Black Witches in Ohio!

 

This post dives a bit deeper into this amazing moth than did the last post.

A female Black Witch (Ascalapha odorata) perches on the foliage of Chestnut Oak (Quercus prinus) deep in Shawnee State Forest, Scioto County, Ohio. This is the largest moth, by dimensions, that occurs in Ohio and similar latitudes. The witch in my photo was shot where it was found near a mothing station that was part of Mothapalooza, on July 17, 2026. Amazingly, a sharp young attendee, Yann, found this one off in the woods, some distance from the illuminated sheets that most of us were inspecting for easier moth fare. A truly great find.

This Black Witch turned up Friday night - a truly epic night for mothing - and amazingly, another turned up a few miles away the same evening, at a mothing station at the Shawnee State Park Lodge. Diana Malas later contacted me to tell about yet another witch that appeared at her house in Dayton. Amazing! Three witches in one day, in Ohio! One must wonder how many that were out there went unreported.

Female Black Witches can have a wingspan approaching 9.5 inches, which is utterly huge for an insect (males are somewhat smaller). The only regularly occurring moth in the Midwest that rivals that is the Cecropia Moth (Hyalophora cecropia). It may outweigh - slightly - a Black Witch but falls short in the wingspan department.

The Black Witch is a tropical species, and the Rio Grande Valley of Texas and the southernmost reaches of some of the Gulf states is as far north as it typically reproduces and occurs in any numbers. But this species is a powerful flyer and well known for its northward wanderings. I believe they are becoming more frequent northward. Following are the iNaturalist records for Ohio for the last decade:

2026 - 12 (so far, there will likely be more to come)
2025 - 13
2024 - 8
2023 - 5
2022 - 7
2021 - 6
2020 - 5
2019 - 5
2018 - 2
2017 - 1

Going back further in the iNat database reveals very few sightings, with no records for many of the preceding years. While a more in-depth analysis of Black Witch records over a broader region would provide a more robust data set to document increases, I think that the Ohio data shows a clear trend in increased sightings in the last decade or so.

Keep your eyes open for Black Witches (they are usually hard to hard to miss). It'll be interesting to watch the continued increase in this species in the north, and to see if they eventually start reproducing regularly at this latitude. The caterpillars feed on various members of the pea family (Fabaceae), including Black Locust (Robinia pseudoacacia) and Kentucky Coffee Tree (Gymnocladus dioicus). The latter is very common statewide, and the former is less common and more range-restricted but is being increasingly used as a landscape tree. They also use various mimosa trees such as Silk Tree (Albizia julibrissin), and some mimosa species may be becoming more frequent in plantings in the north.

If you search "Black Witch" in the search box in the upper lefthand corner of this blog, you'll see other posts about them from years past, including some that have photos of the huge, spectacular caterpillars.