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Sticker of Brown winged plant hopper
Bug card No. 0693 of 4,939

Brown winged plant hopper

Pochazia shantungensis
Eats: PlantsTrue bugs and cicadasGardens and meadows6 legs

The brown-winged planthopper is a small insect with big, broad brown wings. It holds its wings like a little tent and usually has a pale spot on the front edge. Its babies look fluffy because they are covered in waxy threads.

Lives in
Native to China. It has spread to Japan, Korea, Turkey and parts of Europe
Length
7.5 to 8.8 mm (0.3 to 0.35 in)
Top speed
about 1 km/h (0.62 mph)
On foot, estimate
Can it hurt you?
Harmless
Harmless to people. It can harm fruit trees and garden plants.
What does it eat?
It sucks sap from more than 200 kinds of plants, like apple, peach, chestnut and blueberry trees.
For real!Photo of Brown winged plant hopper
Picture by Fikret Arda Düzgünses. CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

How big is it?

How long is it?

Brown winged plant hopper about 8.8 mm long (0.35 in)A grain of rice about 6 mm (0.24 in)A toy building brick about 3.2 cm (1.3 in)
small enough to sit on your fingernailcould run across a dinner table in 3.6 secondsmoves 32 times its own body length every second

How big is Brown winged plant hopper compared to YOU?

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How fast is it?

cool stuff

Fun facts

1

Its babies have a bunch of white waxy threads on their tail, sometimes longer than their whole body.

2

It spends the winter as eggs tucked inside young twigs, covered with white wax.

3

It makes sweet sticky droplets, and a black mould can grow on them on the leaves.

4

It can travel to new countries as eggs hidden in plants that people move.

you asked

Most asked questions about Brown winged plant hopper

?Is the brown-winged planthopper harmful?

Not to people, but it can damage fruit trees and other plants by sucking their sap.

?How big is the brown-winged planthopper?

Its body is less than 1 cm long, and with the wings folded it is about 1.5 cm.

For bug experts

Scientific name
Pochazia shantungensis
Named by
Chou & Lu, 1977
Group
True bugs and cicadas
Family
Ricaniidae
Classification
Insecta > Hemiptera > Ricaniidae
Lives on
Asia, Europe
Also known as
Brown-winged planthopper

Where the facts come from

  1. Pochazia shantungensis (Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0): what it looks like, where it lives, what it eats, sizes and fun facts, retold in simple words.
  2. Picture by Fikret Arda Düzgünses. 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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