364 INSECT PESTS OF FARM, GARDEN AND ORCHARD 



garden crops when they become overabundant and migrate to 

 them from the weeds on which they normally feed, and occasionally 

 do some damage to sugar beets, they are best known as a pest of 

 corn and cotton. Though the species occurs throughout the 

 United States and south to South America, it has been most 

 injurious from Nebraska southward and east to Mississippi and 

 Illinois. The larvae feed normally on the pigweed or careless 

 weed (Amaranthus spp.) from which they sometimes receive the 

 local name of "careless worm/' and only when they become 

 overabundant on these weeds do they usually increase sufficiently 

 to migrate from them and attack crops. 



The moth is a yellowish, buff or grayish-brown color, marked 

 as shown in Fig. 307, and with a wing expanse of about three- 

 quarters of an inch. The larva also varies in color from pale 

 and greenish-yellow to dark yellow, and is marked with numerous 

 black tubercles as shown in Fig. 307, b, c. 



Life History. The hibernating habits are not known, but from 

 analogy with the beet webworm, and the appearance of the 



moths, it seems 

 probable that the 

 winter is passed by 

 the larvae or pupae 

 in the soil. The 

 moths appear in 

 Texas by mid-April 

 and in central Illi- 

 nois in late May 

 and early June. 

 The yellowish eggs 

 are laid on the foli- 

 age in small patches 

 of from 8 to 20 and 

 The larvae of the first 



FIG. 307. The garden webworm (Loxostege simi- 

 lalis Gn.):a, male moth; 6, c larvae; d, anal 

 segment of same; e, abdominal segment of same 

 from side; /, pupa; g, tip of abdomen of same; 

 a, 6, c, /, somewhat enlarged; d, e, g, more en- 

 larged. (After Riley and Chittenden, U. S. Dept. 

 Agr.) 



in Texas hatch in three or four days, 

 generations feed on weeds or alfalfa, where it is grown, and then 

 migrate to corn and cotton or garden truck, the former crops 

 being attacked when six or eight inches high. In feeding the 

 caterpillars spin a fine web, which gradually envelopes the plant, 

 of which nothing is left but the skeletons of the leaves when the 



