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Silkwormscan you identify this for me?
hey guys, i was surfing the internet trying to find out what this thing was. i found it up in a pine tree around 30-40 feet up at work. it is as long as a deck of cards, as one of the pictures shows. ive never seen one before. i live in washington state, near puget sound in stanwood. the place i work is less than a mile from the water. you guys have any ideas what it is? if you could email me back that would be awesome. thanks,
Andrew Smith
Hi Andrew,
We were relatively certain this caterpillar is in the genus Hyalophora, so we tried a websearch. We eventually locted information on the Larch Silkworm, Hyalophora columbia columbia on a Caterpillars on Conifers in the Eastern U.S. website. Hyalophora columbia is found in both eastern and western U.S. There are several subspecies, including Columbia Silkmoth and Glover’s Silkmoth. BugGuide lists the food plants in the west as: “leaves of alder, birch, Antelope Bitterbrush ( Purshia tridentata ), buckbrush ( Ceanothus spp.), buffaloberry, cherry, rose, Russian Olive ( Eleagnus angustifolius ), willow.” The photo you sent on foilage looks like larch to us. We are confident that we have properly identified your caterpillar, and perhaps the list of food plants in the west needs to be updated.
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