First things first. What is Kodukkapuli? Tamilians who grew up in small towns and villages will immediately recognize this! It gets its name from the peculiar fruit resembling tamarind. It has a sweet-and-sour taste and was popular with children when I was schooling. The short and spiny tree is also called Madras Thorn or Manila Tamarind, which goes by the scientific name Pithecellobium dulce. Not sure of any connection with Madras or Manila, but sure enough, this tree grows in the vacant plot near my house!
It all started during this hot summer when Poornima noticed a common grass yellow butterfly busily laying eggs on the plant. A quick check with experts confirmed that this is one of the Larval host plants of the butterfly. A close look at the plant revealed a large number of larvae on the plant. We quickly collected a few to watch them at home.
Very soon we noticed one of them hanging on to a slanting branch, ready to pupate.
The very next day it has metamorphosed into a pupa!
Butterfly species choose to attach the pupa to a branch at a delicate angle. They do this for a purpose. When the butterfly emerges from the pupa, its wings will be fully curled up and maybe wet. It needs to hold on to the empty pupa shell with its wings dangling down for an extended period of time. This allows for the wings to dry and slowly flatten to have functional pairs of wings. A very critical part of the transformation to a butterfly!
We had four of the larvae that converted to a pupa in this small dabba. Please spot all the 4 pupae, if you can!
In a short period of around a week, we had two butterflies emerge. One of them quickly flew away.
Another one spent enough time posing with Poornima for photographs!
An empty pupa shell
But two of them didn’t make it.
One of them was almost out of the shell but just could not extricate itself. Note the ants around – anything dead gets cleaned up quickly!
You can see here the Common Grass Yellow laying an egg!
Finally, here’s the egg of the Common Grass yellow where it all starts!!
While all of this drama was going on, during one of my visits to the tree, I noticed this looper moth, feeding vigorously on the leaf.
This one was resting!
I clicked a video of it actively feeding as well.
We didn’t know the ID of the Moth, but we decided to bring along a few of them (4 again incidentally!) and added them to a separate container with a thin cloth covering the mouth of the container. We had left a few of the branches like we do with butterflies to help the larva pupate. But we noticed that the larvae were frantically moving around on the base of the container ( I guess looking for a safe place to pupate). But eventually, all 4 of them pupated at the bottom of the container.
After this, both of us had to travel to Bangalore and were away for 4 days, during which Anirudh noticed two of the moths emerge. Finally, on the day we returned, the last two moths emerged from the pupa. One of them flew away as soon as I opened the container and settled in a corner of the building.
The Second one stayed for some time in the container. The Moth seems to be Chiasmia sp, more specifically Chiasmia eleonora. Need to be confirmed.
Besides these, we found hundreds of these hairy caterpillars frantically scouring the ground for a safe place to pupate!
We didn’t have time to explore this species. All of this action happened over a period of two weeks in hot summer!
It is amazing how this thorny, short and stubby tree supports such a wide variety of life! These small trees that make food from sunlight sustain all of life on earth including you and me. As the species get more and more intelligent, they become increasingly selfish and take more from nature than give. You know where we fit in all of this!
Finally an image of the Kodukkapuli tree 🙂
Want to be a Nomad 