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Cottonwood Dagger-moth
The moth, of which we reproduce the figures of the larva and imago given by Professor Riley, who first described the species, ranges from Canada to the western parts of the Carolinas, thence across the continent to the Pacific coast, avoiding the warmer regions of the Gulf States and southern California. The imago is discriminated from Apatela lepusculina Guenee by the broader wings, especially of the female, by the paler ground-color of the primaries, and by the absence of the orbicular spot, which is very rarely as conspicuous as it appears in the figure given by Riley, and still further by the very short basal dash on the fore wings, which in A. lepusculina is long, reaching outwardly as a sharply defined black line one-third of the length of the cell. The larva is also quite different in important particulars from that of the species, which has been named, but with which this species is often confounded in collections. The caterpillar feeds upon the foliage of different species of the genus Populus, and is particularly common in the States of the Mississippi Basin upon the Cottonwood (Populus monilifera and Populus heterophylla.)