Ahh, the vulgar aphid. We as gardeners have all had our run-ins with these pesty insects.
So, I thought, why not? Let’s talk about the aphid.

Description: Both adults and their young, called nymphs, are tiny (1/16 to 1/8) soft-bodied, pear-shaped, with long antennae. They also have two tubes (cornicles) which project from their backsides.

Usually found in overcrowded colonies on the undersides of leaves and tender new shoots.
A sucking insect that when overcrowded often grows wings.

Winged females (bear up to 100 live young a week during the growing season, by the way) are born to migrate to other plants.

Found throughout North America in colors of pale green, pink, rosy red, yellow, powdery gray, gold, olive green, brown and black or with a white fluffy coating, depending on species.

With or without wings.

Host plants are: almost anything we bother to grow, fruit and vegetable crops, flowers, ornamentals and fruit and shade trees.

Damages: by sucking a plant’s sap, which causes all matter of damage like leaf, bud and shoot distortion, which may causes the buds, flowers and leaves to yellow and drop.

Many species as they feed excrete onto leaves a sticky, sweet honeydew which transmits viral diseases and molds.

Ants acting as farmers, often herding them onto plants, they “milk” the ants of this sweet honeydew.

Life cycle: aphids reproduce like there’s no tomorrow.

Females can reproduce without mating, giving birth continuously to live nymphs.

Young mature in one to two weeks and start producing offspring themselves.

When days become shorter in the fall, both males and females are born.

They mate and then the females lay their eggs, overwintering, hatching the following spring.

Prevention and controls: aphids are usually sufficiently controlled by natural insect enemies.
Before you do anything, check to see if there are any benefits on the job.

If necessary, wash the aphids off with a strong spray of water.

This flushing blast of water will knock the critters off by crushing and killing them.

As they are soft-bodied, not having an exoskeleton like most insects, which is the hard outer covering or skeleton which protects the insect’s body like a suit of armor.

Insect predators: aphid midges, braconid wasps, other parasitic wasps, hoverflies, lacewings and the all-popular lady beetles.

•••
The summer world is an insect’s world. Like it or not, that is how it is. There are few insects that ever find the day too hot.

– Donald Culross Peattie