If you build it, they will come! If you plant it, they will come. I'm talking about my experience with the beautiful yellow mandevilla vining plant and the oleander caterpillar. Years ago, in my Jacksonville, Florida backyard garden, I planted several oleanders. As they began to mature into beautiful leafy little tree-like plants, I witnessed an invasion of the oleander caterpillar. At that time, I didn't realize how beautiful the adult stage of this caterpillar would be and decided to totally remove all the oleander.
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| Julie's Garden Nature Walk - Oleander Caterpillar on Yellow Mandevilla |
In 2017, I spotted a yellow flowering vine-plant at Home Depot and decided to buy it for my front yard garden in my Leesburg, Florida senior park home. The first several months of the yellow mandevilla, everything seemed pretty normal with it growing and maturing with pretty yellow trumpet-like flowers.
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| Flowering Yellow Mandevilla in Leesburg Florida |
As the Yellow Mandevilla continued to grow, I installed a tall metal trellis to support the vines. It is a plant of the genus
Allamanda in the dogbane family of Apocynaceae.
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| Flowering Yellow Mandevilla and Other Plants in Leesburg Florida Garden |
It was probably in early 2018 that I began to see the oleander caterpillars appearing on my Yellow Mandevilla. At first, there were only a couple, but it seemed that they began to multiply soon afterwards. Like, the word was out!
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| Polka Dot Wasp Moth on Confederate Star Jasmine |
It was November 29, 2016, that I photographed my first Polka Dot Wasp Moth. It was found buzzing my Confederate Star Jasmine, another vine-like plant on a trellis in my front yard garden in Leesburg, Florida.
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| Polka Dot Wasp Moth Flying |
It would be not quite two years later that I would realize that this beautiful, unique moth started off as the Oleander Caterpillar! For that reason, I allowed probably hundreds of Oleander Caterpillars to obliterate my pretty Yellow Mandevilla as they progressed to adulthood as the Polka Dot Wasp Moth!
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| Oleander Caterpillar Eating my Yellow Mandevilla |
For more than two years, I watched my Yellow Mandevilla become the host plant to hundreds of Oleander Caterpillars.
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| Oleander Caterpillar Poop From Eating My Yellow Mandevilla |
In November 2019, I watched a thriving, healthy Yellow Mandevilla taken literally to the ground by the Oleander Caterpillar. That was when I decided I wouldn't let the plant come back for another season.
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| My Front Yard Garden in Leesburg Florida - Yellow Mandevilla on Right |
I've written another blog post about the
Polka Dot Wasp Moth. It is truly a marvel of Mother Nature and definitely my favorite such moth. To experience such a beautiful creature, it is worthy of the experience with growing a Yellow Mandevilla host plant! I'm so happy I had this experience and would recommend it to you.
A great resource for wonderful photos and interesting information on the Oleander Caterpillar is hosted by the University of Florida.
2 comments:
How do you get rid on the oleander caterpillar?
I would like to keep my Yellow Mandevilla
Getting rid of the oleander caterpillar is a challenge. I personally am not a fan of pesticides and insecticides as I have seen what can be done to affect other life in my garden like the Monarch butterfly. We have the mosquito truck that sprays in our community often. The year that I had a lot of oleander caterpillars, I had a lot of Monarch caterpillars. Of those Monarch caterpillars which made it to butterflies, I had so many with deformed wings and never made it past a day or two of life. That was heartbreaking to witness. I've tried eco-friendly alternatives and even some dawn soap diluted in water in a spray bottle. Ultimately, I did not keep my yellow mandevilla but put in a plumbago.
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