FlytrapCare Carnivorous Plant Forums

I've been battling these little caterpillars for a few weeks, they really like eating my wife's petunia blossoms. Captain Jack's works well, but I plucked one of them off a flower the day and fed it to one of the VFTs.
Oops.

I always ceremoniously behead them before feeding them to my plants. Caterpillars and Japanese beetles.

Are you sure it got away? Sometimes though they manage to chew a hole , they don’t succeed in making a getaway.

Yeah, pretty sure although there's no evidence of where it went. I'll try "candling" the still-sealed trap to see if there's anyone in there.

Panman wrote: ↑Sun Aug 06, 2023 5:22 pm I always ceremoniously behead them before feeding them to my plants. Caterpillars and Japanese beetles.

That's a good idea. I figured that the trap would kill it before it could do any harm, or that it couldn't chew through the trap. Those petunia blossoms are very soft and delicate so I thought those little buggers couldn't handle anything tougher.
Off with their heads!

Yeah, it definitely got away. I found a couple more of those larvae on the petunias and dropped the headless bodies into a hungry Sarr.

I've been using the annoying, stinging ants that seem to be plentiful in the neighborhood. I always use tweezers to crush their heads in before they can bite or sting anything. I wish there was a less potentially harmful food source nearby, but at least the plants like it.

Do they still move enough after beheading them to keep the trap hairs triggered? Sorry to see it took revenge on your plant, thank you for the warning before trying the same with my flytrap or Sarracenia Purpurea ssp. Venosa.

No, I think they pretty much go limp and don't move anymore. They are good for Sarr food, though.
I was able to identify them, they're budworms, possibly tobacco budworms, and they definitely prefer petunias. That answers why they haven't attacked the other plants (snapdragon and phlox) in the same large container. I also thought I had an aphid/mite problem, again isolated to the the petunias, but it turns out that the tiny black dots on the leaves are budworm poop.

Ok, this is getting annoying. I fed a budworm to a different plant after crushing both ends of the darn thing. It was still wriggling enough to close the trap, but apparently it still had enough of it's head left to chew a hole in the trap. As before, I can't find any evidence that it actually escaped.
These guys are tougher than they look.
Edit: Found it in an adjacent water tray. I'm just gonna kill these things and feed them to the Sarrs. They're dangerous.