have finally found the volunteer passion vines (Passiflora foetida) — a bit late this year, but here none the less, fortunately.
To top off my quest for holey leaves, I spied holes in a variable leaf snailseed vine (Cocculus diversifolius). Turning the leaf over, I was rewarded with a long, thin shades-of-grey caterpillar that iNaturalist revealed as the caterpillar of a moonseed moth!
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