I admit it, I wasn’t sure I was going to be able to come up with something new to show you this week. Even though the weather is getting nice and the flowers are blooming, it just seemed like I’d seen it all before.
Well, at least until I visited our snapdragons…
Now who is that with its head in the snapdragon?
I’m afraid this post will require an edit, because I don’t know what kind of caterpillar this is. Do you have any guesses?
Today the bug of the week should really come with “Smell-o-vision.†To really get the whole experience, pull out your jar of rosemary, slide off the lid and take a deep whiff. Ummm….
Okay, back to bug of the week. I was looking at our rosemary plant this morning. Rosemary grows great here as a landscape plant.
It has tiny blue flowers that grow in clusters. The flowers are attractive to honey bees.
This morning what I spotted wasn’t a rosemary flower, however, it was a soft, white ball on the stem.
Any guesses?
This is the frothy home of the spittle bug. Or in this case, two spittle bugs. The bugs are relatives of aphids. They feed by sticking their straw-like mouthparts into the plant and sucking out the plant juices. They also excrete a bubbly material to hide in while they are feeding. The two insects in this photo are nymphs. When they become adults they will have wings and look like leafhoppers.
Don’t worry about me exposing the bugs for a picture. I actually had taken a picture of this one first.
Within seconds, it was already producing froth to cover itself back up again.
Wonder what it would be like to live in a froth house? Sure smells good, I bet.
Aphids are typically active only during the cool part of the spring season in Arizona, so now is when we see aphids.
Every wonder how aphids show up? After all, it looks like they don’t have wings.
These are rose aphids. Aren’t they a lovely pink color? By the way, the long tubes on their backs are called cornicles. Aphids emit chemicals from the cornicles. Some of the chemicals alert other aphids of danger (alarm pheromones) and/or actually deter enemies (defensive compounds).
The first aphids to arrive on your plants do have wings, like this one. They aren’t strong fliers and mostly they are carried in the wind.
The winged ones quickly have live babies. Unlike most insects, these aphids do not lay eggs during this part of the life cycle.
I’ve circled the baby aphids in this photo.
I’m not worried about seeing these aphids. Even if I do nothing at all, they will disappear as the weather warms up.
For more information, try:
Cicadas and Aphids: What They Have in Common (Animals in Order Series) by Sara Swan Miller
Aphids (Blastoff! Readers: World of Insects) by Colleen Sexton
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For more information, see Roberta Gibson Writes.
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