Have you ever seen a spot like this on one of your plants or maybe in your yard where it looks as though somebody spit on your plant and it stuck? I spotted this bit of spittle on a plant while I was walking with the dogs sometime this week. I’ve seen the spit spots before and knew they were caused by an insect but I’d never been curious enough to look them up before. First off, they are not spit bugs as I had always called them but spittlebugs. You know was spittle is. Saliva we spit out of our mouths. Sometimes in the past you might even have gotten a spittle bath when your mother spotted a dirty spot on your face when you were a kid. Maybe you gave your kids a spittle face clean-up sometime. I’ve seen some moms clean up their babies’ pacifiers with a little spittle after it fell on the floor or ground. Only the second or third baby. Never the first. With the first, the moms probably had a sterilized extra pacifier in a plastic bag handy. But that’s people spittle.
This spittle bug is bug spittle. Actually it’s not spit at all but some bubbly secretion from their abdomen to make this little hidden spot where the larva can suck the moisture out of the stems of whatever plant its parent bug picked to lay eggs. Spittlebugs use the bubbly substance as protection from predators, extreme temperatures and drying out. You have to be amazed at the adaptability and little wonders of nature.
Gardeners only need to worry about the spittlebugs if there are an abundance of them. One or two won’t hurt a plant that much. If you do want to get rid of them, many gardeners just spray away the spittle spots and any remaining eggs with their hose. For a more permanent solution you can find recipes for a natural deterrent of peppers and garlic. Of course, there’s always the never fail solution of picking them off and squashing the larva. My mother used to talk about having to pick the potato bugs off the potato plants in their garden and I have bad memories of being told to pick tobacco worms off the tobacco plants.
But since this little spittlebug was out in the field on a weed, I didn’t have to do anything to it. If no cow decides to step on its plant or perhaps chow down on the leaves, this larva has the opportunity to develop into the froghopper bug. If you get nothing else out of this post, you have to love the bug names. Spittlebug. Froghopper.
I found two reasons the bug was named froghopper. One place said it was because the bug’s head looked like a frog. Another said it was how they can jump. Froghoppers can jump 27 inches into the air. Even though it is heavier than flea, it can jump higher thanks to strong, well-developed muscles of the hind legs. The hind legs of a froghopper generate G-force of 400 gravities, when it prepares to jump. This force is 80 times greater than G-force generated during the launching of the rockets into the space. See, I told you nature can be amazing.
While it’s easy to spot the spittlebug, it’s rare to see one of those froghoppers. That’s because they can take off and jump away faster that our eyes can follow them. Maybe that’s why they’ve been around forever. Scientists claim to have found fossils of froghoppers they estimate at 165 million years old. But the poor froghopper has a short life span of 23 days.
If you have made it reading this far, you have surely learned more about the spittlebug than you ever knew you wanted to know. But I find nature fascinating and how the Lord designed each creature and each bug to find its place in the world. I’m not sure what purpose the spittlebug or froghopper has in our natural world. Perhaps nothing more than food for birds, ladybugs or preying mantis. But they are part of nature’s cycle.
Thanks for reading. I hope all of you won’t unsubscribe after this post. 
I promise I won’t talk about bugs next post. Maybe.
Do you like to read about the wonders of nature?