We all love our Texas Mountain Laurels! Beautiful evergreen shrubs or trees, nearly invulnerable, with fragrant purple “grape Kool-Aid” pendulant cascading flowers in spring! But alas, their Achilles’ heel is afoot (pun intended). The voracious Genista moth caterpillars can strip them of their new growth in short order, vastly reducing the number of flowers you will get in Spring. Tonight, by flashlight, I removed 50 or so from one of my plants. Personally, I like to pluck them one at a time and squish them! If you are more squeamish, you can drop them in a jar of water with some detergent in it to drown them. If you’re even more wussy, or they’re too high in the tree for you to reach, blast them off with a high power nozzle and they will likely get eaten by predators before they make it back up into the tree. You can locate them by the chewed area near the tips of new growth, accompanied by silky spiderweb looking stuff. Yes I can’t add pictures here, so I’ll create a page for them on my website. For more garden tips, native plant gallery and more, feel free to check out my website, martinbyhower.com.