Greetings, BugFans,

This striking little moth was mentioned briefly a few years ago among an array of visitors to water hemlock flowers. Here’s the rest of the story. 

It belongs in the Clear-winged moth family Sesiidae, but it’s not related to the Clear-winged/Hummingbird moths (Sphinx moths in the genus Hemaris) that play peek-a-boo with the BugLady each summer around the wild bergamot, hovering prettily next to a flower and . It’s not uncommon for common names to be shared – in this case, shared because both groups have scaleless – clear – areas on their wings. There are more than 1500 species in the family Sesiidae worldwide, mostly in the tropics, and we have visited the family once before.     

The Peachtree borer moth is a member of a colorful genus 

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, in a colorful family

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of waspy-looking, day-flying moths (some species fly for only a few specific hours of each day).  They have long, waspy legs and they can hover like wasps, too. It’s called Batesian mimicry – a harmless species is protected by its resemblance to a harmful one – in the case of the Sesiids, adopting the aposematic (warning color) signals of a wasp. 

Some adult Sesiids feed on nectar, and the larvae of most species bore into vines or into the branches, trunks, bark, or roots of woody plants. Some species are big pests of orchard crops and landscaping shrubs and trees.

Females send out chemical signals (pheromones) to attract males. They “call” daily, and these calls may be sensed by males a half-mile away. They lay eggs on various parts of their host plants; the newly-hatched larvae dig in and feed, and many eventually pupate within their plant, but not before excavating an exit and concealing it with silk. Some species are larvae for two seasons or even longer, but adults live only for a few weeks – some for much less. Adult Peachtree borer moths live less than a week and do not eat. 

PEACHTREE/GREATER PEACHTREE BORER MOTHS (Synanthedon exitisoa) can be found in much of North America excepting parts of the Great Plains and desert Southwest and a few Eastern states (there’s also a Lesser Peachtree borer moth that’s mostly Eastern).

Their host plants are peach trees and other members of the genus Prunus, all sun-loving members of the rose family, and they’re considered the most destructive of the clear-winged borers – persona non grata wherever they’re found. In the wild, they use wild cherry, wild plum, and shadbush (Amelanchier sp.). 

As one website said, “I can’t believe they’re not wasps!” They are sexually dimorphic (two forms), and although , the . Their wingspans are 1 ¼”-ish (females are larger than males), and . Although they’re not aggressive, spider wasp stings can pack quite a wallop, but the moths, of course, don’t sting.  

The natural history of Peachtree borers is pretty-well documented. Adults emerge from their pupal cases between 8:00 AM and 1:00 PM and mating commences immediately – females lay more than half of their eggs on their first day as an adult. Eggs are deposited in cracks and crevices in the bark near the base of the tree or on the ground nearby, and her fertility is her Super Power – of the 400 to 900 (or more) eggs she lays, 97% to 100% will hatch! 

The larvae tunnel in and feed on the cambium (growth layer) of the roots and trunk just below ground level (a zone called the “root crown”), and the tunnels they leave behind intersect the plumbing of the tree, disrupting the flow of nutrients up and down the trunk and causing twigs and branches to die. They leave piles of frass (bug poop) at the entrances of their tunnel, and they may cause a thick, gooey sap to ooze from their holes in the trunk. While the tree damage is mechanical, the larval tunneling may introduce fungi and bacteria.

The larvae overwinter within the tree and resume eating in spring, doing more damage because they’re larger. They pupate within inches of the base of the host tree in a . After the adults emerge, . 

A PEACH OF A RABBIT HOLE

So – before peaches, Peachtree borers, a native species, hummed along in harmony with their universe, eating wild Prunus species. When, exactly, did they encounter their first peach? 

According to the lore of some Puebloan tribes, there have always been peaches in the Southwest – the Anasazi, who walked away in the early 1300’s AD, were said to enjoy them. 

Others say that they originated in China 2.6 million years ago and have been under cultivation there for 6,000 to 8,000 years. Peaches were grown in Persia (Iran) 2000 years ago (which explains the scientific name, Prunus persica), were spread west into Europe by Alexander the Great, and were brought by French/Spanish explorers/conquistadores to Mexico/Florida in the first half of the 1500’s (but there’s always a chance that they came over with Columbus, too). It’s likely that the peach wasn’t embraced by the Indians until a decade or so after its introduction, when the missionaries that followed the explorers arrived to set up shop. Once adopted, though, it spread like wildfire along native trading routes and became an important food. Indians who were forced to travel the Trail of Tears from the Southeast to Oklahoma (1830 to 1850) carried peach pits with them. Fifty years earlier, Washington had ordered his troops to destroy massive, mixed fruit orchards in Upstate New York in order to crush the Indians there.

Not only did they embrace it and incorporate it into their agricultural and land management systems, those consummate Indigenous plant geneticists developed many varieties that were quite different from European peaches. In the right soil and with lots of sunlight, peaches grow easily and can plant themselves, but it takes human intervention – pruning – to develop good fruit. Peaches grew so readily that several sources called them, along with the hogs that were also introduced by the Spanish, the first American weeds.

The bottom line – the Europeans who arrived to settle the Atlantic Coast in the 1600’s reported peaches among the bounty that the New World offered and assumed that the peaches were native. “Here are also Peaches, and very good, and in great quantities, not an Indian Plantation without them … one may have them by Bushels for little; they make a pleasant Drink and I think not inferior to any Peach you have in England…….” said William Penn in 1683. A few years later, early Naturalist John Banister wrote “…for the Indians have, and ever had greater variety and finer sorts of them than we… I have seen those they call the yellow plum-peach that have been 12 or 13 inches in girth.”   

