All was going so well. There were flower spikes and happy new leaves coming on after a less than perfect hibernation, and now I have to check closely and squish these nasty little inchworms. A trip to the Nursery for some BT will hopefully solve the problem. I do have two questions though; First being, what is the name of this little critter and its life stages ? Secondly, accompanied with the photo in the next post.
Secondly, on the same plant a number of the leaves have edges turned under. I've looked closely and have not seen any signs of critters. What do you suppose the cause might be ?
http://www.encyclopedia.com/html/i1/inchworm.asp Looks like it might be hard to determine which one it is with over 1200 kinds of them crawling around North America. I sure see lots of little buds on your plant. Can't help with the turned under leaves. Sorry.
Thanks Brugie. Might not hurt to put out an insect trap at night and see just what's flying around after dark. Seems to be on just the one plant- so far.
We have them dropping out of the maple trees right now, but the wrens have been pretty good at catching them in mid air. I sure have no idea what moth they are from, but they do produce well.
Just back from the Nursery with a bottle of Safer's BT. Gave all my little friends a good dose of 2 tsp./ gal. protection. Later in the year we get tent cats, mostly in the Alders, but also in about anything that's green.. Hope this is going to be one of the slack years.
Me too...good luck. I feel a spider mite year coming on too. Maybe clover mites instead, but mites, none the less.
Sent a copy of your cat pic to my dad (biologist) for ID.. will let you know what he thinks
Hi Robert, Here are a couple of sites you may want to check out.
http://www.npwrc.usgs.gov/resource/2000/catnw/photokey.htm
Another
http://pick4.pick.uga.edu/mp/20q?guide=Caterpillars
Welp.. LOL Dad emailed back and said.. "It looks like an INCHWORM.
inchworm, name for the larvae of moths of the family Geometridae, a large, cosmopolitan group with over 1200 species indigenous to North America.
"
.. sheesh so you only need to sift through 1200 types and you're there :D
sorry
Thanks Jaz and GGK . I suppose a 'normal' curiosity would be satisfied with knowing the critter is an inchworm, larval stage of a geometrid moth. Being somewhat anal in a few areas I'm possessed of a desire to capture, feed and incubate one of these little fellers and pin its adult stage to an insect board and find out which one it may be of the 1,200. Haven't collected insects for over 50 years, but think there is still the box of stuff in the attic. Could this be a symptom of the dreaded "but first" disease ??? Having treated my charges with BT yesterday it may be too late, but there is always next year, well most of the time.
Thank you again for your help.
robert
balvenie.. I believe that your inchworm is a "cabbage looper" (courtesy of Dad's info) Here is a site with pics and I think it bears a startling resemblance! (esp since I went through a website with just inchworm larvae and didn't have much luck finding a match.. did you know there were 1200 different ones?? lol) whew
http://www.oznet.ksu.edu/dp_hfrr/extensn/problems/cabloop.htm
This message was edited May 25, 2005 10:59 AM
Jazz, you are right on. That looks just like my little critter.Looking at a google of Trichoplusia as indicated in the reference you gave to KSU there are a mere 30,000 hits. The BT seems to have stopped the little fellers. My thanks to you and your father for the information.
I'm still not sure about the leaf curl cause. Any suggestions ?
There's nothing hiding under the curled edges? Sometimes the cats fold a leaf over and seal it down with webbing. Course, it could be the Enchanted DW in the cross making it do that, EDW would never win a contest on beautiful leaves, lol.
Wow.. they look kinda wilty :(
Checked creases and bottoms of the leaves with a 10X glass and didn't see anything. Soil is damp, gets fed weekly, most of the plant looks good. It is a puzzlement.
