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Crawlies of our garden |
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Larval lifeforms
The ones that most fascinate my boys - the weirder-looking the better.
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This little fella was as bright white as I've ever seen a caterpillar (must
not taste too good - lousy camouflage!). It was racing around our veggie garden
one day, but didn't find anything tasty, so it decided to leave. It may be an albino yellow woolly
bear moth larva.
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This one is even hairier, and not quite as white. While the one above looks kinda
cute, this one looks fearsome!
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When I found a zillion of these guys decimating my Lysimachia punctata,
I had hopes of benevolently sustaining an interesting butterfly or moth
population. Turns out I most likely had a bunch of sawfly larvae on my hand.
Still, with their blue-gray coloration they were quite the fascinating creatures.
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Sawfly larvae sure are a destructive bunch! This time it was the
hardy hibiscus that was skeletonized, by who other than young'ns of the hibiscus
sawfly (Atomacera decepta).
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Striking velvety caterpillar with bold coloration, most likely a yellow-striped
armyworm (Spodoptera ornithogalli), which grows into a not quite so bold-colored
moth.
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Young'n of the black swallowtail (Papilio polyxenes). Although the adult
would be considered more beautiful (judge for yourself at my butterfly
page), baby is kinda handsome in its own way.
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Wow dude! Nice do! Found this one on a milkweed plant, and sure enough, it's
the caterpillar of the milkweed tussock moth (Euchaetes egle). From
what I've read, it's common to find plants just crawling with these caterpillars,
I only saw the one. |
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Found this one crawling on a devils-bit scabious (succisa pratensis). It's a
fall webworm (Hyphantria cunea),
probably in its last travels before pupation, after growing to its largest
caterpillar form inside a silk web shared with its many siblings.
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Since our tomatoes are mostly spared destruction by tomato hornworms (Manduca
sexta), I actually find the sporadic sightings quite interesting. Pardon
the picture of its back end - but the horn is really its most photogenic part.
The adult is a greyish-whitish moth, not nearly as exotic-looking as its
babies.
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Multi-legged ones
Centipedes and millipedes, that is. I usually encounter these ground-dwelling
critters while digging around in my soil, and seldom have a camera to operate
with my grimy hands - so not so many photos. But at least one, so far:
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I'm amazed - I found this guy (a soil centipede) sneaking through my clay soil,
and relocated him to a rock to shoot his picture. He's perfectly clean - my
dirt doesn't stick to him. Why don't my kids have that useful property?
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Fewer segments and legs on this one, but just as shiny. This stone
centipede, in the lithobiomorpha order, was also crawling around in
our soil.
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Even more legs - although I won't vouch for a thousand. Some kind of
millipede, anyway.
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Visitors to this page have left the following comments| Polina | Feb 25, 2006 | WOW ! very informative ...and i like those pics of ur nephew , so cute !! can see that u put a lot of effort in it so
KEEP IT UP ! |
| Ashley | Sep 03, 2007 | I love the pictures of the caterpillars (destructive as they might be). Some of them are really beautiful. And beware the stone centipedes. They can deliver a nasty bite. My dad found this out the hard way. I narrowly missed a painful bite to a bare foot just recently. |
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Last modified:
September 20, 2007
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