Malayan Mistletoe and Caterpillars

This afternoon, while I was doing my routine round at the park, I spotted a Crepe Myrtle (Lagerstroemia indica) with a Malayan Mistletoe (Dendrophthoe pentandra) sitting on one of its branches.

While scanning the mistletoe, I saw a lump of material underneath one of the leaves that looked like bird dropping. I suspected that it could be a caterpillar since the leaf at one end had been eaten away. Later, I did confirm that it is the caterpillar of the Peacock Royal (Tajuria cippus maxentius).

With this find, I started to search more thoroughly to see whether there were more of the caterpillars. Indeed, there were more except that this newly discovered group of caterpillars were not of the same species as the one above. They belong to the butterfly, Painted Jezebel (Delias hyparete metarete).

Both the caterpillars of Peacock Royal and Painted Jezebel are known to feed on this mistletoe. While searching for caterpillars, I also found more mistletoe on this Crepe Myrtle shrub.

There were at least 10 or more mistletoe but most of them were seedlings. This one had just started to germinate on one of the branches. [Update: This was not the seedling of Malayan Mistletoe but another mistletoe known as Common Chinese Mistletoe (Macrosolen cochinchinensis).]

Besides this lone Crepe Myrtle shrub, this mistletoe had also invaded quite a few of the Penang Sloe (Kopsia flavida) trees in the park. One of the trees was so heavily infested that none of the leaf from the host plant was left. These were some of the mistletoe flowers seen on the tree.

If you are interested to read more about mistletoe in Singapore, there is a book titled "The Singapore Mistletoe Story" written by Francis Lim.