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In the past couple of weeks I have had all of my silvery annuals completely demolished by caterpillars. One day I noticed my Licorice plants Helichrysum petiolare and curry plants Helichrysum italicum had some sort of webbing on the tips of the plants (well camouflaged against the felted silver leaves) and days later the plants were dead and covered in caterpillars. A friend identified them as gypsy moths, which I know are in the area but all the searching I have done deals with them as a tree pest. I'm inclined to think they are another type of caterpillar. I did take photos but am not able to upload them at this time. Is there a particular species of caterpillars that are known to eat these plants? It happened so quickly but at least it's nearing the end of the season... any suggestions for prevention next year? My curry plants had overwintered from last year's pots so I didn't seem to have this problem last year.

Does it look like this?
https://negreenhouseupdate.info/photos/c ... elichrysum

Oh man, that would be really cool! If that were right and it were me, I would be glad to sacrifice the helichrysums for the painted ladies.

However, in my (limited) experience, butterfly caterpillars don't tend to congregate in masses like that so much, destructive moth caterpillars do.

Here's a caterpillar ID guide:

https://www.discoverlife.org/mp/20q?guide=Caterpillars

If it does turn out to be something destructive, Bt is usually effective against caterpillar type pests.

Ooo I would love if they were painted ladies! Although I'd also feel terrible, because I did squish some of them I'll have to reference the photos I took later tonight, I'm terrible at caterpillar IDing, some of them look so very similar and some of the same species even look different from one another to me.