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

Strange Bugs

Iochroma

Our neighbor knocked on the door yesterday and told us that our purple Iochroma was covered with strange looking bugs.

We thought at first they might be aphids, but on closer inspection they looked different from the usual sort of aphid we have all over the Asclepia in the butterfly garden.

Ants tend the aphids for the honeydew they secrete, and these insects also had ants close by who appeared very interested in them.

The majority of the bugs were quite small, about two millimeters long, although there were a few larger ones about four to five millimeters.  The larger ones were rounder, with yellowish bodies and what appeared to be long, pig-like snouts.  They're pretty tiny, but they look like they should figure in a science fiction movie.

So what are these things?  Hairy aphids?  Punk versions of a Leafhopper nymph?  Pig-snouted, spiny sap-suckers?  

Cindy dropped a bag of them off at the San Diego County Cooperative Extension Farm & Home Advisor office, aka County Ag. this morning.  The entomologists there should be able to identify the bugs and will send Cindy a report by e-mail in a few days.  

They really don't look like anything beneficial, and there are a LOT of them.