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May 21, 2007

Mourning Cloak Caterpillars

Benia and I were touring the yard today when we came upon a squirming mass of caterpillars in a quaking aspen (Populus tremuloides). I snapped a few pictures and we immediately checked them out on the computer. Benia quickly identified our new visitors as Nymphalis antiopa caterpillars. When they grow up, they are known as the Mourning Cloak butterfly.

A big part of the Native Suburbia philosophy is to provide habitat for animals. We love to see butterflies of all kinds fluttering around the yard. Our kind hearts are tested though, when we see a mass of 50 caterpillars working their way up a branch and eating every leaf. We only have 3 quaking aspens and they are all next to one another. Could these hungry little caterpillars wipe them out? I could cut them off at the pass now and increase the survival chances for the trees, but that would mean killing all the caterpillars. Am I prepared to do that? These are the tough decisions of the backyard nature preserve.

See Nymphalis antiopa on Wikipedia for more info.

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Bill Hilton Jr. wrote at 2007-05-21 18:44:

Wow! You're lucky to have these caterpillars. :-)

Even if they were to completely defoliate your aspens, they would move on to some other forage plant and the aspens undoubtedly would make new leaves. Almost never do relatively small numbers of caterpillars kill trees by eating their leaves. Even Eastern Tent Caterpillars--which can denude cherry trees in spring--seem to have little impact, with the cherries re-leafing and in fine shape within a few weeks. the exception might be a tree that is under great stress from drought, disease, or several consecutive years of defoliation.

In reality, the aspens probably have a far greater chance of survival than the caterpillars, which are likely to fall victim to a wide variety of predators.

Best wishes,

BILL

Someone wrote at 2007-05-25 17:26:

Bill is right. A healthy plant can handle a lot of foliage loss without any long-term harm. This is particularly true when you're gardening with natives! After all, native plants are adapted to coexistence with native insects. (If native caterpillars could wipe out native trees, they'd starve.) Wild Flora

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