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I hope someone can I.D. this bug for me: I brought home a Cuphea ignea/Cigar Plant a couple of weeks ago and didn't notice then that some of the leaves had been chewed on. When I did notice it, I carried it inside and thumped it down on the counter and a tiny little snail was among the debris that fell off. I dispatched him and thought that was that.
Three days ago I happened to notice a bunch of new chew damage on the leaves so I carried it back inside and thumped it on the counter again, no snails this time but a couple of these little bugs fell off. I continued knocking it about and a total of 7 of them fell off and I flushed them. Next I spent half an hour with a little pair of surgical scissors and clipped off ALL the damaged leaves so I could see if there was any new damage the next day.
The next day, yesterday, I got up and thumped the pot on the counter again and four or five MORE of these critters fell off! Again I flushed them and again I clipped off all the damaged leaves. The same thing this morning! There aren't a lot of leaves left on the poor thing by now so there's no where for the bugs to be on the plant without me seeing them, and there are no other plants inside the house so I am assuming they are coming out of the dirt.
Before I go any further let me say I patiently went through all 21 pages in Bug Files under 'beetles' and the only thing I saw close to it was the 'imported willow leaf beetle'...except those are fatter than my bugs are. I don't know for sure if it IS a beetle, it just looks like something in the beetle family. And my camera can't take a useable picture of anything that small so I have to try and describe it. I recently read on here that Japanese Beetles love Cupheas so that's the first thing I looked at...thankfully it's not one of those!
These guys are small, about 1/8", or maybe just a little longer, and medium in width for a beetle and pointed on the head end. It is irridescent shiny black but not so much as to make it look greenish. I haven't seen any of them fly. The damage they do is chewing the leaves...sometimes the holes are in the middle of the leaf, either single holes or several clumped together, and the singles ones are about the size of a standard sewing pin head. Most of the chewing though is along the edges, both down the edge and into towards the middle. There doesn't seem to be any preference for new leaves as there are lots of them on the plant still.
If I've left out any important info that would help I.D. this bug please let me know. I could just seal the plant inside a bag and throw it away but I really like this little plant! If anyone knows what it is then I'd also like to know what to do about it, and whether or not having it on just this one (I think!) plant means I might have a much bigger problem in the works?
TIA...you guys have saved the day for me more than once on here!
Becky
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