The Witchetty Grub – great bush food

The Witchetty Grub is great bush food – Australian bush tucker. The Witchetty Grub is the larval stage (caterpillar) of a wood moth. The grub is large, white, soft and juicy and is encased in a brown cocoon. Witchettty comes from the word of the Adnyamathanha people of South Australia’s central desert, the ‘witjuri.’

The larva feeds on the Witchetty bush, the Acacia kempeana. It can grow to 12 centimetres (almost 5 inches). The Witchetty Grub, when it is an adult, becomes the wood moth, Endoxyla leucomochla. The moth lives for only a few days before it breeds and dies.

The Witchetty Grub can be eaten as they are a rich source of protein. The white grub is gently and briefly heated in a hot pan or roasted over coals before it is eaten.

The photograph shows a pupa of the Witchetty Grub which I found in the Tidbinbilla Nature Reserve, near Canberra, the capital of Australia.

MARTINA NICOLLS is an international aid and development consultant, and the author of:- The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).

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