Cabbage patch troll

White butterflies fluttering around the Brassica plants mean very hungry caterpillars . I went to check and I found this one straightaway. However I needn't have worried because something else had got there first: a tiny parasitic wasp named Cotesia glomerata. Using its syringe-like ovipositor it laid its eggs inside the live grub, the larvae on hatching devoured its innards and then emerged to spin the cluster of tiny silken cocoons, visible here, from which they will hatch into wasps and start the cycle all over again.

A nightmarish scenario but one that is not at all rare in the insect world where parasites can have parasites of their own (called superparasites). Like others, Cotesia glomerata has long been employed in commercial horticulture (and now domestic gardens) as a bioagent, controlling pests without the use of chemical insecticides.. It was first imported into America for that purpose in 1883.

There are some VERY unpleasant videos of the parasitic larvae breaking out of the engorged caterpillar such as this one. Even I failed to watch it to the end. 

A GARDEN is a lovesome thing, God wot!
Rose plot,
Fringed pool,
Ferned grot—
The veriest school
Of peace; and yet the fool
Contends that God is not—
Not God! in gardens! when the eve is cool?
Nay, but I have a sign;
’Tis very sure God walks in mine.

 Thomas Edward Brown (1830-1897)