I saw a sphinx moth working the plumeria first a few days ago.
I didn’t have my phone. I went inside to get it, hoping I could catch the moth on the plumeria blooms. By the time I came back out, it was on its way from the plumeria grove to the Mexican hydrangeas. That’s the clip — the moth on the hydrangea, actually drinking. I missed it on the plumeria. I still got to watch it feed.
I keep thinking about that every time I walk past another young seed pod. We have a lot of them this year. We didn’t walk around with a paintbrush. Something out here did the work.
Two visitors, two different jobs
If you stand in our grove long enough, you will see hummingbirds on the plumeria. I see them all the time. They hover right in front of a bloom. They go from tree to tree. It looks like pollination. It isn’t, not in the way that gives you a seed pod.
A hummingbird is built for a different kind of flower — shorter, often wider, usually full of nectar. A plumeria bloom has a long, narrow throat. The hummingbird can try. The bill doesn’t work that tube the way a moth’s tongue does. So the bird visits. It looks busy. Then it leaves. The flower usually just finishes and drops.
A sphinx moth — also called a hawk moth — is built for our plumeria flower. It hovers too. Then it unrolls a long, thin proboscis and reaches down the throat. Plumeria flowers are most fragrant toward evening, which is when these moths work. A lot of plumeria don’t offer much nectar. The moth is following scent, searching bloom to bloom. Pollen goes with it. That’s the visitor researchers have actually found plumeria pollen on. That’s the one tied to seed.
So when I say we thank the moth for the pods, I’m not saying the hummingbirds aren’t here. They are. They’re just not the reason a flower turns into those little horns.
What a seed pod means
Most blooms on a plumeria simply fade. A pod only starts after a flower has been pollinated. The base swells. You get those small green points, sometimes with a bit of red on new growth. Later they lengthen into a pair of pods. They need about nine months on the tree. Pick them early and the seed usually isn’t worth much.
This year those young pods showed up on tree after tree — JL Jefferson’s Gold, Herzog Joy, King Kalakaua, Royal Hawaiian, KoolAid, Fantasia, San Miguel, Kaneohe Sunburst, ET LemonDrop.... It seems like every plumeria that has an inflow with blooms now has seed pods forming. That tells me the moths were working. It also tells me the plants were healthy enough to bloom hard and then set seed.
Seedlings will not be copies of the mother. Cuttings keep a variety true. Seed is a new plant. That’s why a year with this many pods feels like a gift, even if we won’t see those first flowers for a while.
What I saw in the video
This wasn’t a planned shoot.
The moth was already on the plumeria, going bloom to bloom. I ran inside for my phone. When I came back it was on the Mexican hydrangea. That’s what I filmed. The hydrangea had nectar. The plumeria had the shape and the perfume. The moth used the whole yard.
I wish I’d caught it on the blooms. What I did catch still tells the story. We can’t pin every pod on that one moth. We can say this is the insect plumeria is known for, we have them here, and this is the year the grove set seed on its own.
What we do with that information
We try to keep our nursery and yard a place a sphinx moth wants to work.
We plant other flowers they will actually feed on — Mexican hydrangea, moonflower, things with nectar — so they have a meal besides the plumeria. The plumeria is what they’re built to pollinate. The other blooms are what they can drink.
We don’t spray in the evening. That’s when the moths are out. When we do need a fungicide or insecticide, we use organic products and we do that work at a time we’re not fogging the grove at dusk.
We don’t need to catch the moth. We just try not to run it off.
If you grow plumeria at home and you’ve never seen one, that doesn’t mean it isn’t coming. A lot of their work happens when we’re already inside. If you do see one hovering in front of a bloom, that’s the visitor. If you see a hummingbird doing the same thing in daylight, enjoy it. Just don’t wait on that bird for seed.
We made a simple drawing so it’s easier to see the difference.
On one side, a hummingbird at the face of the bloom — hovering, trying, bill only going so far. On the other, a sphinx moth with that long tongue down the throat. That’s why one visitor is fun to watch and the other is the one that leads to seed pods.
The phone video is the live version. I missed the moth on the plumeria and caught it on the Mexican hydrangea instead. Still worth sharing. Once you’ve seen the tongue on that moth, the pods on the trees make a lot more sense.
That’s the story this year. Hummingbirds mainly in the daytime. Moths mainly at dusk when the flowers smell strongest. And a grove full of young seed pods we get to watch for about 9 month and then harvest.