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Re: hornworms, was nasturtiums

At 05:02 PM 1/31/97 -0800, you wrote:
>At 04:03 PM 1/31/97 EST, you wrote:
>>Horn worm bites are not venomous nor very painful, ware gloves if you
>>wish. But do learn to spot them early and hand pick them. Drop them into
>>a bucket of water and they will expire overnight. If you can't see them,
>>watch for droppings to help locate them. If you are going to grow
>>tomatoes, your going to have horn worms, so learn to live with them.
>>
>  I agree, I throw them up on my roof where the sun will soon do them in and
>  they provide a tasty morsal for the neighborhood birds.
>
>  They are big and ugly and can eat a tremendous amount of folage so hand
pick
>  right away.  I also noticed last spring a small white moth or butterfly
>fliting
>  around the tomatoes.  I suspect this was the hornworms "MA" so I harrased
>it everytime
>  it came around and the result was only two hornworms all season.  I could
>be wrong about
>  the "MA" being that white butterfly, but I tried not to let it land on the
>plants and
>  ended up with verrry few hornworms.
>
>Richard KF6ATJ
>Sacramento California
>
Yes, you were wrong in your ID.  The white butterfly is probably the parent
of a cabbage worm.  The parent of hornworms is the sphinx moth, which is
very large -- between a hummingbird and a sparrow in size.  Some people
call the sphinx moth a "hummingbird" moth because it hovers and drinks
nectar with a visible proboscis.  Margaret
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