It is a tobacco hormworm. Yours wasn't yet full grown. I've seen them 4" long or longer. The tobacco hornworm and tomato hornworm are a big problem on tomato plants in the summer months and in warm springs I've seen them appear as early as very late February.

More info about them can be found below.

Dawn

Here is a link that might be useful: Tobacco Hornworm

I've seen birds weighted in flight while carrying one of these enormous creatures. It was at least five inches long. It is a spectacular sight!

bon

Interesting that it's a tobacco hornworm instead of a tomato, but I guess they are equal opportunity feeders. I looked all over my tomato plants outside both for the worms and missing leaves, and couldn't find any worms or signs of damage. I wonder if the birds are feasting on them? Funny that the only one I've seen grew up on plants I've had indoors.

By the way, along with the missing leaves, the first thing that caught my eye was the collection of little black "pellets" scattered on the window ledge below the jar containing the tomato suckers.

It took me awhile to figure out those black pellets were actually digested tomato leaves deposited by Mr. Worm. Ugh...

Tobacco hornworms seem to be much more common than tomato hornworms in OK. There's lots of other kinds of hornworms, but most people don't see them unless they have the specific plants used by those other types of hornworms. This year I've seen several other kinds of hornworms on our property, but not on our veggies.

Tobacco hornworms prefer tobacco plants, but except for ornamental flowering tobacco plants like Nicotiana, there's not a lot of tobacco grown in OK, so the tobacco hornworms tend to feed on Solanacea plants, including tomato, pepper and eggplant plants, and on native solanums.

Tomato hornworms (Manduca quinquemaculata) are more common West of the Rockies, while Tobacco hornworms (Manduca sexta) are more common East of the Rockies. I raise mine on Datura, a member of the Solonaceae family. They will also thrive on Brugmansias, Nicotiana as Dawn says, tobacco, potatoes, pappers, eggplant, tomatillos, and many other ornamentals. They do seem to prefer Tomatos and Datura in my garden.

The adult moths are quite large and very pretty. They are great pollinators of many deep-throated flowers, that other insects may not be able to reach. Manducas have a very long proboscis, about 4-6". And, no, the cats do not "bite". They don't have stingers, or teeth, or anything of that nature. The "horn" is very soft to the touch.

When I check my tomatos for larvae, I look for things like munched leaves - especially at the tops of the plants where the more tender leaves are from new growth; frass, or caterpillar poo, which is large, dark green pellets, on foliage. If I am lucky, I might find the large, spherical green eggs on the undersides of foliage, layed singly. If it's a cluster of eggs, it's not a sphinx moth, but something else. Tobacco sphinx have white slashes across the length of their body, but Tomato hornworms have chevrons. The Tobacco hornworm's horn can be red or yellow, while the Tomato hornworm's horn is always black.

You may find a large hornworm with little white cocoons amassed on it's body. That means it has been attacked by a parasitic wasp. The wasps eat the hornworm from the inside out. You may not want to kill a hornworm that exhibits these cocoons because you may want to have more parasitic wasps around to take care of the hornworms. If you want to save it, you can't. People sometimes try pulling the cocoons off, but that won't do any good. They are already at work inside the caterpillar. The cat is a goner.

I love having the night-flying sphinx, often referred to as hummingbird moths because they hover at flowers like the hummers do. The adults are extremely beneficial in the garden. You can grow extra tomato plants to move the cats to, or grow another plant they like. I grow Datura which gets huge, and I move the cats to this plant. You can enjoy a great portion of their life cycle. They have many predators as it is, like the wasps, birds, and other insects.

There are many other night flying and day flying sphinx moths commonly seen in gardens. Day flying sphinx include the Snowberry Clearwing - a small sphinx that resembles a large bumblebee - and the Nessus sphinx, a reddish brown sphinx, a bit larger than the Snowberry, that has two (or sometimes one) cream colored stripe across the lower abdomen. When I put out my rotting bananas for the butterflies that like to nectar on them, I often see the Nessus sphinx enjoying them, too, and they are such fun to watch. The White-Lined Sphinx is a larger sphinx seen nectaring on flowers during the day. Night flying moths often seen in Oklahoma include the Pink-Spotted Hawkmoth, Eumorpha sphinx, Pandora Sphinx, Virginia Creeper Sphinx, Trumpetvine sphinx, Elm or Four-Horned Sphinx, and Tersa sphinx. There are many more, but too many to list all of them. I have raised many of these found in my own yard only. Quite interesting. My GD helps me with them and she is very interested in nature now.

Whatever you choose to do with them is up to you, tho. I know Dawn usually plants extra tomatos for her Tobacco hornworms, and since she lives in a rural area, she sees many more of these beautiful sphinx moths than I do because many of their larval host plants are found in rural areas.

Susan

Susan, I grow Nicotiana sylvestris and, strangely enough, they seem to prefer daturas to it. Figure that one out! lol

They rarely bother my tomato plants. I have had as many as 300 tomato plants this year, but have yanked out about 2/3s of them now, and haven't seen a hornworm on a single one, not have I seen hornworm damage. They must still be eating the native solanums in the fields. Since we have had almost average rainfall year-to-date, the native solanums still look pretty good.

I also think the four o'clocks have something to do with the hornworms leaving my tomatoes alone. I have seen the Cherry hornworms, pandora and Virginia Creeper this year. Usually see some others. Since we have tons of night-blooming flowers, we have hawkmoths all over the place at night and really enjoy watching them.

They haven't bothered my two brugmansias at all this year, but that may because the poor things are crawling with spider mites despite me trying everything under the sun to kill the mites.

Dawn

Dawn,

Do your four o'clocks actually bloom at 4? I think I have eight o'clocks and was wondering if that is usual.

No, mine are not 4 o'clocks. I believe they must respond to daylength or light intensity or temperatures or something because they open up earlier in fall and spring and later in mid-summer. Right now mine are more like 6:30 o'clocks. I ran outside just now to look and see if any were open, and the first flower on the first plant is half-open. I have about 100 of them and they do not all open at the same time. It takes an hour or so for all of them to open.

Also as the autumn gets cooler and cooler, the flowers stay open later and later in the morning until they're staying open most of the day, and not only at night. Morning glories often do the same thing in autumn, and so do moonflowers.

I have nothing to add except that I love you took a picture of that thing on your granite countertops! LOL!

Ha! The tomato starts were on a window sill above the kitchen sink. After a quick photo shoot on the counter, the bug and denuded plants went into the compost bucket for a trip out back.