Black cutworm
The black cutworm is a brown moth with a little black Y mark on each front wing. Its fat grey caterpillar hides in the soil by day and comes out to cut through young plants. That is how it got the name cutworm.
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Fun facts
Its caterpillar grows from 3.5 millimetres to 5.5 centimetres long.
In spring it flies north and in autumn it flies south, like a migrating bird.
A mother can lay well over a thousand eggs.
Its round eggs have 35 to 40 little ridges, like a tiny striped ball.
From egg to moth takes only about one to two months.
Most asked questions about Black cutworm
?Why is it called a cutworm?
Because its caterpillar cuts through young plants near the ground.
?Is the black cutworm dangerous?
Not to people. But its caterpillars eat many vegetables and crops.
?What does the black cutworm eat?
The caterpillars eat weeds, vegetables and crops. The moths drink nectar.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Agrotis ipsilon
- Group
- Moths
- Family
- Noctuidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Lepidoptera > Noctuidae
- Lives on
- Europe, Asia, Africa, North America, South America, Australia and Oceania
- Also known as
- Dark sword-grass, Ipsilon dart, Greasy cutworm, Floodplain cutworm
Where the facts come from
- Agrotis ipsilon (Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0): what it looks like, where it lives, what it eats, sizes and fun facts, retold in simple words.
- Picture by Caroline Harding, MAF. CC BY 3.0 au, Wikimedia Commons. The round sticker of this bug is cut from the same picture.
If we got something wrong, sorry, we are bug fans, not a science journal. Tell us at [email protected] and we will fix it.
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