Anne Chatfield, age 13, of Redding, Conn., for Her question:

Why do tent caterpillars prefer cherry trees?

A mother moth or butterfly lays her eggs where she knows that the babies will have plenty of their favorite food. The beautiful monarch lays her eggs on a milk week plant where hungry young caterpillars can eat their fill of tender milkweed leaves. Certain tent caterpillars enjoy a diet of cherry tree leaves. Their mama, who is a drab little brown moth, is very careful to lay her eggs where her babies will have plenty of these leaves.

Along with the webworms, tent caterpillars are a great nuisance to many kinds of trees. The webworms encase whole shoots in their nets. Tent caterpillars festoon their tabs around twigs. These two pesky insects threaten many varieties of garden trees, big shade trees and even forest trees. It is a good idea to destroy the moth eggs early in the spring, perhaps by spraying, before they have a chance to hatch into hungry, web weaving caterpillars.