Teri C said I should draw my silkworms as she hadnt seen any. Well they start off as tiny little threads of caterpillar's and grow to at least 2 to 21/2 inches long. I have some almost white ones and some with distinct stripes. Last year I got white and yellow cocoons and I wondered if the stripey ones had yellow cocoons but this year they both have white ones. My sketch of the cocoon looks pretty strange and not much like what it should. Really they are large caterpillars who spin silk.While I was in Japan I went to the silk museum in Yokohama and they had a lot of different silk spinning caterpillars. Not just the two varieties that we have in Australia. They live on mulberry leaves and I am wondering how many leaves I will have left on the tree. I have made these a bit brown mostly so they would show up they really are a grey. I am leaving my cocoons to hatch out into moths in the hope that enough hatch at the same time to lay eggs for next year. I can still get a bit of silk off the cocoons if I want to.
4 comments:
NEAT !!!! Here in NC (and in SC), we have an abundance of mulberry trees -- feeding materials for silk worms. Our earliest colonists imported silkworms to try to begin this industry --- Alas, the trees were the wrong species of mulberry -- so the industry didn't take off ... are you growing these for silk?
Thank you Penny!! That is absolutely fascinating, the drawings and the comments. I really know nothing about silkworms. As Lin asked, do you grow these for silk? And how are they harvested? Arn't we just full of questions.
Great learning experience here. Thank you again.
How fascinating....growing silk worms brings mostly warm fuzzy memories.
When I was about 10 years old, my mum decided to grow silk worms....
There was this huge mulberry tree right under our windows but unfortunately wrong type.We had to travel to other parts of town with permission to harvest the leaves.
It was a 24/7 job that at the end did not bring that little extra income as hoped.
Odd that they should be the wrong mulberries as I have a friend who feeds hers on white mulberries and mine are fed on black, as a child all we could get were black mulberries (and they are the best to eat too).
You need lots and lots of cocoons to really make silk so I think mine will be used in my textile stuff.
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