Can anyone tell me what these are? They were very veracious. Their host plant was the Yellow Loose strife, I have growing in what I call my wild garden.
CLOSED: Caterpillars on Yellow Loosestife
Another picture of them.
A second caterpillar I don't know. It came from my birch tree.
Same one, from the birch tree.
Given the number of prolegs on those in the first two images, I'd say they are sawfly larvae. Sawflies are not flies at all but grouped with ants, bees and wasps in the order Hymenoptera. They get their name from the way the adult female's ovipositor cuts into plant tissue to lay eggs. Their larvae resemble Lepidopteran caterpillars but Leps almost always have 5 or fewer pair of prolegs. Sawflies have 6 or more pairs.
Perhaps someone else can narrow it down further, but here is one that is similar:
http://bugguide.net/node/view/521023/bgimage
As for the second larva, I can only say that it seems to be from the Geometridae family of moths, which includes the caterpillars we often call loopers or inchworms. There are a bunch!
http://bugguide.net/node/view/188/bgimage
This message was edited Jun 19, 2011 3:50 PM
i agree that the first ones definitely look like sawfly of some type. get rid of those buggers fast! put some poison on your poor loosestrife. My poor columbine was nearly demolished by columbine sawfly this year
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