Nature’s wonders : Red Lily Beetle

Red lily beetleI made an interesting discovery recently, an amateur “horticulturalist” that I am, which today made me Google the subject for some clues.

This Spring I found out, thanks to being pointed out by a good friend of ours and a very keen green-fingered Bill Leadbetter, that lilies have a foe named “Red Lily Beetle”.

At the time they looked pretty harmless, “mating” all over the place, not doing much to disguise themselves, coloured brightly red against the green foliage. A few leaves were munched in places which was apparently a good give-away sign of their presence, but nothing too serious.

Heavy debugging took place at the time, followed by regular check-ups which showed no further signs of the beasts…

That is until today when  I noticed in passing a random wet “soil lump” on a lily leaf where there should have been none. On closer inspection it turned out to be a “fat caterpillar-like” creature covered in soil all over its back, looking just like a small clump  of soil! I then quickly realised that there were 20-30 of these things on many other leaves and stems, all looking like bits of soil, munching away my lilies!

Well, all I can say is that they are no longer there. Google search revealed that this is one of the stages of the red lily beetle lifecycle – the larvae!

The de-larvae-ing process was unpleasant for someone as squeamish as me. Malc may have to step in next time! 🙂

I do take my hat off though to the way the larvae evolved to camouflage themselves so effectively with minimum effort. Very impressive.

Nature never ceases to amaze us with its beautiful creativity and adaptability for survival… even if we have to squash an odd bug or two to protect some species over others.. )

 

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