L’il critters
Went to my garden and found somebody with an appetite had been there before me. Happy, healthy tomato vines had been gnawed leafless, nothing left but nubs on branches. That’s what tobacco hornworms do.
A month ago, I found three or four small hornworms just beginning their damage, but since then I have seen none at all yet the damage continues. Are hornworms ninjas? They are well-camouflaged against a tomato vine background, but I generally can find them. Maybe they have invisibility cloaks.
Tobacco hornworms are more common in the southern U.S. with tomato hornworms farther north, though hornworms range throughout our hemisphere. Cardinals and bluebirds might prey on them, but in my situation not often enough. Southern Asia and Australia (like it or not) have taro hornworms, and the whole hornworm family is illegal in Europe.
The best time to catch them is early morning or at dusk when they are less invisible. What happens next after finding one is up to each of us. All I can say is a hornworm carefully placed on a bird feeder will disappear… be invisible again.
Hornworms are the larva of particular hawk moth species. Hawk moths speed around like hummingbirds, hover like hummingbirds, and apparently lay eggs that grow up to eat tomato plants. Ain’t life curious?
Parsley worms, which are the larvae of the Eastern black swallowtail butterfly, also appear in summer. They get their common name because they graze on foliage of carrot family plants such as parsley, fennel. carrots, dill, celery and Queen Anne’s lace. I have seen them eat foliage of a fennel or parsley plant down to the stem, but the plants regenerated unfazed. A gardener can pick them off if desired, but the plant probably will be okay. It takes the larvae only about a month to six weeks to show up, eat your fennel, hide in a chrysalis and emerge a butterfly.
They are important pollinators. Your garden might host two or three generations every year. They are a delight to see, but birds eat them, so there’s that.
So, minding my business, working in the garden, when I see an inch-and-a-half of a yellow-green cushiony-looking larva in the rocks. Looked like something I drew in kindergarten, and as every kindergartner knows, this was the larva of a polyphemus moth. Ten or eleven sections marked with a white band where they joined, each section with a pair of red dots. Life has many faces.
It’s a fair question– which came first: Polyphemus or the moth. The mythical Polyphemus was (one story goes) a one-eyed giant who lived in a cave at foot of Mt. Etna. Depending on whom you ask, he was either a savage or a sweetie-pie. Homer wrote about him in the 8th century B.C. However, moths have been around for 300 million years (depending on who’s counting), so moths predate Homer, so they win the prize.
Orangey-brown polyphemus moths might be as wide as your hand and feature a pair of distinctive dark eyespots to scare away predators. A larva resembles a cute bunch of similar bright green segments added together. Once assembled, the larvae eat leaves of several deciduous trees, including hickory and oak, but they are usually not a problem. Birds eat them.
Maybe if you have a plum orchard, they could be a problem. If I were a polyphemus moth, that’s where I’d go.
The adults don’t eat anything and don’t live long. Bummer to be a Polyphemus moth grownup, plus the males can’t fly in temperatures above 45°F according to somebody who sat there and watched.
And I still like seeing walking sticks. I’ve never seen them hurry, and it’s not their fault that sticks look like them. I’ve seen them as long as six inches, but there are walking sticks in southern China two feet long! Life is full of surprises.