Check Azaleas for Caterpillars

One of my neighbors brought some caterpillars by my house just this past week and wanted me to identify them for him. He said that they were eating the leaves off of his azaleas.

The caterpillars that he had were fairly large in size – about 2 inches long – with broken yellow stripes that ran down the length of their black colored bodies. The head and legs of the worms were red in color.

These are actually called azalea caterpillars. They occur now in the early fall period of the year and there is only one generation in the life cycle. They feed strictly on azaleas.

The adult moths are about 1 inch long and are brown in color. They have a wingspan of about 2 inches. As they fly around, they lay masses of 80 to 100 eggs on the underside of the leaves.

When these eggs hatch, the young caterpillars begin to eat the leaves and grow. They typically feed in clusters side by side unless they are disturbed. A unique behavior that they have is that when the worms are disturbed they will raise their head and posterior in unison.They can completely defoliate small azalea plants and partially defoliate larger azaleas if they are not controlled.

If you have azaleas growing in your home landscape, make sure that you check them for this pest. With all of the struggles that we have had this summer with the heat and dry weather, this is a pest that you don’t want to allow to strip the leaves off of your plants. It’s important to keep the leaves on your azaleas as long as you can this fall so the plants can make enough energy reserves for the root system to survive the cold winter months ahead.

Insecticide products labeled for azalea caterpillars include carbaryl (Sevin), bacillus thuringiensis (Thuricide, Biotrol, Dipel, etc.), and various pyrethrin products. Check the label on any insecticide product that you plan to buy and use and make sure leaf feeding caterpillars are listed on the label.

Small numbers of azalea caterpillars can be removed by hand and destroyed. Larger caterpillars must be sprayed directly to control them since they reduce their feeding as they near the pupae stage.

Don’t ignore your azaleas and allow azalea caterpillars to completely defoliate your plants this fall.