catalpa trees - catalpa worms

My younger son has a big Catalpa Tree in his yard (these photos were all taken by him).

In the spring the tree has beautiful sweet smelling blooms , and then makes a nice shade tree in the hot part of summer...

.....until the Catalpa Worms show up!

Hundreds of them!  Sometimes they completely eat every leaf on the tree.

  The end with the pointy thing is the tail.

A little online research tells us that this is not harmful to the tree..it just grows new leaves and remains healthy.

This isn't his big tree...it's a smaller one in his yard that came up from a seed from the big one. You can see how the worms have chomped away at this one.

Here is another picture so you can see the size of the worm compared to this giant thumb!

The fully grown caterpillar pupates under ground to emerge a few weeks later as an adult Catalpa Sphinx Moth. The moths mate and lay eggs in the underside of catalpa leaves. This cycle can take place several times during the summer until the weather cools and the pupae stay in the ground over the winter.


Parasitic wasps sometimes lay eggs in the worm's skin. The larvae
 feed on the worm and develop inside, then emerge and spin these little silky cocoons. This eventually kills the worm.

I guess they keep eating leaves right up until they die!

Catalpa worms eat only Catalpa tree leaves. Apparently they also make excellent fishing bait. There are even catalpa tree farms where they grow the trees just to harvest and sell the worms for bait.

Junior said he has a few worms in the fridge that he is going to try out for fishing in the river.
If he has any luck he will probably have more photos!