Bagworm Bonanza - Bag Lady is a Homebody

The larva of the  Polyphemus moth , pictured in the Saturday Saturniids post a few weeks ago, spins a silken cocoon in the leaves of its host tree. The keen observer may sometimes spot these silken sanctuaries suspended from the twig of a birch or willow oak as the leaves begin to thin out in the fall.

Occasionally, Saturniid cocoons share their branches with a slender, elongate sack of silk which tapers near the top and bottom.


These little pouches are cleverly disguised with ornaments of organic matter, and can sometimes be quite numerous, particularly in their preferred evergreen host trees.







This is the home of the evergreen bagworm. The male lugs its "mobile" home around with it until time to pupate. Then it will secure its bag to a limb with silk and seal off the opening. It will emerge in a month or so as a bee-like moth and seek a mate. In this case the bag lady is a real homebody. She never leaves her cocoon; mating through an opening in the cocoon and then remaining in the cocoon with her eggs through the winter.

The young will hatch in late spring from her carcass and set out upon a silken strand to begin building their own cocoon. Such is the life of a bagworm...

A Sheep in Wolf's Clothing...Hickory Horned Devil

Nature, master of deception...

Fearsome Dragon... Demon Seed...

Gentle Giant... Hungry Child...

The Regal Moth, splendid scion of the Saturniids, like its kin the Cecropia, Polyphemus and Luna moths, has only vestigial mouthparts. It emerges each summer from months of slumber with no means of nourishing itself, and barely a week to live...

Fly, fly, mate and die.

From a tiny egg deposited on the leaves of the persimmon tree, or perhaps a hickory, a caterpillar hatches. Ravenous, it feasts on the bounty of greenery... for hours, for days, for weeks, it taps into the energy of the sun itself, bound up in the leaves of its host.

It eats, and it grows. And, as it grows in girth, it grows in hideous ferocity, daring any other living thing to touch it, glaring in the face of danger, staring down the winged, would-be predator.

At last, sufficiently fed to ensure its readiness for the task ahead some ten months hence, it slips from its perch in the trees into the soil below, where it will begin its tranformation from demon to glorious queen of the night.

Sweet dreams, gentle giant.