Caterpillar eating orchid.... Help

[Nanook 2010]

Hello members...

Need a little help.... Attached are pictures of the little guy doing the damage and the other is if my orchid ( lost the I'd tag). Can anyone help in the I'd of the caterpillar? I have moved this plant, washed completely and repotted. No other orchids seem affected.

Thoughts?

[Leafmite]

Wow!
Many moths and butterflies are host specific but some eat anything green. Here is a link to my favorite site to identify bugs:

Superfamily Psylloidea - BugGuide.Net

[WhiteRabbit]

I have a couple of times found green caterpillars on orchids - no idea what they were - I just relocate them away from the orchids lol

[Bud]

A butterfly laid eggs on one of my Vandas....I used a butter knife to scrape it whole with its sticky glue and all....relocated and pasted it to a maple leaf ....I think they survived

[dounoharm]

kill kill kill! i hate any bug that eats my orchids, they are all subject to squishing.....

[Orchidsoutdoors]

I grow all mine in the garden so it's par for the course. Once they get big enough they can handle a bit of gnawing, the only time it hits hard is when they attack bloom spikes.

[Brooke]

All of my caterpillars are moths - little tiny pale yellow or white moths. They get sucked through my vent fan, lays eggs, the caterpillars hatch and eat blooms, spikes and leaves. The moths LOVE to lay eggs in some of my mounts with coir string as the media.

I keep Raid bee/wasp spray in the g/h and because the spray can shoot 10-15 feet, I kill the live moths. This year I am going to use an insecticide in the coir string mounts to hopefully kill the caterpillars before the create havoc.

Brooke

[allyqat]

I was directed by the friendly forum members to a reasonably priced insecticide: $10 Garden Safe® Brand Neem Oil Extract Concentrate at Lowes. You dilute it as per instructions on the bottle and spray on affected tissues until wet. Relatively safe for humans and animals, but fungus, insects, and mites hate it. Works very well in my experience with fungus. The idea is the neem oil is a repellant in addition to a killing agent. Dunno how well it works with caterpillars, but may be worth investigating. Just wanted to pass on what someone awesome shared with me

[euplusia]

Sometimes its hard to get by with an insectizide. Take a flashlight and hunt them up at night, eventually guided by their excrements. Do it repeatedly, because several eggs produce several caterpillars.