Tersa Sphinx Moth and Caterpillar

Tersa Sphinx Moth, resting after a storm.

 Xylophanes tersa

Early Instar of Tersa Sphinx on Pentas

Tersa Sphinx:  Spiracles are circled with brown and white patches

Tersa Sphinx: Head tucked in and three pairs of thoracic legs are clasped together.

Xylophanes tersa got wet when I watered the Pentas

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Tersa Sphinx Caterpillar:  Pentas' leaves will grow back.

I was able to identify this pretty caterpillar and the dramatic adult with the help of www.BugGuide.net.  I love learning the names of our neighbors.  Matching this week's garden caterpillar with a several-year-old moth photo was a treat.  I had figured that the dramatic, streamlined  moth was a Sphinx, but knew nothing else about it.   Now I know that it is  Xylophanes tersa.   Xylo- is a Greek root meaning "wood".  Doesn't the moth look as though it were made from wood?  Phanes is the primeval Greek god of new life.  His name means "Bring to Light".  Phanes is described as having a helmet and golden wings.  Tersa means clean or bright in Italian.  What a descriptive appellation for this moth.    The caterpillar appears to have large brown eyes.  (Its true eyespots are tiny and not easily seen). The adult moth actually does have huge brown eyes.  Sphinx moths are so cool.  You may spot an adult moth in the evening as it sips nectar from your flowers - just like a hummingbird.

Frost Flowers

Frost Flower wrapping around a Pentas stem

Frost Flowers on Pentas

Frost Flowers on Pentas

Frost Flowers spread like wings from Pentas

Candy floss, cotton candy, spun glass, ribbon candy, wool roving, spun sugar, spun cotton:  all are ways to describe the delicate, crystal structures called Frost Flowers. 

A cool, rainy day followed by a freezing night provided the conditions needed for Frost Flowers to occur in my garden.  The soil was moist and not frozen.  The plants had viable roots which could conduct water from the warmer, wet soil into the stems.  When the air temperature plummeted to below freezing, the water in the stems expanded and the plants extruded the water.  Countless, tiny threads of ice were pushed out of the plant stem, starting near the base of the plant.  Variations in air temperature caused the waves of ice to bend, curl and twist forming fantastic shapes.  

If you touch a Frost Flower you will feel that it’s not solid like an icicle.  It’s frothy and fragile.  The ice of a Frost Flower will sublimate as the air warms.  Sublimation means that this ice does not bother with melting into a liquid.  From a solid state it will change directly into a vapor.  The magical Frost Flower will literally vanish into thin air.

In Texas, Frostweed, Verbesinia virginica, is known for making Frost Flowers. The common name is a clue!  In my garden, the Pentas produced the biggest Frost Flowers, but I noticed Frost Flowers on Salvia Indigo Spires,  Russelia and Plumbago.  We have had this phenomenon for three mornings in a row.  I noticed today that the white ice crystals began to appear around 0500 hours.  By 0800 hours, my husband and I were taking photos of the curling formations.  By 10:00 o’clock that morning, the ephemeral Frost Flowers had disappeared.

Frost Flowers on Salvia, Indigo Spires

Frost Flowers on Pentas

 

Frost Flowers on Pentas

My husband captured this image of Frost Flower on Indigo Spires

Fritillary Euthanasia

Injured Gulf Fritillary on Pentas

Injured Gulf Fritillary

Proboscis partially uncurled

  The silver flash from the folded wings of the Gulf Fritillary (Agraulis vanillae) is usually a welcome sight, but there was something odd about this one clinging to my Pentas.  His behavior was wrong: he lingered too long and he didn’t startle as I passed.  The next morning, I found him on the same plant, dangling precariously from the magenta blossoms.  This did not bode well.  Was he dead?  Was he too cold to be active yet?  At the same moment, another Gulf Fritillary hurried through the garden, spreading his pumpkin-orange wings as he paused to sip from the cosmos.