An upright cassava stalk with hand-shaped leaves rises from a cluster of fat yellow roots. A black caterpillar banded in yellow, with a red head and tail, climbs a leaf stalk, and a gray moth with patterned wings and yellow spots on its body flies at upper right. A spotted brown snake coils around the stalk, a dark red pupa lies on the roots, a mass of green-speckled eggs rests on one cut root, and a small black-and-yellow insect sits on a crumbly slab at right. Maria Sibylla Merian drew the scene for plate 5 of Metamorphosis insectorum Surinamensium (1705), engraved by J.

Mulder. Her text explains that cassava roots were grated, pressed to remove their poisonous juice and baked on an iron plate into a bread like Dutch rusk. The black caterpillar ate whole fields of cassava in her time, pupated in December 1700 and gave the moth four weeks later. Merian wrote that she added the snake to decorate the page; its thick belly showed it carried eggs, which have no hard shell but a speckled skin, like those of crocodiles and turtles.

It is in the Smithsonian Libraries in Washington, DC.