TAKING WING


Ladybug larva (Coccinella) on stem eating an aphid


success!) and parasitize dozens more of the aphids. In my experience, almost all of the aphids on this milkweed and  browned or blackened aphids. One of the odd things you might encounter is completely


blackened aphids hanging off the milkweed leaf or stem, al- most by a thread. But that’s what it is, it’s like the hawser hole of an old sailing ship. The wasp larva, as it prepares to pu- pate, drills a hole through the skin of the aphid and ties silk threads to the plant to anchor itself as a pupa. After hatching from the pupa, the adult wasp will drill a hole opposite the


 When oleander aphids, Aphis nerii


America, waiting didn’t work as well as it does now. Although they have plenty of natural controls in southern Europe, lo- cal parasitoids weren’t adapted to the newcomer. The wasp, Lysiphlebus testaceipes, is a mouthful to pronounce, so I call it “Lucie.” It’s a native, but it took Lucie a while to adapt to our orange invader. Now this wasp it is doing a good job, at least in my neck of the woods. I once planted two different cherry trees (for cross-polli- nation) and had a year or two of excellent harvests. Then one late spring I saw that the branches were covered in aphids. I was less ecologically oriented in my gardening back then, but I restrained my thoughts of the sprayer and waited. 


were vacuuming up the cherry aphids. It pays to wait! If you let the natural controls of the dreaded oleander aphid build           problems.


Clement Kent is a gardener and a scien- tist. As a scientist, he studies the genetics of pollinators. As a gardener, he loves design- ing, planting, and enjoying pollinator gar- dens using native plant species.


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© Clement Kent


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