I wasn’t quite intending for this post to be so involved, but I happened upon an article which said that in Welsh, you can call ladybugs buwch goch cwta, which translates to English as “little red cow,” which I think is absolutely adorable.
buwch: from the Middle Welsh buchmeaning cow, ultimately a derivative of the Proto-Indo-European root gwou-, meaning cattle
goch: a mutation of the adjective coch,from the Latin coccummeaning “scarlet, berry, dye or dyed red,” from the Ancient Greek term κόκκος kokkos, which is a “grain, seed or the color scarlet”
cwta(I’ve also seen it spelled gota), means “short or little,” and is supposedly borrowed from a Middle English term which meant “to cut down”
It turns out, though, that the name for these beetles is actually quite complicated in a lot of European based languages.
First, to look at the taxonomic family name coccinellidae.This comes from the Latin coccineusmeaning “coloured scarlet,” a term which you can also see in the Welsh, it is the same root from which we get coccumand eventually goch.There are a few other descendants of this term in nearby languages as well, like the French coccinelleand the Italian coccinella.
However, obviously, that’s not where we get the English name ladybug.In Old English, they were called lady cows (again a nod to the Welsh), in which cowwas a comment on it’s spotted wings and ladywas in reference to the Virgin Mary. The seven black dots displayed on its back were believed to have been symbolic of her seven sorrows as are described in Christian scripture.
Although English uses the more ambiguous lady, many languages have retained the Mary portion in the modern name, like Catalan marieta, Danish mariehøne(literally “Mary chicken”) and German Marienkäfer(literally “Mary beetle.”)
I have absolutely no idea what chickens have to do with anything, but good job Danish, I like it.
A piece from 2017, around this same time of year. On a hike through the redwoods, there were so many ladybugs crawling over each other it looked like a shifting, solid mass, and it was (quietly) audible! One of the most surreal things I’ve witnessed (on a third date with my current partner, no less.) Today I happened to do the same hike, and there was a modest few piles of ladybugs, which brought me back to this piece.
The pose is borrowed from Klimt, one of his figure drawing sketches from a secondhand book I found (but I replaced clothing with nature!)
Reminder, as winter wraps up in the northern hemisphere:
Don’t ever buy lady bugs (or lady birds or lady beetles or what have you) for your garden.
They’re wild-collected, not farmed. Meaning every time you purchase them, you’re actively hurting wild ladybug populations. (And the way in which they’re collected is also plenty horrible).
They are not kept with adequate nourishment or water, so by the time you buy them, ~50% of the bugs on average are either already dead or will drop dead within a few hours of you releasing them.
They DON’T EVEN WORK. Ladybugs don’t hang around in one place. The small fraction that live will LEAVE YOUR GARDEN immediately (if you want ladybugs, you have to court them with an attractive space. The end. Bitches can’t be bought).
Buygreen lacewings instead. They’re sustainably farmed, they arrive as either eggs or larvae, they stick around where they’re released, they’re native, they’ll decimate aphids and other tiny pests, they’re perfect…. And they’re a pretty green color.
But don’t be the fucking asshole who buys ladybugs.
Video to show how the ladybug clusters I just posted about were everywhere. It’s pretty low quality but I just wanted you all to be able to see the distribution of them. They are vibrant when viewed in person, but the photo captures that effect better.
reblog this w your weirdest fear!!! mine’s balloons
I said weirdest not deepest! stop reblogging this w shit like ‘my life falling apart’ and ‘intimacy’ and have fun!! be scared of figurines or something damn
cherry blossoms or peonies? lakes or ponds? swans or cranes? sand or snow? sugar or honey? mint or lemongrass? sailing or diving? still or sparkling water? butterflies or ladybugs? sun or moon?
