My friend who lives in Houston Texas has discovered unsightly holes in her precious hisbiscus. I've asked her to look thouroughly for bugs/webs/foreign object on the plant, but there is nothing at all! Can anyone help us resolve this mystery? I've included links to the pics, and I'd appreciate any and all help. Thanks so much, Cynthia http://i161.photobucket.com/albums/t226/aladybughugs/hib2.jpg http://i161.photobucket.com/albums/t226/aladybughugs/hib1.jpg
Could be any number of little guys. Your friend lives in Houston, so I presume the plant is outside. My best guess would be an orange dog cattepillar. This is also the larva that becomes a swallowtail butterfly. Look up the orange dog. You will see that they look like bird droppings, and sometimes are difficult to see, because you look for a typically tube shaped worm.
not sure what it might be but orange dog eats on citrus not on hibiscus. there are a bunch of moth caterpillars that eat on hibiscus and if you see one that is green with lime green tree looking spines donot touch it the area will burn for some time found out the hard way. i just looked in the tropical hibiscus handbook and it says the cabbage looper or inchworm is the likely culprit for holes in the leaves.
Thank you very much, I've passed the message on, I can only hope the problem will stop! Now, if I could grow these babies in Northern Ontario, I'd be so happy :)
Golly! I stand corrected. The orange dog IS a citrus pest. And my hibiscus IS usually attacked by the IO moth cattepiller. The IO (eye-oh) moth is a big, arrowhead looking moth, but his larva is 'firestorm personified' if it stings you. Don't know where my head was. Sorry for the bum info, originally.
i let the butterfly larva eat on some of my plants i have some i planted just for that is the only reason i know about the orange dogs and have done one of the saturday florida butterfly classes. it is listed as a citrus pest but i have never seen to much in the way of damage from them but guess if it was a small citrus it would be noticeable. and actually have only ever noticed one orange dog cat it does not eat allot even though it gets to be a good sized cat. and it becomes the giant swallowtail butterfly.
