4.19.2008

gardening quandary

I noticed yesterday morning that one of my pentas was looking unusually bedraggled in spots. Haven't had rain in a couple of weeks so I thought that might be the problem...but the other pentas in the yard all looked fine. Upon closer inspection, I found TWO huge caterpillars happily munching away. They are pretty funky-looking with 2 huge black spots which are, I think, to scare birds into thinking they are much larger than they are, and then a series of circles down their back.The coolest part of their camouflage is that they can look like a dead leaf hanging from the plant. So now the quandary. A good butterfly garden has good host plants for them to lay their eggs...and will have caterpillars. My reading on the subject suggests planting in large quantities for this very reason and just assume that you will lose some to bugs & caterpillars. Eventually a balance will be achieved as natural predators invade, etc. It's so hard to do though when I have a plant that I feel so personally invested in though!

For the moment I'm going to let them be since the plant seems to be fine except for those 2 areas. Plus, it seems to have survived this before since I can remember it looking this way in other years.

In other gardening news, I'm checking out a place this afternoon that I found online and that just happens to be over in St. Pete! (Jene's Tropical Fruit) It looks like they have both the perennial peanut there AND blueberry bushes! I am very excited :)

3 comments:

kristi said...

from what i can see of these caterpillars they look like a similar shape to the ones that are designated officially as hornworms. but maybe the "circles" just look like bumps on the photo.

sorry again about dragging the whole family to the gardening place today. i can't wait to see how everything new looks!

p.s. if you get impatient and want to borrow my BT for the critter just let me know. :)

krystal said...

Yes, you're right - well, it is a hornworm although not a tomato hornworm. It's a Tersa Sphinx Hummingbird Moth and according to that blog, only feeds on pentas. One of them has disappeared now so I'm hoping that they are at the molting stage and my penta will recover. ;) Which made me wonder if this is your unidentified bug?

kristi said...

no i don't think so, although maybe the idea of searching for a "hummingbird" might turn up some results. this bug we have is a very bright green. almost like sometimes when flies are that green color--do you know what i mean? ok now back to work. :(