Farmers Weekly Review

Wooly aphid

As I get older, I can’t tell if there is some small bug in front of me or if it is some eye floater thing, except for one of my favorite insects — wooly aphids. These tiny insects appear to be a minute feather or maybe a stray ash from a neighbor’s firepit. Be on the lookout, they are adorable!
How you know the difference is at first, they seem to be falling from the sky, but then they motor by you in a straight line. Up close under even a hand lens, you get the real picture. I call them aphids in mink coats. You can barely see the insect for its silky long white covering.
Aphids as a whole can be a real problem, with their piercing-sucking mouthparts and their crazy reproduction rate, where the mom is giving birth to her daughter, who is giving birth to her daughter at lightening speed.
Fortunately, my cute little white-coat friend here isn’t really a big pest. That silky coat is actually a secretion that is waxy and is their bullet-proof vest … a way for them to protect themselves from drying out and from predation. Similar to our bubbly insect, the spittlebug secretes more bubbles than on a Lawrence Welk show to protect its babies.
Wooly aphids are found on silver maples, apple, pear and hawthorns. These little minky insects have an interesting life cycle. They use two alternating trees to complete their life cycle. On their preferred tree, they lay their eggs. These eggs overwinter and hatch the following spring.
In the spring, all of the babies are females and start reproducing (unmated) — you go girl! The next generation are born, and they fly to their summer home (because this generation are born with wings). As summer winds down, everyone flies back to their preferred tree, and presto changeo, now boys are made, and the sexual season begins. Ah, to be an insect: Make a mate when you need them … hmmmm.
Another one of my favorite insect fashion trend setters is the Tree of Heaven moth. Gucci and Oscar de la Renta designs pale in comparison to this slinky, beautifully patterned moth. I have several questions on this one every year, because this day-flying moth is quite eye-catching and is often found nectaring on early fall goldenrod.
The story of this moth, rather the tree its larvae, isn’t so pretty. The Tree of Heaven (should be Hell) is an introduced tree from China. It is also called the stinking sumac (although not a true relative to a sumac, it smells terribly when cut.) Also, it is extremely invasive.
Prior to 1874, the Ailanthus Webworm Moth was primarily found in Florida feeding on a native tree there called Simarouba. In 1874, an exotic “easy to grow” (always a red flag) tree was brought to Philadelphia, the Tree of Heaven. It was touted as a tree that could take urban settings, bad soil, pollution … and oh, never stops, and literally can grow in the crack of a sidewalk. The book by Betty Smith, “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn,” was literally this tree. A model for how in adversity the tree persisted.
And persist it did, becoming one of our worst invasives. This tree was a host plant for another human intervention gone wrong, the gypsy moth, the introduction of what they thought would be silk moths to create a silk empire here. Instead, the gypsy moth, now recently renamed the spongy moth, was a terrible silk maker and then escaped into the wild and has led to defoliation of forested areas out east … heading our way now. That is why there is spraying for gypsy moth in our area.
But I digress, the little patterned, bespeckled, orange, black and white Ailanthus webworm moth, with the dazzling pattern, only helps defoliate this wicked, smelly invasive tree a little as it is the preferred food source of its caterpillars. They will weave a few leaves together (hence the name webworm) and chew away, until they pupate then eclose (the fancy name for coming out of their cocoons) as the stunning moth.
Mother Nature didn’t stop there with the pattern making designs though. The silk moths are some of the most beautiful, yet tragic, insects. These moths include our largest moth, the Cecropia, Luna, Prometheus, Io, and Imperial moths.
Their beauty is captivating with bold colors and large eye spots, that are thought to mimic larger animals to keep hungry predators at bay. Their tragedy falls under nature’s cruel side, and these magnificent beauties are born without any mouthparts at all. Their life spans are incredibly short. They eclose only to seek a mate, reproduce, and die.
The other insect fashionista admired throughout history is the scarab beetle family. The bedazzler has nothing on these beetles. I always say that Japanese beetles, with their copper-colored shiny elytra (again, another fancy science name for their wing covers) would make great jewelry if they would just sit still.
Kidding, not kidding. I was given the opportunity to tour the “behind the scenes” insect collections at the Field Museum years ago, and there was a whole collection of Japanese beetle necklaces, bracelets and earrings. It was also popular, back in the day, for women of high society to wear a broach that had a tiny leash on it, to which they attached a living large brightly colored scarab beetle. Remember, they didn’t have TV or cell phones back then.
As for me, no thank you, I prefer to keep the wonder and beauty of nature outside … where it belongs.