Quote:
Originally Posted by Janet Baraclough
"K" wrote in message
...
Ragwort is a native UK plant which is a primary food plant for the
cinnabar moth, listed on the UK Biodiversity Action Plan as rapidly
declining.
In my childhood, every ragwort seemed to be crawling with handsome
stripey cinnabar caterpillars and later we saw clouds of moths.
but I hadn't seen any caterpillars for years . Last week, weeding the
drive, I found a very stunted ragwort with two tiny
cinnabar caterpillars on it. A couple of days later, no more had
appeared, and the two had almost exhausted their larder so I moved them
to a full-grown ragwort plant
where they are gobbling and growing fast. I walked up the lane
inspecting every ragwort I could find, not one caterpillar. Dunno why;
there's no chemical spraying here.
What luck to have them in my garden !
Janet |
There are two kinds of ragwort, and one is not a desirable or native plant. That is the Oxford ragwort, which escaped from the Botanic Garden and was drawn along the railway lines and now infest badly kept pasture and rough ground. It is a notifiable agricultural weed, and failure to remove it can result in a fine or [in the case of farmers] refusal of payment for set-aside.
I have seen no caterpillars on moths round here for years, nor any moths.
Since cinnabar presumably feeds on other foods than ragwort, it is the other plant that we should be encouraging.
Perhaps there is a pest eating the caterpillars?