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GNAWING TALES

 


 

LT COL NOEL ELLIS

 

12/IX/2025

 

‘Gnawing’ can be very annoying for a gardener. As the heading suggests, this piece is all about ‘gnawers’ in the garden. By who, is the question?

 

Well, the rainy season has come to a close. Plants are becoming bushier and lush. New shoots are jutting out. Fresh leaves are spouting. Bulbs and tubers are emerging but then tragedy strikes. You find half eaten flowers, leaves pockmarked and sometimes just the ‘midriff’ left. Leaves and flowers of the citrus variety are the main targets.

 

It has been a month since butterflies have been making rounds in the garden. They look so lovely flapping their wings enjoying nectar from flowers. They are welcome as they pollinate.

 

They lay their eggs in this season which grow into caterpillars. From their nascent stage, caterpillars go ‘chomp-chomp-chomp’ on leaves like there is no tomorrow. What an insatiable appetite they have! Imagine, if one caterpillar can eat one leaf a day, how many would a colony of them devour. Their munching is continuous and ruthless. I am not sure if they stop by night.

 

Nature has just given very little window to grow and turn into green caterpillars from a small black dot which can be mistaken for a bird dropping. Perfect way of concealment.

 

If you want fruits on your plant, these crawlies have to be removed. If you let nature have its way, one has to sacrifice and watch the plant being eaten leaf by leaf. A time comes, if the caterpillars are left to feed unchecked, they can leave the plant completely bald.

 

It is a natural way of trimming. Once the leaves are gone, new shoots sprout. This is the season for flowers to follow. These gnawing creatures attack them too. These guys do not pardon the flowers and buds. For us, a flower is a sentiment, an emotion. For them, it is survival.

 

We have potted sweet lime, Bonsai oranges, and a lime variety called Galgal. Due to our caterpillar friends, we have been missing out on their fruits since the last season.

 

This year we decided to say thank you to the gnawers. Not by sprinkling any insecticide, but by painstakingly and physically removing them one by one along with the leaf they were eating. We didn’t want to but had to.

 

There is another issue. These caterpillars tend to fall off on other potted plants in the near vicinity. To survive they start chomping on them, spoiling that plant too, till they return to their favourite plant where they finally transform into a pupa.

 

This is what happened to one of our hibiscus flowers. Two adjacent pots had buds galore. One bloomed into an eight inch flower while the other which was eaten from the top and looked like an eclipsed moon.

 

We were thrilled to observe the complete life cycle of a butterfly turning from eggs into a caterpillar, to a pupa, till it burst out as a young butterfly last year. This year as the plant has been trimmed to remove those creepy crawlies, we might not be able to spot the naughty boys undergoing transformation.

 

How hard you try; there would be some caterpillars always left. We shall let them be. Plants generally do not die after getting a crew cut by these little “agnawing” read “annoying” creatures. But to see plants getting bald is a bothersome feeling. The whole year's hard work gets eaten overnight.

 

How many caterpillars would turn to butterflies? Well, this morning my wife discovered one pupa perfectly blending with the plant. A droplet of water was still stuck to its bottom. Seems their coat is waterproof. We wish her luck.

 

If I could talk to a butterfly, I shall request her to leave our pots alone next season. Maybe she will understand.

 

 How soon would this pupa turn into a butterfly? I wonder!!!!!

 

JAI HIND

©® NOEL ELLIS






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