This great image is an adult tobacco budworm, Heliothis virescens, clinging to some unidentified stink bug eggs on a tobacco leaf in Nash Co. The photographer assumed that they were budworm eggs, but budworm eggs would be smaller and of a different shape, and I doubt a moth would risk damaging her eggs by hanging from them like that. In checking our records of insects on tobacco, I was surprised to find that out of several hundred samples, only 1 was of stink bug, some unidentified nymphs. The tobacco budworm is most often reported from tobacco and cotton in NC, but we also have records from geranium, petunia, rose, snapdragon, soybeans and even Fraser fir.
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