CLOSED: What are these???

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mjfulgham Madison, MS Sep 01, 2006

They look like fire ant spiders??? LOL - Can anyone tell me if they're good or bad - thanks!

Thumbnail by mjfulgham
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sallyg Anne Arundel,, MD(Zone 7b) Sep 02, 2006

I think an immature bug, Hemiptera, which will be sucking on the plant. (Somebody more knowledgeable will surely improve on this.)

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ceejaytown The Woodlands, TX(Zone 9a) Sep 02, 2006

It is either the nymph of an assassin bug (good guy - sucks the juice from insects) or the nymph of a leaf-footed bug (bad guy - sucks the juice from plants). I lean toward bad because of the shorter neck/head. But the way to make sure would be to watch them. If they separate and start to wander over the plant separately, looking for something to suck the juice out of, they are good guys. If they just wander a short distance and stick their little straw-like mouth parts into the plant the two brick treatment is in order.

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ceejaytown The Woodlands, TX(Zone 9a) Sep 02, 2006

Also, the back legs of the bad leaf-footed bug will start to widen as they mature, and this does not happen with the good-guy assassin bug. I was looking at the picture closely (as closely as I could) and it did appear that the one up on the edge of the leaf had that thickening of the back legs. Can you tell from looking at them yet? And remember - what are they eating? If they're sucking on the leaf, that is enough for ID.

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mjfulgham Madison, MS Sep 02, 2006

This is my baptisia plant - I had put up earlier a post to identify a worm/cat that was all over it and eating up my leaves - here's the link to that - http://davesgarden.com/forums/t/643463/
Now the leaves are all brown and the plant is horrible looking - I noticed these this afternoon when I decided to cut back some of the stems on my baptisia. I had the kids go and mash most of the cats but there are still a few left on there.

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ceejaytown The Woodlands, TX(Zone 9a) Sep 02, 2006

Ooh, I remember. That poor plant has really suffered. Were you ever able to use the Bt?

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mjfulgham Madison, MS Sep 02, 2006

I thought the kids had gotten them all - they had a ball smashing them all, I didn't notice until today that there will a few more on there.

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winging Cincinnati, OH(Zone 6a) Sep 02, 2006

That looks a lot like what I found on one of my pansies earlier this summer. They definitely did foliar damage, but they were limited to that one plant, so it wasn't a big deal for me. I couldn't get a decent picture with my camera since it doesn't do tiny so well. But the red color of those bugs was noticeable from at least 8 feet or so when they were all clustered together.

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