Black Beetle

Thanks to my friend Bob’s encouragement, I was able to fiddle with my camera and get this shot of a Black Beetle on my Vanda orchid a week ago. If you zoom in on the picture, click on this image and then click on it again in the new page, you can see the beetle’s long hook like nails used to climb plants I suppose. He’s definitely in the “benefical instect” category.

I’ve been singing this song for the last four days, because we had a BIG heat wave last Thursday.  Half of each pot of my herb and flower seedlings got wiped out!

Affected worst were Catnip, Purple Basil, Sun Flower, Foxglove (totally kaput now), Allysium.

The contenders were Four O Clocks, Mint, Succulents (Cape Blanco and Lithops), and all my other plants that were in the shade,  and lemon tree.

Here are the pictures of what remains:

So my mint plant had just recovered from a good pruning from one month ago and was flourishing.  Yesterday I noticed holes and black spots appeared on some of the leaves.  Today there were a lot more holes so I decided to document this occurrence.  All it is is a hungry little caterpillar!  This is totally harmless.  I in fact love having caterpillars around as they always remind me of Eric Carle’s book The Hungry Caterpillar.  I find the whole metamorphosis into becoming a butterfly is so fascinating.  If I were to cook with my mint, I could just make sure to clean the mint leaves (as I normally would) and just make sure I haven’t added the caterpillar into the meal by mistake.

Wikipedia Entry for Lithops