Behold the Glassy Winged Sharpshooter (Homalodisca coagulata)


I finally spotted my first glassy winged sharpshooter (Homalodisca coagulata or GWS for short) sinking its vampire like feeding tube into one of my hops vines. The GWS transmits Pierce’s disease, fatal to many grape varieties including my flame seedless, a gardening frustration I blogged about last week. For your enjoyment I captured a 1/2-inch GWS specimen and scanned it. Note that the GWS was harmed in the process, for which I’m unapologetic.

While there are many varieties of native sharpshooters in California, the GWS is an interloper from the Southeast US and is much more mobile. The native varieties tend to hang out in riparian areas while the GWS enjoys jumping around backyards, citrus groves and vineyards, spreading a host of nasty plant diseases including almond leaf scorch and Citrus Variegated Chlorosis. The GWS is also responsible for spreading oleander leaf scorch. Astonishingly, 20% of home gardens in California contain oleander and 2,000 miles of highways in the state are landscaped with it. The University of California estimates that oleander leaf scorch could cause over $52 million in damage.

Dig the GWS’s built-in hypodermic syringe!

The discovery of a GWS in our yard has solved a mystery that has puzzled us for years. When sitting under the grape vine covering our arbor we’ve often felt little droplets of water, highly unusual in a place where it never rains past April. Turns out it was sharpshooter pee. Sharpshooters feed on the xylem, the water bearing veins of plants. As the xylem contains mostly water, the sharpshooter must process large quantities of material in order to survive. Excess water is puffed out their rear ends, a fascinating thing to see close up. The constant water puffing combined with their fast side to side movements make GWS seem more like machines than insects. Perhaps we could “monetize” this blog by teaming up with Hasbro and Michael Bay to create a line of glassy winged sharpshooter toys, video games and action movies.

Barring a GWS blockbuster we can instead offer our fellow plant and insect geeks an industrial film from the University of California that delves into the GWS in pornographic detail. Nice retro voiceover talent on that video UCTV (one of Mr. Homegrown’s former employers, fyi)!

If you like that video, you’ll also enjoy UCTV’s 90 minute Home Vineyard lecture. I’ll add one point to that talk: if you’ve got GWS, grow muscadine or native grape varieties. Don’t bother with table or wine grapes until the bright folks at UC figure out how to breed Pierce disease resistant vines.

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4 Comments

  1. Muscadines and wild grapes are not your only option. There are hybrid table and wine grape varieties that are resistant to Pierce’s disease. Many of the old 19th and early 20th grape varieties of Texas, including ones that Munson bred, are resistant. “Black Spanish” is an old variety which is apparently resistant. Although I haven’t tried them, I hear many of these grapes are quite delicious, and are important “heirloom” varieties worth trying for both eating and winemaking.

    Also, many native grapes do not have resistance to Pierce’s Disease at all. Only some species from the southeast have this resistance, and often inconsistently.

    If you have a chance, check out “The Grape Man of Texas”, a good book on T.V. Munson

  2. PETA and ALF hate you. Have you tried grafting some of your grapes onto a native rootstock? do you think some of the native sharpshooters might be able to defend you land?

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