Beetle & Nightshade

Today, Kevin and I discovered this brightly colored beetle crawling along the posts on our deck.  It was a new one to me, and, always curious about new sightings, I went to look it up in our insect guidebook.  Turns out it's a pretty common beetle called the Colorado Potato Beetle.  It's found across the US and Canada in mountain meadows and potato fields.  As you might guess from its name, this beetle feeds on potato foliage ... and also on foliage of  nightshade plants which are poisonous weeds that grow wild around here. Nightshades belong to the same family of plant that the potato plant does.

 

Nightshade Plant

The nightshade is a scrubby looking plant.  Its leaves, stem, roots, flowers, and berries are all poisonous to humans and other mammals.  We discovered a few of these plants growing under our rhododendron bush out back.  The flowers are quite pretty, but the plants are thorny and their leaves are very bug eaten ... perhaps they'd been munched on by the Colorado Potato Beetle!