Some late season caterpillars

Caterpillars are an integral part of any butterfly garden, but ortho has the world conned into thinking that all caterpillars are bad.

There are some bad caterpillars, like the squash vine borer (SVB). Get an infestation of these, and either perform surgery on the injured plants, or wave good-bye to the crop.

Very bad news indeed! The SVB lives inside of the vine and/or fruit, and kills the plant.

The long-tailed skipper is less problematic, this caterpillar eats a leaf or two, and becomes a beautiful butterfly. I suppose there's always the option of removing the little caterpillars to one of their usual host plants like the spurred butterfly pea pictured below.

The long-tailed skipper butterfly

Caterpillars on the coffee weed. No worries, I grow coffee weed (Senna obtusifolia)for the sulfur yellow butterflies...



The coffee weed is an attractive, interesting plant, the leaves fold at night like a sensitive plant.

Buckeye caterpillar on agalinas purpurea.

Creepy looking caterpillars feasting on the pokeweed.

I'm not having any luck tracking down an id on these pokeweed caterpillars, after several pages of google results, I'm ready to ask for help in identification... Does nebody know what they are?

Pokeweed berries.

Gulf fritillary caterpillar

Gulf fritillary butterfly

As usual, I have too many pictures to post, I'll have to save the purdy wildflower pictures for my next post...