What Is Cuckoo Spit?

Cuckoo Spit In June | Image copyright Graham Jarvis 2014, all rights reserved

What is cuckoo spit? The answer isn’t the spit of a cuckoo. It is something much more interesting.

You may have seen cuckoo spit in your garden or in the park on plants in the spring or early summer. From a distance it looks something like white cotton-wool on the leaf or stem of the plant but if you look closer you’ll see a lot of tiny little bubbles joined together like bubble bath. If you look around carefully in the months between April and June I’m sure you will find some yourself. I found lots in my garden when I started looking. The photo above was taken of some I found yesterday.

You might think that it is something to do with the plant itself and that would be a sensible guess. When someone tells you that it is called cuckoo spit you will probably think that it comes from a cuckoo and maybe other types of birds too but why would a bird spit on a plant?

In fact it has nothing to do with birds. The little cloud of bubbles is made by a tiny green bug who is living inside them! The insect is a baby froghopper and it makes the bubbles itself. The bubbles keep it warm on cold nights, cool in the hot sun and hidden from small birds who might want to eat it. I have heard that the bubbles don’t taste nice either - but don’t try to find out for yourself!

Here is a photo of the froghopper who was living in the same splodge of bubbles you saw in the photo at the top.  Click on the picture to make it a bit bigger:

Froghopper Nymph | Image copyright Graham Jarvis 2014, all rights reserved

Froghopper nymphs, as the babies are known, eat and drink by sucking the juice from inside the plant and are so small that they don’t usually hurt the plant by doing that. The bubbles are in fact frothed up juice that the they drink and think blow out as bubbles out of their bottom! This one will drink and drink until he is ready to become an adult and then, just like the caterpillar in the book The Big Hungry Caterpillar, he will make a more solid house for himself, called a pupa, and after a while come out as a grown up froghopper. Adult froghoppers look a bit bigger, are darker in colur and have wings and very powerful legs that help them jump from one plant to another. They don’t need their bubble-houses anymore. They move so quick I think its going to be hard for me to take a picture of one in my garden but I will keep looking and give it a try later in the summer.

Froghopper adults are interesting because they can jump as high as a flea can. That’s amazing because they are much heavier than fleas are and so must be much stronger. Our little green friend here is one day going to be the strongest jumper in the garden.

Did you know this? Me neither. I had never heard of a froghopper before, until this month. They are common and I’m sure you’ll see one if its the right time of year and you are looking for them carefully. A few days after I found out about froghoppers I came into my kitchen from my garden to have lunch and found a baby froghopper climbing on my shirt. Because I had learned about them I knew what this little insect was. I don’t know how he got there but here is a picture of him taking a walk on Sim’s arm:

Froghopper Nymph on Sim's Arm | Image copyright Graham Jarvis 2014, all rights reserved

Let me know if you find any baby froghoppers yourself whilst it is still the right time of year to find them.

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