The 'worms' might be painted lady caterpillars, Sylvia, which will make a beautiful butterfly. I've never raised any myself - they're rare in south MS - but they may be more common in north MS.
The posters on this forum don't do much 'worm' squishing, since most 'worms' on leaves are caterpillars - we mainly kill predatory stink bugs and wasps, because they prey on caterpillars.
Maybe somebody else will have a picture of painted lady cats - if not, you can Google it and find a picture.
Sherry

I found both Painted Lady (Vanessa cardui) and West Coast Lady (Vanessa annabella) larvae on my Hollyhock! What I do before I squish is the 'poke' test. With a soft paintbrush, I gently poke the larvae. IF it raises up like an inchworm, then it is SQUISH! Inchworm-like movement equates to cutworm/Armyworm/ugly brown moth. If it doesn't, then chances are pretty good that it is probably a butterfly larvae. Check out my blog for more info.

Here is a link that might be useful: tdogmom's butterfly guide blog

Greetings Bluebirdms!
If they look like this:
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or like this:
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or maybe this:
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They will turn into this:
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None of these pictures were taken by me, they were pulled off of the internet.
-B

Another possibility is the hibiscus sawfly larvae; image attaced below. They are real skeletonizers!

Here is a link that might be useful: {{gwi:496151}}

Thanks for all the good input & pictures. I've actually seen only one "crawling critter" which I squished. There is still chewing going on so I will find a culprit and put it in a container.

Sylvia

If you can't find the culprit, the culprit is most likely slugs, which apparently do their chewing at night. Check your hollyhocks on cloudy days - I've seen them then. They were chewing the leaves of my seedling pteleas which are growing in containers. I had these containers on the ground in my garden, so I moved them up off the ground to some baker's racks, and now instead of slugs on them, they've got giant swallowtail eggs! Too bad you can't move those hollyhocks to backer's racks!
Sherry

If it is slugs, it seems you could also probably see slime trails on the leaves.
-Jmcat

That one little worm (that I squished) is the only culprit I've found. The leaves had lot of chewing done on them when I bought them, but they were the only 2 I could find. Today I called a nursery I had called 2 weeks ago and they had a new shipment of Hollyhock. I may leave them in their containers for a few days while I see what happens.

Sylvia

Check to see if you see any 'webbing.' It would be somewhat dark in colour. My Kindergartners are now very much aware of this as this definitely will indicate the possible presence of a 'lady' larva! In fact, just today, Jonathan came in with a Lavatera leaf with 'possible' caterpillar marks. Two other children immediately ran over and grabbed magnifying lenses (arguing over three different types of lenses I have available! "This one's better, no this one, no this one!") Sure enough, consensus was that there WAS a caterpillar in the little webbing! I saw it myself...and it will probably be either a Painted or West Coast Lady (Vanessa cardui or Vanessa annabella). Hard to tell at this early stageâ¦

CalSherry aka tdogmom

Here in central CA the damage to my hollyhocks is almost always snails and they attack at night as MissSherry said and absolutely skeletonize the leaves. Just yesterday I had to put some snail pellets around the base of the plants because we have a LOT snails and you can literally lose an entire plant in a single night if it is very young and tender. The butterfly larvae don't usually do any real obvious damage to the plant as they don't eat all that much and there are seldom enough of them to be a problem anyway. Murray

Of course, I would most likely absorb the loss of the plant for the love of the butterflies but fortunately it has never come to that. Even a couple of years ago when we had massive migrations of Painted Lady butterflies come through and for weeks on end had literally hundreds in the yard all day and everyday there was no noticeable damage to my Hollyhocks or my Rose of Sharon shrub.

I have tiny holes all over some of my Virginia Creeper leaves - the culprit? Flea beetles! They are just doing it to the foliage that crawls across the ground, though, so I am not going to do anything about them. Better leave them alone rather than spray the Virginia Creeper.

You might go to the Organic Forum and see if there is anything you can use that would not harm caterpillars.

Susan

There really isn't a thing to do, other than remove the little critters by hand. Any organic or alternative solution would also be harmful to caterpillars. Unless, of course, the culprits are snails or slugs. There is an organic slug bait (active ingredient iron phosphate) that is very helpful. Don't use any other kind of bait.