A plastic bottle filled with paper strips is held up in a greenhouse of tropical plants, and many brown lacewing insects have emerged and perched on the rim. One has launched itself into the air and is fluttering away, wings-ablur. Brown lacewings are native insects in Southern BC but we add them to our greenhouses all winter to eat aphids and other small pests, when the native ones outside are not active because of the cold weather. Luckily the little Pacific Wren that visits my greenhouse all winter on her morning patrol (and keeps me amused) has moved on, because she loves to snack on my lacewings and my rove beetles. So the lacewings have a brief, predator-free window before the nesting birds and spring dragonflies start hunting them! In the background various tropical plants are visible, including Alpinia zerumbet 'Variegata' (yellow variegated shell ginger) and Tillandsia usneoides (Spanish moss) hanging from hooks.
My brown lacewing army has arrived! Look out aphids and mealybugs! They scorned the dispersal directions: no waiting to be shaken onto leaves, they boiled up from their bottle and launched into the air immediately. Fly, my minions!
#micromus #brownlacewing #pnwnative #inverts #plantnerd #greenhouse
