Box sucker
The box sucker is a tiny bug that lives on box bushes, the small evergreen hedges in many gardens. It sucks the plant's juice. Where its babies live, the leaves at the tips of the shoots bunch up into little balls that look like mini cabbages.
How fast is it?
Fun facts
The cabbage-like leaf balls it causes are called galls. The leaves in them get thicker and curl inwards like little bowls.
In summer many pale green babies hide inside the leaf balls.
The babies are covered with a coat of white wax.
It comes from Europe, but people have carried it to North America too.
Most asked questions about Box sucker
?What does the box sucker do to box plants?
It makes the leaves at the tips of the shoots bunch up into small cabbage-like balls.
?Is the box sucker harmful?
Not to people. It only feeds on box plants.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Psylla buxi
- Group
- True bugs and cicadas
- Family
- Psyllidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Hemiptera > Psyllidae
- Lives on
- Europe, North America
- Also known as
- Boxwood psyllid
Where the facts come from
- Psylla buxi (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 Mick E. Talbot. CC BY 2.0, 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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