A team of researchers located what they believe to be the earliest North American peaches at an archaeological dig between Atlanta and Augusta, Georgia, when they dated to 1520 to 1550 AD some peach pits that were found at the bottom of post holes (blowing out of the water the notion that peaches were introduced by the Spanish to St. Augustine, Florida in 1565 or to Mexico in 1562).  

Peachtree borers responded to the massive increase of host plants with a population boom of their own and were recognized as pests by the early 1800’s.

Yeah, yeah – the BugLady is a history geek, too.

The BugLady

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It’s time again to celebrate the bugs that fly under the radar – bugs that are neither famous nor infamous and that live alongside of us, about whom not much has been written. All three of these species, coincidentally, have their flight periods in the first half of the summer.

CURRANT TIP BORER

This beetle is a poster child for insects that are barely visible online, although unlike many, it has picked up a common name along the way.

The Currant tip borer (Psenocerus supernotatus) is a not-very-long-horned member of the long-horned beetle family Cerambycidae. The long-horned (long-antennaed) beetles are divided, uneasily and depending on whose book you read, into 10 subfamilies, and the Currant tip borer’s subfamily, Lamiinae, the Flat-faced Longhorns, includes about 20,000 of the 30,000 species of Cerambycid worldwide.  There are 5,000 species in the New World, but only 250 of them occur in North America.

This little beetle (about 1/3”) can be found in early summer, east of a line from Manitoba to Texas. Its larvae feed within the dead branches of a variety of woody plants, and it’s been found on oak, Virginia creeper, poison ivy, sumac, catalpa, and mulberry as well as currant and gooseberry. Considering its name, the BugLady was expecting to find a bunch of Extension Bulletins telling us how to protect our gooseberries and currants, but she found none.

Mr. R. P. Dow, writing in the Bulletin of the Brooklyn Entomological Society in 1916, recounts how he found some Currant tip borer larvae in sumac pith. First to hatch were two males that, after exploring their surroundings, began to fight by a specific spot on the twig. Two days later, a female emerged from that spot. He wrote, “It is evident that some sense organ revealed the female to the males not less than 36 hours before her emergence from the unmarked wood.”

. Hmmm – the BugLady doesn’t see it

SULPHUR-WINGED GRASSHOPPER

The BugLady automatically surveys butterflies and dragonflies as she walks – it’s like breathing. From mid-summer on, she sees Clouded Sulphurs over the grasslands (bugguide.net informs the BugLady’s spellcheck that “both spellings of “sulphur” or “sulfur” are seen frequently. The first prevalent in older works, with the second becoming more common in recent decades”). With black-bordered, lemon-yellow wings, the butterflies are almost unmistakable. (This is a remarkable shot, and not just because it shows . Sulphurs perch with their wings closed, so the black border is seldom photographed).

Almost unmistakable – the Sulphur-winged grasshopper (Arphia sulphurea) always makes her do a double-take https://bugguide.net/node/view/640715/bgimage.  Members of the genus Arphia are found across North America; they’re in the Short-horned grasshopper family Acrididae and in the Band-winged grasshopper subfamily Oedipodinae, some of which are , and .

Most of the grasshoppers that the BugLady researches have extensive rap sheets due to their fondness for plants that grow in ag-lands and pastures, but she could find no wanted posters for the Sulphur-winged grasshopper, alias the Yellow-winged/Spring yellow-winged grasshopper.

Sulphur-winged grasshoppers are found in grasslands, edges, and sometimes in open woodlands east of that Manitoba-to-Texas line, and north just into Canada. They feed primarily on grasses, with a few wildflowers thrown in for good measure, and unlike many grasshoppers, they don’t eat any animal material. Bugguide.net tells us that both males and females “crepitate” (make snapping/crackling/popping sounds with their wings) during courtship displays. Adults can be seen starting in early spring and are gone by mid-summer.

They overwinter as late-stage nymphs, and they have the best nymphs ever! and

WHITE-SPOTTED/THREE-SPOTTED HORSEFLY

In early summer, the BugLady spied this impressive male horsefly eyeing her from a lily pad (male, because its huge eyes meet in the middle – all the better to see you with…..). Horse flies and deer flies are in the family Tabanidae. For “Horse fly 101,” visit here.  Many species are also called (visit the Atlantic coast in summer to get the full Greenhead experience), and many have spectacular, Technicolor eyes that make them the darlings of macro photographers.

• (Sorry – they’re just so cool.)

They’re the flies we love to hate. In The Tabanidae of Minnesota (1930), author Cornelius B. Philip anthropomorphizes, “After feeding to satisfaction, the fly may withdraw and make new stabs, apparently for the pure love of it…….”

The Three-spotted horse fly (Tabanus trimaculatus) is one of about 100 genus members in North America, and it will not surprise southern BugFans to read that the genus is most diverse in the their neck of the US. According to bugguide.net, tabanus was “a name used by the Romans for a kind of biting fly.”

Horse flies lay , in damp areas. When the eggs hatch, the drop to the ground or into a “semiaquatic habitat” and burrow into the soft soil, where they find small invertebrates to eat. They’re eaten, in turn, by nematodes and mud-probing birds, and they’re parasitized by sand wasps, tachinid flies, and chalcid wasps. Here’s an interesting shot of a , and a shot of an .

TSHFs are fairly early-season horse flies that seem to prefer woodsy settings – researchers in the Minnesota study found that “the larvae outnumber by far any other species taken but the adults seem to have retiring habits in Minnesota.”

From what the BugLady could find, the TSHF is not a notorious scourge of man or beast. Yes, female horse flies need the protein from a blood meal in order to produce eggs, but both females and males also feed on nectar. In a study to discover which species of horse flies were most annoying to deer in Oklahoma, four species made up 95% of the horse fly attacks, and although the TSHF was abundant, it was not seen feeding on deer.

The BugLady

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