A recent comment to a blog entry got me thinking about vine weevils. I haven't seen many in my garden for a few years. I wonder if this is the result of my zero-tolerance approach.
A recent comment to a blog entry got me thinking about vine weevils. I haven't seen many in my garden for a few years. I wonder if this is the result of my zero-tolerance approach. Along with lily beetles, this is about the only creature I will deliberately crush under foot. Even so, I have a nagging admiration for their dark brown armour, ponderous waddling and their instinct to survive.
Though they are flightless, lacking the membranous flight wings that carry most beetles up and about, they get everywhere. A few years ago I cleared out the small window boxes of the dead and dying plants that were clearly not doing very well. All I found, instead of roots, were lots of these small (7-8mm) creamy white maggots — vine weevil grubs.
The adult weevils themselves are very tough. I was astonished to find the specimen pictured above in an East Dulwich garden. It was lying on the patio waving its legs in the air. At first sight I thought it was something new, a pale-bodied weevil, rather than the usual dark brown species. But no, the white is spider silk. This one had been caught by some arachnid, trussed up with winding threads, but had still managed to escape and crawl, shackled, across the concrete. Respect.
Vine weevils go exploring at night, and they must be a pretty curious bunch. Perhaps not as curious as entomologists though. I don't want to upset people, but at least six exotic relatives of vine weevils have turned up in Britain in the last 10 years, several in Chelsea Harbour, brought in from Europe with planted shrubs. A friend of mine went looking for them through the dark streets of night-time Chelsea. He was exploiting a little-known fact that these and many other strange critters fluoresce under ultraviolet light. Using a small hand-held UV dark-light lantern he was creeping about the pavements examining fence posts and peering over garden walls. Needless to say he soon had to explain his strange actions to members of the local constabulary.
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