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The Grampound Times
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Edition 45

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THE LADYBIRD

The ladybird has always been and still is one of our most popular insects - quite some time ago its name was given to a complete set of children’s books, with generations of children reciting the rhyme :

‘Ladybird, Ladybird fly away home
Your house is on fire and your children have gone’

Evidently this rhyme refers to the time when fields were set alight at the end of the hop-picking season, as a result of which ladybird larvae were killed.

Ladybirds were actually named after the Virgin Mary. The commonest, the seven-spot, was the first to be named, its red colour said to resemble the red cloak in which Mary was depicted in many of the old paintings, the seven spots representing the seven joys and seven sorrows. They are often called the gardener’s friend not only because of their brightly coloured wings but mostly because they devour so many pests, the aphids’ blackfly and greenfly. Surprisingly there are more than 40 specimens of ladybirds in Britain and a variety of colours, not only red but orange, yellow, cream and white. The reds and yellows especially have no need to conceal themselves as these brilliant colours warn predators that they taste, unpleasant, even to those birds that normally feed on insects. If you are lucky you may come across a striped, a cream streaked or even some very small ladybirds that are plain coloured without spots, and certainly difficult to find.

However, during the last two or three years a large number of Japanese Harlequin ladybirds have been sighted in Essex and the South and East of the country, having evidently been blown across the English Channel from Europe. This larger ladybird had been introduced into Western Europe to control aphids, had spread rapidly and with quite devastating results. There is serious concern about the spread of this larger alien species, which can bite, and may result in a drastic decline of our own native ladybird population.

BETTY MURDOCH