This growing season a number of my bonsai trees
have been attacked by caterpillars. I noticed that some of them belonged to moth
families Noctuidae and Geometridae. However, I didn’t expect for one of my
trees to be attacked by a butterfly. While styling a Ficus benjamina shown on the leftmost photo, I spotted several
empty chrysalises attached to its leaves. After a quick look I found an unhatched
chrysalis (photo in the middle). This is a chrysalis of the Common Crow
Butterfly (Euploea core) and you can
see how the adult butterfly looks like in the photo on the right. Common Crow caterpillars
are orange and white with black stripes. Their striking appearance serves as a warning
to predators. Ficus sap contains toxins such as ficusin and its derivatives are
stored in the fatty tissues of the Common Crow caterpillars. These toxins make
caterpillars distasteful to vertebrate predators. This also could be the reason
why the chrysalis is so flashy.
