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While we were watching one of the many big fat black yellow and orange caterpillars inching its way across the path, the 9 year old grand daughter of my landlord took me to a Frangipani Tree and showed me a horrifying site!
The tree was covered in the biggest, fattest and most voracious caterpillars I have ever seen. They were eating all the leaves off the Frangipani tree! Within a week all leaves were gone, the tree literally eaten alive.
Life continued however, even as the destruction was going on around them, two baby humming birds in their nest were being kept alive by their mother, seemingly unaffected by the caterpillars, except that there once hidden and protected nest was now fully revealed.
The birds have now left the nest, the tree is bare, no leaves no fragrant blossoms. Can someone please tell this new islander if –
a: Frangipani butterflies will someday emerge from the caterpillars,
b: that the process is a natural one and that the Frangipani blossoms will soon come back to the tree and fill the air with the fragrance I love.
Posted : January 13, 2004 2:32 pm
Hello Paul,
Yes its natural, they pretty much come every year around the same exact time of year and the tree grows new leaves and reblossons - a cycle.
Yes you will have butterflies soon, or more then usual.
--Islander
Posted : January 14, 2004 4:16 am