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Cacti & Succulents

Kalanchoe leaf getting eaten up

13 years ago

I got this plant on the 17th and a couple of days ago I noticed that one of the leaves looked like something had eaten part of it (like a caterpillar?). I assumed that maybe it was there before I got it home and just hadn't noticed it, but today I saw that the eaten portion had gotten bigger.

What do you folks think?

Thank you for all the advice, help and encouragement. Because I'm new, trying to figure out the care of each type of plant I have takes time to research and then more time to absorb, practice, make mistakes, relearn etc. But it's a lot of fun and very rewarding and most of that is because of the strong sense of community I feel on GW.

I have a lot of questions and I hope I don't come off as someone who is making a lot of demands on people's time.

~ deburn

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sorry about the quality of these pics. I couldn't get a clear view of the leaf, but hopefully these give you the idea

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Comments (4)

cactusmcharris, interior BC Z4/5
13 years ago
Definitely slug, snail or caterpillar, or someone's playing a joke on you using very small scissors.

That looks like a K. blossfeldiana leaf - if it has the same qualities as the other Kalanchoe (in terms of offsetting/rooting easily) your leaf should still be viable.
deburn
Original Author
13 years ago
Thanks cactusmharris - I like "someone's playing a joke on you using very small scissors" Very funny!

You're right, it is a caterpillar. Al/Tapla had the same suggestion. So I looked again at the plant and found a green caterpillar on the underside of a leaf. It was almost exactly the same color! I had to look very closely to find it.

Released it to the outdoors and hoping that was the only one.

On a side note, this is one of the few plants that I've bought from a nursery and in my mind I thought one of the benefits of buying from a nursery is that the plants are better taken care of and in better health.

I've bought a lot of plants from HD and a few from Lowes and never had a single bug or anything - so far at least!
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deburn
Original Author
13 years ago
Here's a pic of the culprit, if anyone's interested. Sorry about the blurry pics - it moves fast!

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norma_2006
13 years ago
That plant may not have had anything on it when it was purchased. Look under flats and pot and inbetween the pots, they crawl up walls, and grasshoppers do that kind of damage as well. The squirells ate some Rebutia for dinner and the squirell finished it off, I saw this, birds also eat the top of Lithops, they also can see the water inside. We have Blue Jays here, which are very smart birds and can be trained to take food out of your hands, very cheeky. Norma

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