What Is It? Wednesday – Pigweed

What caused the hole in the side of this cucumber? (Nothing is wrong with the color. This cultivar is called Silver Slicer.) This week’s question is a review from a post Tom Bilbo wrote recently about pickleworms.

Here we see an assassin bug that has caught and is feeding on a lady beetle. Normally, both of these insects are good guys, though when assassin bugs get hungry, they will eat just about anything they can catch.

These muscadines have been fed on by the larvae of a leafminer (a species of fly (Diptera)). Adults lay their eggs on the surface of a fruit, stem, or leaf of a plant, and the larvae tunnel in the tissue of the plant, forming a distinct-looking pattern where they have fed.

The Russia-Ukraine grain deal that has been critical to keeping global food prices stable and preventing famine is currently in tatters. On July 17, 2023, Russia said it was pulling out of the year-old deal, which allowed shipments of grains and other foodstuffs to travel past the Russian naval blockade in the Black Sea. And to make matters worse, over the next two days Russia bombed the Ukrainian grain port of Odesa, destroying over 60,000 tons of grain.

Fasciation (also called “cresting”) is a relatively rare plant growth condition that produces flattened, ribbon-like, crested, or contorted tissue in the stem, root, fruit, or flower head.

The ability to camouflage oneself and the level of that camouflage is often a matter of life and death for an insect. Adults and larvae employ static strategies such as adapting their shape, pigmentation, and color patterns to disguise themselves. Some insects can modify themselves in response to the environment. Still, others, larvae, in particular, adorn themselves with leaf and flower parts, frass, lichens, dead insects, soil particles, small rocks, and other organic material to disguise themselves or create protective covers in a display known as decorative crypsis.

This may look a lot like a paper wasp, but it is actually a mantidfly. If you look carefully, you’ll notice the front pair of legs is different from the two back pairs.

This is a caterpillar known as the hickory horned devil. The adult is a beautiful moth known as the regal moth (Citheronia regalis), but it is rarely seen due to its nocturnal habit.

This looks a lot like bird poop; however, it’s just a camouflage tactic of the giant swallowtail caterpillar (Papilio cresphontes). This species is often called the “orangedog” as they feed on members of the citrus family throughout their larval stage.

These beets were injured by glyphosate overspray. Only the last 6 feet of 6 beds were affected.

This little critter looks a lot like a bee (it’s yellow, fuzzy, and foraging flowers), but if you look closely, you’ll see it has only one pair of wings (bees have two). This feature distinguishes this as a fly, specifically a bee fly (family Bombyliidae). Though they look similar, these flies grow up very differently from bees. Bee flies are parasitic and develop on the larvae and pupae of other insects, such as wasps, beetles, butterflies and moths, grasshoppers, and other flies.

This is the caterpillar of the imperial moth (Eacles imperialis). The imperial moth is one of the largest moths in the Southeast.