Tent Caterpillars

They pitched a tent in my snapdragons—icky.

After spending two hours on the internet trying to figure out what the creepy caterpillars in my flowers were, I went to bed. My husband got on my computer to download some photos. I was just snugling down in my soft, comfy bed when my husband walked in and said “Why do you have a picture of tent caterpillars on your computer?”

Thank you, dear.

I always tell my kids “daddy knows everything, go ask him.” (He went to one of those fancy-shmancy ivy-league colleges, you know the one—it’s big and old, it’s in Cambridge, starts with an H.) I went to a state college with all the other mere mortals.

Anyhoo.

Yes, we have yet another infestation of yet another pest. This one was easy to cure though, all it took was a pair of Felco clippers and Voila!—good-bye creepy, black, hairy things.

I don’t know what they were doing in my snapdragons, because for the most part, tent caterpillars like deciduous trees.

On the East coast, they can be a problem. They overpopulate and decimate the trembling aspen. Even though trembling aspen is their favorite host, they can also defoliate most other species of deciduous trees, such as, elm, oak, ash, basswood, maple, birch, poplar, and birch.

A defoliated tree will grow new leaves late in the summer. If they are severly defoliated their growth may be stunted for a couple of years.

If you have them in your yard, you can cut them out and just drop them in soapy water.

In the wild, they will overpopulate quickly, but soon disease and natual preditors will bring their population down. They repeat this cycle every several years.

Common parasites of the species are the flesh fly (Sarcophaga aldrichi) and the ichneumonid wasp (Itoplectis conquisitor).

Comments

[Carol]

Felco pruners solve a lot of problems in the garden, don't they?

I've never seen tent caterpillars on snapdragons, just in trees, but then, you are in California, and I lot of stuff is different there. ;-)

[Annie in Austin]

Yuck. Our pecans get those tent caterpillars every year, and they're on it right now. I can use the pole pruner for anything up to 12 feet - unfortunately most of the moths lay their eggs at the 20-foot mark.

You have a lot of great posts here Chigiy, inspiring many comments:

I hope someone will ID the cool succulent. I want one.

Building a tree house for one's children is wonderful, and look how happy it made their dad to do it!

How interesting that the extra-tall delphinium needed chemical assistance to stand out like that.

Now I want a shrimp plant, too.

I don't have Dr Brommer, but Mrs Meyers products arrived in a cute carton for mothers day... maybe she can help clean the white gunk off the Meyer's Lemon? I hope your Coneflowers make it.

Nice snapdragons! Do your kids squeeze the sides to make the 'mouths' open, and make them 'talk'?

Annie at the Transplantable Rose

[chigiy]

Annie,
It's good to have you back. Thank you for reading all of those posts. I love reading your comments.

Carol,
Your right in California we do things differently. At first I tried to make the caterpillars go away by using kind thoughts and positive reinforcement.
That didn't work so I cut them out with my Felcos and stuck them through the chiipper shreader.

[kate]

When my son was about 3 or 4, we used to take a board and we'd plop slugs on it and then my son would take a salt shaker and watch them wither up ... I worried for years that I had caused irreparable damage. But not to worry - when he caught me cutting tent caterpillars in half while building my trellises, he was horrified at the glee I was experiencing. We've had a terrible infestation of tents on elms and maples here ... and they seem to have a great fondness for my lilac and viburnum, which is when I declared war on them.

Not the brightest of creatures, they crawled one after the other along the fence and I spend a satisfying time using my handy little Fiskar flower snipper thingy.