A week or two ago I found myself up on a ladder pruning out diseased portions of my crabapple tree.  I suspected bacterial blight that seems to happen every spring.  I was very delayed in cutting it out so larger portions of the leaves were distorted and curling below the typical brown areas I was familiar with dealing with.

It was very warm out and the job was taking forever as I had to come down off the ladder and dunk the hand pruners in bleach water between cuts.  I was also trying to confine the cut leaves to a large plastic bag as I didn't want them to contaminate the yard or the rest of the tree.  I was taking a little rest as I leaned against the ladder.  I happened to look up and saw something attached to the undersurface of some healthy leaves.

I looked some more and found another one.  Hmmmm, I wondered if it were friend or foe?  My first thought was to call Jennifer, our Master Gardener Coordinator.  My second thought was to call Sharon Leos, Master Gardener extraordinaire, who teaches our insect classes.  Then I thought, wait a minute, I have been a Master Gardener for over 16 years.  I should at least look into this myself before I call them.  But where to start?

I looked at the creatures again.  They looked a bit curved and I thought I detected some spots.  Then my eyes fell upon the plastic beg I had been putting the diseased leaves into.  I saw a ladybug inside, so went over to let him out.  I spotted another.

Now I knew what lady bug larva looked like.  They are intimidating appearing black eating machines with red splotches.  My leaf creatures were definitely not them.  Then I grabbed my smart phone and asked Siri to show me the lifecycle of a lady bug. Sure enough she directed me to a YouTube video.

There I saw the whole process in living color.  After reaching maximum size the lady bug larva plants his head on the underside of a leaf and turns into a pupa.  This was exactly what I was seeing on my leaves, lady bug pupa.  These were definitely friends, so I tucked the leaves back in the tree hoping I had not disturbed them too much.