Keelbacked Treehopper

Nymph

The San Diego County Cooperative Extension Farm & Home Advisor office came through with an identification of the strange looking bugs we found on our Iochroma plant.  Cindy dropped off a bag of them at the County Ag office last week and they have now been identified as nymphs of the Keelbacked Treehopper, Antianthe expansa.

The nymphs are these brown strange-looking, pig-snouted, spiny, wingless bugs.  The adults are a bright green color and can be mistaken for small leaves.

In addition to the Iochroma, their preferred food sources include other members of the Nightshade (Solanaceae) family:  tomatoes, tomatillos, potatoes, peppers and eggplant.  That's not good news for the garden, since much of our produce comes from these plants.

Infestation

Worse yet, other types of Treehoppers apparently like to lay their eggs in slits in the woody stems of plants so the species can over winter in the mild California climate, and the Iochroma plant seems ideal for this purpose.

So it looks like we'll have to figure out how to get rid of the nymphs before they become adults and breed even more of them to eat our vegetables.

Adult Keelbacked Treehopper

Hard to Spot Them