Rewilding My Lot

I have twice had populations of Genista Moth (Uresiphita reversalis) caterpillars on my Texas Mountain Laurel tree (September 2023, November 2023) behind the house. On both of those occasions it was more important to me to protect my young and somewhat stressed tree and so I picked off caterpillars as I found them. I only needed to do that for a few days.

I have now (March 2024) spotted a cluster of the same kind of caterpillars munching on a Bluebonnet plant in front of the house. This time my strategy is different and I will watch but not interfere. The caterpillars may cause some leaf damage but they are unlikely to kill the plants completely, and even if they did, I have dozens of Bluebonnet plants here.

I usually don’t mind if my plants are being eaten by wildlife visitors — if you like butterflies or birds, you have to let insects feed! The goal for my garden is not merely to have a collection of plants, but rather to provide an environment that will support all the interesting things that go on in nature.

Here’s an incident that occurred recently to illustrate this, but it all happened so quickly that I couldn’t photograph it. A white moth flew into my pollinator garden and began to feed. Seconds later a bird flew down and snapped up the moth. The bird could not have had that snack, were it not for earlier caterpillars that presumably ate something.