Found in: North America, Europe, Australia, New Zealand, and western and central Asia to Siberia and China.Brown hooded owlet caterpillar (calico paint caterpillar) If you grow any plants in the parsley family, such as parsley, dill, fennel, and carrots, you’ll often find larvae feeding on the leaves. When activated during times of stress, the osmeterium releases a foul odor to deter predators. The black swallowtail caterpillar is sometimes mistaken for the monarch caterpillar because of its vivid stripes, but that’s where the similarity ends.īlack swallowtail caterpillars have stout green bodies with black and yellow stripes the stripes can also have yellow dots on top.Īll swallowtail caterpillars share a common trait in having an osmeterium, a glandular defense mechanism that resembles a forked tongue sticking out from behind the head. Found in: Southern Canada, most of the eastern and midwestern United States west to the Rocky Mountains, and southwest into Arizona and northern Mexico.Turns into: Black swallowtail butterfly.Host plants include “everlasting” or “cudweed” herbs and their close relatives in the aster family (Asteraceae). White dots are found on either side of the body on segments two through eight. They also have a row of large, branched, black spines with orange or red bases on each segment.

On some caterpillars, the black stripes are so wide that they appear to be black with narrow yellow stripes. The caterpillars silk together leaves and chaff at the tips of flower stalks where they hide during the day, and emerge at night to feed.įull-grown caterpillars are 1.4 inches (3.5 centimeters) long with yellow bodies and thin black stripes.

While American painted lady butterflies are beautiful in their own right, they’re best known for the characteristic nests their caterpillars make at the tops of host plants.

Found in: Southern Canada throughout the US and southward to northern South America occasionally seen in Europe, Hawaii, and the larger Caribbean islands.

Turns into: American painted lady butterfly (also known as American lady, painted beauty, or Hunter’s butterfly).

Bonide Captain Jack’s Dead Bug Brew Garden DustĬommon types of striped caterpillars American painted lady caterpillar.

Safer Brand Bacillus Thuringiensis (B.t.) Concentrate for Caterpillars.

Monterey Bacillus Thuringiensis (B.t.) for Organic Gardening.

Recommended products for caterpillar control: So besides appearance, consider the type of host plant it’s feeding on in order to properly ID the caterpillar. Sometimes a striped caterpillar starts out green before it develops its telltale stripes, and sometimes it turns brown or gray before it pupates. Related: Caterpillar Identification: A Visual Guide to 32 Types of Green Caterpillars in Your Garden All caterpillars go through multiple molts and instars before pupation, and their coloring may change each time. The tricky part is finding a caterpillar in a life stage (instar) where its appearance may not match the pictures below.

While many striped caterpillars seem to look alike at first glance, they all have unique attributes that make them easy to identify, such as spines, horns, and other protrusions. Rosy maple caterpillar (green-striped mapleworm).Orange-striped oakworm (orange-tipped oakworm).Brown hooded owlet caterpillar (calico paint caterpillar).

Yellow striped cat