Greenhouse whitefly
The greenhouse whitefly is a tiny insect with four white, waxy wings. It sits under leaves in greenhouses and drinks the plant's sweet juice. If you shake the plant, a little white cloud of them flies up.
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Fun facts
Its babies are called crawlers, because they are the only young ones that can walk around.
After that the young ones stay put and look like flat, see-through scales on the leaf.
It drips sweet, sticky honeydew onto leaves, which is bad for the plants.
Gardeners release a tiny wasp called Encarsia that lays its eggs in whitefly young and stops them.
The eggs are pale yellow and turn grey just before they hatch.
Most asked questions about Greenhouse whitefly
?What are the tiny white flies on my tomato plants?
They are probably greenhouse whiteflies. They drink the plant's sap from under the leaves.
?Do whiteflies bite people?
No. They only feed on plants and are harmless to people.
?How big is a greenhouse whitefly?
Only about 1 to 2 millimetres long.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Trialeurodes vaporariorum
- Group
- True bugs and cicadas
- Family
- Aleyrodidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Hemiptera > Aleyrodidae
- Lives on
- Europe, Asia, North America, South America, Africa, Australia and Oceania
- Also known as
- Glasshouse whitefly
Where the facts come from
- Greenhouse whitefly (Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0): what it looks like, where it lives, what it eats, sizes and fun facts, retold in simple words.
- Picture by Desmond W. Helmore. CC BY 4.0, Wikimedia Commons. The sticker of this bug is drawn from this picture.
If we got something wrong, sorry, we are bug fans, not a science journal. Tell us at [email protected] and we will fix it.
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