Saturday, May 30, 2009

Buggy

The latest in garden visitors.
Looks like a Harmonia Axyridis. A large coccinellid beetle (often referred to as ladybird, ladybug, lady beetle, ladyclock, lady cow, or lady fly) originally native to eastern Asia but introduced to North America and Europe to control aphids and scale insects.
I'm sure there's more visitors. I'll start looking closer.
.
Nom nom nom...

3 comments:

  1. Little Mary SunshineMay 31, 2009 at 4:53 PM

    Do you know why she is called coccinellid? Because of the red pigmentation.

    Red bugs are ground to make red food coloring. Next time you are eating something with the color red in eat, look at the ingredients. Anything "cochineal" or related means your food or beverage contains ground ladybugs! (Or similar)

    ReplyDelete
  2. Eric,
    I love seeing these little gals in our garden, but hate their cousins those Japanese ones that bite ... they look similar but don't have the nice color the real ones have. The story is that the Japanese ones were introduced to control some agricultural pest and ran amok. They seem to show up here in late summer and fall when they turn into nasty biters! Of course the nice ones never bite....

    ReplyDelete