Cottonwood Leaf Beetle

This tiny but pretty little beetle is the Cottonwood Leaf Beetle (Chrysomela scripta). Reaching lengths up to 1/2 inch classifies them as a small beetle, but they are stunningly colored. Oval shaped and marked with yellows, black, and red they look like a brightly colored package all gift wrapped for the holidays. Trouble is, these are one gift you may not want to recieve. Their food of choice are Cottonwoods, Willows and Poplars. The adults feed on the midrib and veins of tree leaves. The larvae will feed on the same leaves, but they carry it to an extreme, they completely skeletonize the leaves, eating all the good fleshy parts of the leaves and leaving the veins and midrib. In large numbers these beetles could potentially harm trees, by reducing their seedling growth. Adults hibernate through the winter under bark or leaf litter. In the spring they become active again and begin feeding on the tender leaves and early buds of Cottonwood trees. Several days later the female will begin laying her eggs on the underside of leaves on trees in the Willow or Cottonwood family. The tiny reddish to yellow colored eggs hatch in a few days and the tiny black larvae will begin feeding. You will commonly find adults and larva together feeding on the same leaves. These beetles are plentiful and can be found most anywhere that Cottonwood, Willow, Poplar and sometimes Alder are found. The one pictured here was on some River Willow along the Platte River at Elrod Mill Conservation Area just north of Savannah, MO