CONCORD – “If a child is to keep alive his inborn sense of wonder, he needs the companionship of at least one adult who can share it, rediscovering with him the joy, excitement, and mystery of the world we live in” – Rachel Carson.
At this time of year, the beginning of summer, I always take time to think back to my favorite summer memory: my Uncle Dan spending time with me sharing the wonders of the Catawba Worm Tree.
It was early in the morning, not quite time for kids to be out playing. I was swinging on the front porch, uncertain as to what the day would bring, but it was summertime, so the possibilities seemed endless.
My Uncle Dan came walking down the driveway, stopping at a tree. There are many descriptive names for this tree: Indian cigar, bean tree, and worm tree.
In the North the tree is called Catalpa. But, if you live south of the Mason Dixon line, you surely pronounce the name of the tree correctly: “Kuh-taw-buh.”
Uncle Dan called it the “Catawba Worm Tree,” and so it is.
Uncle Dan was turning over the huge, heart shaped leaves of the Catawba, looking under the backside of each one.
My curiosity drew me out to the tree.
“What are you doing Uncle Dan?”
“Looking for worm eggs.”
A million questions ran through my head. Worm eggs? Did worms lay eggs?
“None yet but it’s time for them. We’ll check tomorrow.
So, each morning when he came walking down the driveway I would run out to join him. There, we would stand side by side, in the deep shade of those gigantic leaves and beautiful clusters of orchid like blossoms. The honey bees were dipping deeply into the flowers but there were no worm eggs.
Finally, after about a week, he said, “Here they are!”
He bent a leaf down for me to see. What I saw was hundreds of whitish, oval shaped dots, inside of a mass. Each oval was about the size of the tip of pin.
I felt disappointed. This looked nothing like any egg I had ever seen. Where was the nest? Where was the mama?
Those eggs had been laid the night before by a female Catawba Sphinx Moth, and their journey to the backside of a Catawba leaf actually began last fall.
As the previous summer waned, the brightly colored adult worm, having eaten all its skin could hold, made its way down the trunk of the Catawba Tree. It burrowed two to three inches beneath the ground and shed its skin to reveal its pupal casing. The pupa is soft and almost translucent at first, then hardens to a light brown for protection from the elements. There it remains through the winter until late spring.
The tissue, limbs and organs of the worm all undergo a miraculous transformation called metamorphosis to become the beautiful parts that make up the Catawba Sphinx Moth.
The adult moth looks nothing like its colorful offspring. It has a large, gray, spindle-shaped body, and is about one and a half inches long. Wings are mostly mottled gray-brown, and span about three inches when extended.
The moths time their emergence when the tree is completely leafed out and the temperature is perfect. The catawba tree is their host plant, and its leaves are the only plant the worms, their larvae, will eat.
The male moth sheds its pupal skin and crawls out from under the ground where it had been living in the pupal stage since last fall. The female emerges a short time later.
The moths are strong flyers but their wings are useless, wet and crumpled when they first emerge. The moths pump a hormone stored in its abdomen which plumps the wings. Little-by-little, the wings gain strength, unfurl and take on shape. The moths flap their wings to build their muscles, and then are able to fly.
Females summon the males with a pheromone released from a gland at the tip of her abdomen. The males can use their antennae to discover her scent from a mile away. When the two locate each other, they fly up the trunk to mate. They mate by attaching at their abdomens while the male holds onto the female with claspers. The female already has hundreds of eggs stored in her body. Soon after the two mate, and the eggs are fertilized, the female flies up and lays a mass of hundreds of eggs on the backside of the lower leaves. The eggs take five to seven days to hatch.
We continued to check on the eggs all that week. One day Uncle Dan bent a leaf down so that I could see something very special.
Inside of the eggs I could see the baby worms moving around.
A few days later Uncle Dan turned over a leaf and there they were: hundreds of tiny, pale, whitish-yellow worms, all together in a group.
What we had been waiting for had finally happened – the eggs had hatched. I did not know at that moment that their hatching was only the beginning of a summer full of wonder.
Editor’s note: This article was contributed by Cindy Austin, a recent addition to the growing family of talented writers at the Richmond Observer.
