My youngest son found this his exquisite little caterpillar of pale tussock moth Calliteara pudibunda while he was cutting down the rampant ornamental hops that festoon our garden hedge. Aside from its colour and spectacular hairiness, one of its features that fascinates me is the way it exposes bands of black skin between its segments as it walks. Its undulating progress reminds me of an accordion and I half-expect a tune to emanate from it as it hurries along.
If you disturb a pale tussock moth larva it immediately
adopts a ‘curled-up hedgehog’ mode, becoming a defensive ball covered in
rosettes of long, neon green whiskers, with a mane of bristles, with dense
tufts like miniature shaving brushes on its back, and a menacing spike of
rose-pink hairs at the tail. Everything about it warns “don’t touch me”
This caterpillar might present a challenge for most
insectivorous birds, although cuckoos, with a gizzard that can cope with
irritating hairs, sometimes eat them.
Those deterrents inflict discomfort on tender human flesh:
finely barbed and filled with irritating fluid, they can cause
dermatitis. Calliteara pudibunda was once a notorious pest of hop
fields, which might explain the naturalist Gilbert
White’s journal entry for 8 October 1781, noting
that “several women and children have eruptions on their hands … after
they have been employed in hop-picking”. More recently, families from London’s
East End, travelling
to Kent for traditional hop-picking work every autumn, would have been
painfully familiar with these caterpillars, which they knew as “hop-dogs”.
Pale tussock larvae are not picky about food plants and
defoliate at least a dozen broadleaved tree species, including beech, hawthorn,
sycamore and lime. By early autumn they are fully fed and only interested in
finding somewhere dry and secure, ambling off (to the tune of an imaginary
accordion) among the leaf litter, where they’ll pupate inside a cocoon woven
from recycled defensive bristles.
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