Caterpillars, Moths, Butterflies, and Links to More Facts About Them

According to Google this web site has been read mostly in that country where the Yahoo hackers were, recently. Google displays Blogspot page views on a little cartoon-type world map, and Turkey is so dark-colored (to show frequency of page views) that all other countries show up pale by comparison. Nevertheless a few hundred people in the United States, Russia, Canada, France, Italy, Hong Kong, and other places have been searching specifically for the posts about caterpillars. Apparently some people either like caterpillars, or are still trying to identify the black and orange caterpillars crawling on their Rose of Sharon or Northern Hibiscus bush.

With that description there are all kinds of possibilities this web site has not gone into. A lot of different caterpillars, and other insect larvae that are not technically caterpillars, can be black and orange.

I am not a real entomologist, but I've written insect articles and blog posts from time to time, sometimes on commissions from real entomologists, dating back to a 1989 pamphlet called Know Your Pests: Gypsy Moth Caterpillars or Eastern Tent Caterpillars. An update of that material expanded into "Know Your Pests" articles for Yahoo (Associated Content) and from that into a batch of posts that appeared here in 2013. (Someone actually paid $50 for the post summarizing the information then available about the buck moth genus.)

More recently I've written some guest posts for other sites, from all new research, on pretty butterflies. The butterfly posts will not be duplicated here. Since they're written for someone else's site they may "sound" different from posts to this site--less auntly, less Virginia-specific; you might not recognize them when you find them. They're not the ones I've cited in the posts below.

For the person with the Rose of Sharon, or Northern Hibiscus...The worst case, assuming the reader is in the Eastern States, would be young stingingworms; in the early stages they can be red or orange with simple black spines. When they're most often seen by humans, just before pupating, stingingworms are mottled in almost any mix of color including plaid, usually black and brown or gray, but they are no longer bright tomato-red. They eat almost anything but usually seem attracted to berry bushes and cherry trees, where they can make picking your own fruit much less fun than nature intended. At the red-and-black stage they usually live in close-knit family groups at the tops of oak trees, and eat oak leaves. I've never seen one of this loathsome species, at any stage, on a Rose of Sharon but sometimes tree-canopy feeders blow out of their trees and wander about nearer the ground after a storm.

The best case would be ladybird beetle larvae, which look like tiny caterpillars and can be found wherever aphids or scale insects are found. Though not what most humans consider beautiful, baby "ladybugs" are harmless to humans and helpful to flowers.

This post discussed some other possibilities, beginning with a beautiful, endangered butterfly species whose caterpillars probably get some survival benefit from looking as if they might be young stingingworms, though they don't sting. Baltimore Checkerspot butterfly caterpillars are almost as unlikely to attack a hibiscus bush as stingingworms are. However, if you see red or orange caterpillars with black branching bristles in the Eastern States, they're harmless baby butterflies and should be protected.

https://priscillaking.blogspot.com/2020/05/caterpillar-black-and-orange-rose-of.html

Since the computer is showing a lot of interest in the Lepidopterae posts at this web site, here are links to all the informative posts about them, each of which contains more links to legitimate science sites where you may find more information about the caterpillars you are trying to identify.

More caterpillar posts. (Note the increasing sophistication of nature posts over the years. When I was trying to begin each day I went online with a phenology post I offered only links. Now, for almost any nature post, I can find a good free photo of the featured plant or animal--although readers didn't fund the phenology posts and they're no longer a daily feature. If you want more phenology, fund it.)

https://priscillaking.blogspot.com/2017/07/phenology-caterpillars-attack-rose-of.html

https://priscillaking.blogspot.com/2015/08/phenology-post-for-august-20-farewell.html (caterpillars, and their parent moths, at the end)

https://priscillaking.blogspot.com/2013/12/know-your-pests-walnut-caterpillar.html

https://priscillaking.blogspot.com/2013/09/know-your-pests-tigers-that-start-out.html (This one laments the shortage of information available about a large moth family. I would expect that more information about the Tiger Moths that start out as Bear Caterpillars is available by now.)

https://priscillaking.blogspot.com/2013/07/know-your-pests-webworms.html

https://priscillaking.blogspot.com/2013/06/buck-moths-reader-reaction.html (This was a follow-up to...)

https://priscillaking.blogspot.com/2013/06/heres-summary-of-whats-known-about-buck.html and

https://priscillaking.blogspot.com/2013/06/phenology-buck-moth-caterpillar.html

https://priscillaking.blogspot.com/2013/06/know-your-pests-forest-tent-caterpillar.html

https://priscillaking.blogspot.com/2013/05/phenology-gypsy-moth-caterpillars.html

https://priscillaking.blogspot.com/2013/04/phenology-eastern-tent-caterpillars.html

https://priscillaking.blogspot.com/2012/10/halloween-gross-out-caterpillar-photos.html (The post contains links, not actual photos. By now, who knows how many of the links still work.)

Adult moths:

https://priscillaking.blogspot.com/2018/08/phenology-desmia-do-moths-read-this-web.html

https://priscillaking.blogspot.com/2015/07/phenology-sphinx-moth.html 

https://priscillaking.blogspot.com/2014/07/the-personal-moth.html

https://priscillaking.blogspot.com/2018/06/book-review-with-photos-cluster-of.html

https://priscillaking.blogspot.com/2011/09/tulip-tree-beauty.html

https://priscillaking.blogspot.com/2011/08/phenology-grape-leaf-moths.html

Adult butterflies:

https://priscillaking.blogspot.com/2018/04/book-review-butterfly-gardening-for.html

https://priscillaking.blogspot.com/2013/05/phenology-flower-and-butterfly-pictures.html

https://priscillaking.blogspot.com/2013/04/can-monarch-caterpillars-eat-dill-or.html

https://priscillaking.blogspot.com/2011/05/tiger-swallowtail-butterflies.html

https://priscillaking.blogspot.com/2011/05/tiger-swallowtail-videos.html

I've been surprised and delighted by the amount of information about moths and butterflies that's now available online.

Unfortunately some of it's wrong...I'm thinking of an egregious Answers.com page where somebody claimed that monarch butterflies are the ones that can be blue or orange depending on sex. Diana's Fritillary, Speyeria diana or just "Dianas," the official state butterfly of Arkansas, are blue or orange depending on sex. All Monarchs are orange and black, except for a mutant form, very rare except on Oahu island, that are white and black. Several butterflies in the Fritillary, Vanessa, and Anglewing groups are mostly orange and are big enough to be mistaken for Monarchs from a distance; when seen close up they're obviously different animals. People who have not taken much interest in butterflies before hearing about Monarchs being endangered hopefully report these other species as Monarchs...they're pretty too, and some of them are endangered too, but their ecological niches are different from Monarchs'. It's worth checking the university-sponsored nature sites to correct errors like that on social sites such as Answers, if you have the time. Wikipedia is one social site that has attracted enough scientists to be pretty reliable--so far as it goes. Wikipedia still lacks full pages for several members of both the animal and the vegetable kingdoms for which the information is now online, but has not been posted to Wikipedia yet.

As a Green pre-teen I used to wish someone had written a book that explained how to tell whether a caterpillar found in a Green garden needed killing, rather than how people then thought butterflies had evolved into different species. As a middle-aged aunt I'm finding the material that will be needed to write that book. I'm not sure whether I'll be able to publish the butterfly book I wanted as a child; finding the information will be easy, but getting permission to use photos may not be. I do expect to be able to get it printed for The Nephews.