Читать книгу The Wildlife-friendly Garden - Michael Chinery - Страница 12

Lily beetles These colourful beetles destroy the leaves and seed capsules of all kinds of lilies. What look like slimy black droppings on the plants are actually the lily beetle grubs which are covered with their own excrement.

Michael Chinery

Beautiful, but also beastly, the lily beetle must go if you value your lilies.

Aphids These tiny bugs occur in huge numbers and they deform many plants by sucking out the sap. They also spread numerous viruses responsible for diseases such as potato leaf roll and various mosaics. There are hundreds of species.

Michael Chinery

This apple shoot has been deformed by the piercing beaks of hundreds of sap-sucking aphids.

Leatherjackets These rather featureless grey creatures are the grubs of crane-flies or daddy-long-legs. They live in the soil, especially under lawns and flower beds, and destroy the roots.

Cabbage white caterpillars The black and yellow caterpillars are the larvae of the large white butterfly. Living in large clusters, they can quickly reduce a cabbage leaf to just a skeleton, and they contaminate the rest of the plant with an unpleasant smell.

Michael Chinery

Caterpillars of the large white butterfly here surround a solitary caterpillar of the small white. Both species are major pests of cabbages and other brassicas.

Slugs Perhaps the most hated of all our garden residents, the slugs nibble their way through our flowers and vegetables with equal enthusiasm. But not all slugs are pests: some of them prefer rotting leaves and fungi (see here).

Michael Chinery

One of the worst of the gardener’s foes: the netted slug is the one we usually find in our lettuces.