So I discovered a terrifying (but also kind of fascinating and beautiful at the same time) new element to the garden this morning. We’re having a heat wave here, and so this morning before leaving for work I thought I’d give the tomato plants a spot of moisture. I passed one of the tomato clusters and noticed that one of the (still green) tomatoes had a large bite taken out of it. I assumed it was an experimental bite from a squirrel (my nemesis – or one of them), and muttered dark things under my breath and then prepared to move away the strange coiled leaf that seemed to be on top of it. Then I noticed.
It wasn’t a leaf.
It was a HUGE caterpillar! Enormous! Giant and green with spots and even a red horn at one end! There’s a moment when you’re unexpectedly close to a creature like that where your skin crawls for a bit. Well, mine did for a while anyway. It took me a while 
to get over the shock, tinged with horror at the size of the thing. Then after a while I calmed down and got curious. Of course I’d already googled and found that it is called a Tomato Hornworm (manduca quinquemaculata) [update: It is actually the Tobacco Hornworm*, manduca sexta], and it is the larva of the five-spotted Hawk Moth (update: Carolina Sphinx Moth* or sometimes Hummingbird Moth). Apparently they are indeed among the largest caterpillars in North America so my shock was not misplaced.
In the photos that I took (click them for larger views) I tried to give you a sense of scale with the pencil. This beast, still munching on the tomato as I photographed it (it had stripped most of the leaves of the plant off overnight, amazingly), was about 4 inches long! Remembering past times when I’ve had mysterious leaf loss on tomato plants, I am beginning to wonder if I’ve had this sort of creature visit before, and I just missed it somehow. On the one hand – HUGE – but on the other hand, you can see that the green is a perfect match and so easily missed if you’re not expecting to have to look for the creatures.
The moth it will become is also impressive in size, I learned (about a 5 inch wingspan). I’ve a soft spot for moths. I think that they are very understated and under-appreciated creatures that if you do look up close are often fascinating and beautiful (given my usual rooting for the underdog, you might have guessed this), so I could not bring myself to dispatch this fellow. I detached the tomato and put it and its rider into a container and left for work. When I came back, the caterpillar was still alive, and so I might have to figure out what to do with it tomorrow. It needs to be near ground so that it can bury itself and pupate…
-cvj
*Thanks for the correction Andrew!
P.S. More on Mothra here.
Yes they are indeed amazing! I saw the wasp larvae phenomenon online earlier. I agree, the whole thing is a bit like watching some alien fantasy movie… I’m sure some of the creators of those works are inspired by (and borrowing heavily from) Nature’s amazingness/weirdness!
Look a couple of comments up for the outcome for this particular guy.
As for the Triangle. Yes! (on the other thread…)
-cvj
Aren’t they amazing (though one can do in an entire tomato plant). Keep an eye on it–here in NC they are very commonly parasitized by wasps. The caterpillar looks just fine and then is suddenly covered in hundreds of white “spikes”–the pupae of the wasp larvae. It is truly “alien”
http://aggie-horticulture.tamu.edu/galveston/beneficials/beneficial-04_braconid_wasp_on_hornworm.htm
Wow! Great picture! Yes, snails are quite destructive too…
The news for the caterpillar, and its sibling that appeared the next morning and took another tomato, is not good. Once separated from the bush and mobile on the ground (leaving the tomato I left them attached to) their camouflage was not very good, and one of the mockingbirds that lives in/near the garden appeared and took one of them of while I was watching. (I did not see the other one get taken, but I imagine it suffered the same fate…)
“Nature, red in tooth and claw”, as Tennyson said (…and yes I know that in this case it would be more “Nature, green in beak and claw”)
Cheers,
-cvj
This is indeed fascinating and thank you for posting about it, including the images. If you do end up keeping it, please do post regular updates. I get some wild bugs in my garden too, or samples of fascinating behavior. Here is my cauliflower feeding a family of snails several seasons ago. Image was taken after nightfall, with flash firing. You can see the devastating damage these guys can do.
https://flic.kr/p/7KRBoC
Hi Andrew,
Thanks! I double checked and you are right. Amusingly, I knew of the similarity, and checked (but incorrectly – I may have used a poor website) that I was making sure to get them the right way around when I first wrote the post.
Cheers,
-cvj
Hi Amy,
Actually, with the heat wave on right now, the very idea of wearing a cashmere sweater is a difficult one for me, so I might not be averse right now to feeding one to a giant moth…!
-cvj
Just looked these up on wikipedia, and I noticed that the red horn (as opposed to a black one) means you actually have a “tobacco hornworm” rather than a “tomato hornworm,” but they are from the same genus. I have a soft spot for these, since I raised one in a terrarium when I was a kid. Pretty fascinating to watch the life cycle, and I seem to recall it was pretty easy. Just give it some tomato leaves to eat and watch!
So. Creepy. Are you sure you want it to pupate? The moth that comes from that thing could swallow your best cashmere sweater whole.