In spring I found dozens of scattered egg cases of our native Preying Mantis. Their now in the final stages of nymph hood, the grasshoppers beat them by a month. The mantis seem to only get 1 inch or a little over in size. Last week I bough a cypress tree at lowes and apparently the Chinese Mantis (largest species) hitchhiked. They are easily 3x the size of the other mantis and only feet away from some. Will the Chinese mantis eat the california mantis? The Chinese variety is an adult with wings, beyond the nymph stage.