Foresters speak of “skeletonized” leaves. If you see an oak with leaves that have been eaten back to the main stem and veins, you’re looking at the work of orange-striped oakworms, Anisota senatoria.
Most of the caterpillars are still in the trees eating, but we were hiking after a storm, which knocked some to the ground.
They were about an inch and a-half long, black with eight yellow stripes. As the common name suggests, some have orange stripes, although the ones we found did not. The caterpillars have two black spines behind the head. I imagined a tiny longhorn.
The moths are about an inch long, reddish brown with a white spot on the forewing. The female lays about 500 eggs — imagine tiny green BBs — on an underside of a leaf. The caterpillars hatch in about a week and start eating.
When they are grown, the caterpillars dig a hole in the ground and pupate, say the entomologists at the University of Georgia. That I have not seen.
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