This bug has taken up residence in one of our mini greenhouses.... Should we be worried??
Perhaps one of our readers can help us with the identification..... Susan?!
Friday, 4 May 2012
A Question of Bugs..
It's a lovely colour; a shiny metallic green and brown. And it's very photogenic, in an ugly bug sort of way, but we'd be happier if we knew what it was.
This bug has taken up residence in one of our mini greenhouses.... Should we be worried??
Perhaps one of our readers can help us with the identification..... Susan?!
This bug has taken up residence in one of our mini greenhouses.... Should we be worried??
Perhaps one of our readers can help us with the identification..... Susan?!
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10 comments:
Easy peasy. No you needn't be worried. It is a Rose Chafer Cetonia aurata. Very beautiful, very common here, but rare and restricted to patches in the south in the UK. See my Chafer page on LVN for more info and some very interesting links. http://loirenature.blogspot.fr/2009/12/chafers-scarabaeidae.html
I'm pleased to have this one identified....I found several of them last week in my Caunes MInervois garden....aren't they beautiful ! So, thanks Colin and Elizabeth,for asking the question, and Susan for providing the reassuring answer. J.
I discovered these a couple of years back, they are very pretty. My shrubs were covered with them. Diane
it looks like a doryphore, dont know the english term , they are not good to have around.
Annie v.
Plumping for rose chafer too http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cetonia_aurata
Janice you are further south than us, so I think you could get this species and another lookalike (which is much less common).
Doryphores are Colorado Beetle. They are black and tannish stripes, unrelated to Rose Chafers, and about a quarter of the size. Colorado Beetle are a pest of potato and related plants (aubergine, tomato, peppers, chillies). Rose Chafers do no real harm to plants (the adults eat the stamens of roses and paeonies)and the grubs are good to have around as they eat decaying organic material (they like to live in your compost heap).
I just think someone has done a great spray job - the metallic look is excellent.
Jim
Thank you Susan for clearing this up for us. We just couldn't be sure and we didn't want to risk harbouring something which might damage our plants, so we're relieved to know it's a Chafer.
Just wish my last metallic look car had such a good finish!
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