masters of camouflage

i checked, that’s really how it’s spelled.

so, over the winter, the top of one of my persimmons died. it had gotten a branched ripped off in a windstorm and something must’ve gotten in the wound. sucks, but shit happens.

it did have one little branch from just above the graft union (the tree is actually a graft from a wild tree that i really like), that was fine, leafing out, maybe ready to shoot up to take the place of the lost main leader. over the course of a couple hours, every time i walked past this tree, that little branch was missing more leaves. i didn’t pay enough attention in time...one time i walked past and there were no leaves, and even the soft new stems of the new growth were all eaten most of the way back. son of a bitch!

so i really looked, and  a bunch of these rascals were hiding in plain sight, on a dead branch section i hadn’t removed. they have since gone to visit with my chickens.

i dug a bit, and they seem to be lappet moth caterpillars, in the genus Tolype. awesome fringe around the edges to blend the line where the feet meet the twig.

Sorry to hear about your persimmon, Greg. That sucks. Hopefully it can recover. They can be pretty resilient.
Those are super hard to spot! A caterpillar did something like that to one of our grafted persimmons last year. It looked like a lichen! Possibly a spiny oak slug, but other pictures of them I see look way different. The one in question looked like this

That really is a great disguise.