I raise butterflies of all kinds and just about 4 days ago on a passionvine leaf I found something I was unsure of. It looked like white mold on the underside of a leaf. I put it in tupperware and checked it tonight and found it had HATCHED!!! The "mold" was about the size of a dime and now I have about 100 little caterpillars. Can someone help. I have raised monarchs, gulf fritillaries, zebra longwings, swallowtails and this is the first time I am seeing this. They are about the size of shirt eyelashes, little blackheads with clear little bodies. Please tell me this is something cool that I can teach my girl scouts.
Chris "Flutter" Mac
Found something wierd on Passionvine
I am thinking more of baby beetles or aphids or something else. Do they actually look like caterpillars? Hopefully they are not tent caterpillars. You don't want them!
Here's a link for Tent Caterpillars:
http://gardening.wsu.edu/library/inse003/inse003.htm
Here is a link that was posted by Becky (above). I had to put this one in my favorites Becky, it is so helpful.
It has the host plants for the cats, see if you can id the ones that use passion vines, that are in your area. http://davesgarden.com/forums/p.php?pid=3656069
After looking at the list myself, I don't see anything that would not be one you already know about. OOh! I hope you don't have tent cats either. They are eating everything here. Something stripped my holly leaves even!
This message was edited Jul 4, 2007 9:19 PM
Sheila - Sounds to me like tent caterpillars and they eat all kinds of plants. Will literally devour the leaves off a small tree in short order. None of the usual butterflies that use the Passion vine as a host lay a cluster of eggs like that. At least none that I am aware of. Usually just one or two eggs close together not 100! It really sounds like tent cats if it's not some other kind of bug.
How about a picture, someone will know I bet.
Good idea, Sheila! A picture is worth a thousand words ..... or a hundred bugs! LOL!
Let me work on a picture. these little buggers are definately eating the leaf today but they are so small the picture comes out cruddy. First before they were eating it Blurry as I mentioned
here is a better unblurry pixcture but again, becasue they are so small ...AND NOW EVERYWHERE because i had to open the container LOL
Okay, well last night I went to move some of the cats and found that they have a silkyness around them. I would pick them up and it would drop down like on a thread. Wierd. Like a baby spider silk.
I have no idea what they are unless they are tent caterpillars. And you say they are EATING the passion vine leaves???? Ya got me scratching my head and saying ...... "Huh???"
If I were you I would keep those guys well penned up, it doesn't sound good.
Sounds like the dreaded web worms that have infested everything around here.