- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
When a ladybug landed on a gaura in our bee friendly garden, it was business as usual.
The business: eating aphids.
The rose aphids sucking the plant juices from the tender shoot didn't last long.
This is why ladybugs are known as "beneficial insects."
You gotta love those ladybugs.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Pollen-packing honey bees dangling from gaura (Gaura linheimeri) are a joy to photograph.
Gaura, native to Louisiana, Texas and Mexico, is a long-stemmed plant with a burst of pinkish-white petals that resemble whirling butterflies.
A member of the Onagraceae family (think primroses, fireweed and fuchsias), it's a perennial that needs little care.
Gaura! Gaura! Gaura!
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Call them plant lice. Call them plant suckers. Call them aphids.
The tiny, soft-bodied insects with pear-shaped bodies form denses colonies on plants.
They suck. Literally.
Their destructive feeding habits do not endear them to gardeners and farmers. No love lost. No lost love.
California has more than 450 species of aphids, according to the book, Caliifornia Insects, written by Jerry A. Powell and Charles L. Hogue.
I spotted these aphids on a friend's gaura (Gaura linheimeri). She called the guara a "desert rose."
Not everything was coming up roses.
For the aphids, this "desert" rose was an an oasis.