Doing ink paintings are so rewarding. You can never capture the iridescent look and vibrancy in a photo. This is my painting “Overlooked Beauty”. Ladybugs are such helpful beetles and quite beautiful too. Please follow me for more animal artwork. #inkart #inkaddict #ladybug #ladybugs #ladybugs #beetlelovers #inkartist #inkdrawing #inkpainting #wildlifeartists #wildlifeart #wildlifeaddict #wildlifeartist #wildlifeartwork #wildlifeartworkforsale #bugart #bugartwork #ladybugart #inklovers #inklover #indiaink #indiainkpainting #painting #paintings #paintingart #animalart #animaladdicts #animal #animals #animalartist https://www.instagram.com/p/CWlSvdepXo_/?utm_medium=tumblr
In my last post, a reblog from last year, I mentioned the cut conifers to be sold as Christmas trees had started arriving at the garden centre where I work, but together with the trees we also received some visitors.
As of October, ladybugs (Coccinella septempunctata) begin congregating in sheltered places to spend their winter dormancy period, a time when their mobility and activity level are strictly dependant on the temperature, and it seems a large number of them had chosen the dense, evergreen foliage of the Nordmann firs (Abies nordmanniana) to do so. Whenever I would free a tree from its net, shaking it, several ladybugs (as well as a variety of spiders) would fall to the floor, suddenly thrown out of their cosy temporary home.
I collected and placed dozens of them around the garden centre, where they will be valuable allies in my battle against aphids next year, but I also decided to relocate some of them to my allotment. I had one of those boxes sold as “butterfly houses” installed on a south-facing portion of the fence, and I thought it could serve well for the purpose of giving them shelter, so I filled it with some bamboo sticks and placed them inside to see what they would do.
They seem to find it suitable, the following day the box was still full and the majority had climbed up to rest under the roof. If all goes well, they will spend the winter there, and when they emerge they will find the place to be a good breeding site, which will also, inexorably, be filled with food for them.
Aphids, mites and all of you, soft-bodied insects, cower before my army now!
Exactly two months after giving the ladybugs a new home, I gave a small group of them a first task. A Salvia plant overwintering in my mini greenhouse had become the target of likewise overwintering aphids, taking advantage of the sheltered position. I could have simply used an insecticidal spray, but why, when I can mingle with biological warfare?!
Jokes aside, any shelter or protective structure you can give a plant against the cold will also be ideal for other creatures. Biological pest control means playing with the balance in the numbers of these creatures, encouraging what’s beneficial to your situation.
Go ladybugs!
Thanks to an unexpected heatwave, which has raised the temperature to the highest ever recorded in February here in the UK, guess who was out and mating today?
Insectblr, what should i feed my ladybugs? I have been giving them raisins socked in water, and they seemed to be ok until 2 days ago when one killed another ladybug and began eating it.
Should i try to find aphids? I cant exactly go into other people’s garden to try to see if they have an infected plant and my building doesn’t have that much of plants.
If they are craving protein is there like a supplement i can give to them?
There were many times in my childhood where goblin instincts really shined through, and this is one of those times.
When I was in around 3rd grade, my friend and I got one of those little tiny water bottles, dumped out all the water, and then filled it with ladybugs. Like, easily around 100 ladybugs. We sprinkled some grass in there cuz duh and then poked some holes in the lid.
Now, of course we couldn’t let our little friends go, so we decided one of us would have to take this tiny water bottle home and keep these ladybugs. Little goblin me decided of course ~I~ should take them home. So I did.
I hid them ever so carefully in my backpack and took home my new little friends. When I got home, I ran right upstairs to my room, shut the door, and took out the tiny water bottle from my backpack. Naturally, my tiny goblin hands could not resist the temptation of holding these sweet darlings, so I open the lid and get like three of them out of there. I set them carefully on my bed and watch them crawl around.
After a while, it was time to catch them.
So I tried catching each one in my hand, but they kept getting away and crawling under stuff and I couldn’t manage to catch them!! Ahhh!!! I ended up catching them all except for one, which I just accepted the fact that there would just be a lady bug flying around my room and that there’s nothing I could do about it.
The next day I brought the water bottle back to my friend because I couldn’t handle the responsibility of being a parent to 100 little babies. We released them back to the earth, where they belonged. Also my mom never found out about them because hehehe I was a sneaky little goblin child
