. Bulletin of the Department of Agriculture. Agriculture; Agriculture. UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE i BULLETIN No. 264 jM9 Contribution from the Bureau of Entomology "<«SFL L. O. HOWARD, Chief. Washington, D. C. T June 15, 1915. THE VIOLET ROVE-BEETLE. By F. H. Chittenden, Sc. D., In Charge of Truck Crop 1 and Stored Product Insect Investigations. INTRODUCTION. Beginning with the year 1901 a small dark-colored rove-beetle, known to science as Apocellus sphaericollis Say, has been reported as an enemy to violets and other succulent ornamental plants in the Dis- trict of
. Bulletin of the Department of Agriculture. Agriculture; Agriculture. UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE i BULLETIN No. 264 jM9 Contribution from the Bureau of Entomology "<«SFL L. O. HOWARD, Chief. Washington, D. C. T June 15, 1915. THE VIOLET ROVE-BEETLE. By F. H. Chittenden, Sc. D., In Charge of Truck Crop 1 and Stored Product Insect Investigations. INTRODUCTION. Beginning with the year 1901 a small dark-colored rove-beetle, known to science as Apocellus sphaericollis Say, has been reported as an enemy to violets and other succulent ornamental plants in the Dis- trict of Columbia and from St. Louis, Mo. This insect is a very common one in the United States and is quite generally known as a scavenger, feeding on humus and decaying vegetation and similar matter. That it feeds on violets as well as on a variety of other vege- tation is now undoubted. Informants have furnished abundant proof of this in the eaten flowers and leaves, while beetles in confinement in the writer's laboratory were observed by him to attack violets and other plants. Nor does the insect confine itself to plants grown in- doors or in gardens, since in its Washington occurrence the violets were grown in hothouses and at St. Louis the various plants affected were growing in the open. There is no doubt, however, that although the habit of the insect of feeding on delicate flowers and leaves is well established it is nevertheless an acquired taste, the insect living normally like others of its kind on old, dead leaves or in soil which has been covered by leaves over winter. Undoubtedly injury by this species is more extensive than our note- show. This may be ascribed mainly to the resemblance of this insect, to the casual observer at least, to an ant, and to the fact that the beetles swarm in numbers on plants in the manner of ants. The year after the first report of injury by this species so many com- plaintsof injuries by ants in greenhouses were made that the Florists' Exch
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