The light catches something in the lavender, something snared on the stems, something bright, like a flung fistful of little jewels. Balls of white foam, bright in brilliant after-rain light. A seasonal signal, though a discordant one: cuckoo spit.
This folk name is today a compound association set adrift: so called because its appearance is said to coincide with the first calls of the cuckoo, though for many of us the latter is becoming rarer and more unpredictable; I haven’t heard one this year.
Another name connected with this phenomenon is “spittlebug” – though this refers to the maker rather than the product. Philaenus spumarius is the common version of the ambiguously-named froghopper. Does it hop over frogs, or hop like one? Both, possibly.
These white blobs are made by the nymph froghoppers, which in their vulnerable youth push air through a sticky secretion coating their abdomen, rather like a child blowing bubbles. This foamy cocoon covers their bodies and protects them from desiccation while they feed on the sap of, in this case, lavender. Eggs are laid in November in the nooks and crooks of stems: each spring hatchling makes its own foam-ball.
I look closer at the “spit”, the smell of the plant pleasantly overpowering as I approach it. The intricacy and density is impressive, particularly when I see a nymph, and appreciate the ratio between it and its product. The spittle is the size of a thumbnail, the bug the size of a linseed. If I touch it, apparently, it will leap. I don’t.
What I do is search the internet and all of a sudden here is negativity: “How to get rid of…”, “remedy”, “pest”. P spumarius is unwelcome to gardeners because it can sicken a plant. Apparently.
But here’s something else: people are being asked to report spittlebug – that’s the name they use – to map a potential infection zone of Xylella, a tree-killing bacterium rampant in Europe. Britain has escaped the disease so far, but if it arrive it would start where the spittlebugs are. Dutifully I file a report at www.xylemfeedinginsects.co.uk. Then I marvel at how an eye caught on a lavender bush grew to worry so quickly.
