Eastern Lubber Grasshopper, also known as Romalea microptera.


There was an outbreak of these large,  flightless native grasshoppers at the studio this year. Usually, there are just a few, and they don’t seem to do much harm to what grows in the landscape, except for some that took to munching on amaryllis leaves. Amaryllis grow very easy here and proliferate well, so I don’t mind that they love to eat chunks out of the leaves. By the time the hoppers appear, amaryllis are finished blooming. The hoppers also feed on citrus a bit, but up until this year,  I never noticed any partaking, and I doubt they climb very high in any case. This year, they seem to be everywhere, but if they are doing any damage, it isn’t to my garden. I cannot say the same for others, it may just be that I am not growing their favorite vegetables. There must be some weed around here that they prefer to peppers and tomatoes.


This part of the state has been in a harsh drought, and it is hotter than average this year, which might explain why their population went off the charts. The nymphs of this species are typically an even matte black with fine reddish orange and yellow detailing, that I must admit, looks very stylish. 


One morning I saw clusters of what looked like 20, 50, even 75 or more individual nymphs which appeared seemingly out of nowhere all around the place. One group decided to hold what looked like a cosplay convention on a small potted lemon tree. Perhaps their eggs overwintered in the pot? I have no idea, not yet. (Time to look it up.)


I did dispose of most of that particular bunch though it didn’t look like they had begun feeding. They were far too close to my vegetable starts - it didn’t seem wise to take chances, with the cost of vegetable seeds these days. 


As soon as these grasshopper nymphs  sense you touching a branch they are on, they drop off onto the ground. This behavior makes it fairly easy to catch them en masse, by simply holding a container beneath them and tapping the branch.


Did I mention how slow these grasshoppers are? They are sluggish, the more so when adults, but given their bright colors, they are likely not very appetizing to predators, and don’t have a need for speed. Bright color is in nature often an indicator to predators that what they are looking at will give them a bad stomach ache or worse. So it is a deterrent. But, here in Florida, orange and red on black really doesn’t stand out much. There are a lot of red and yellow  leaves and stems on southern vegetation, and if it wasn’t for their large size they blend in well enough. They blend in surprisingly well. So are they toxic or just camouflaged? I’ll have to look it up.


Still, they do make rather lame attempts to slowly hide behind leaves or branches if they think you are interested in them, but their size makes hiding difficult. I suppose a slight sense of grasshopper self-preservation may be in order even if 

you are a toxic-looking grasshopper, because there is always a chance of being discovered by a predator that didn’t get the memo and doesn’t know if you are poisonous or not- but is willing to sample. 


Lubbers also spit so-called “tobacco juice” when disturbed, as other grasshoppers do, which seems to indicate enough get eaten by some animal now and then to justify the ability to deploy defensive “hopper-hockers.”


This one wasn’t bothering anything, so I left it to continue its afternoon sunbathing after taking some photos of it. It is beautiful. And I am thankful for that, and also grateful that it is of a more solitary and sedentary nature, and not one of the subset of infamous migrating, social species of grasshoppers called locusts, capable of traveling great distances and causing massive destruction of crops. I suppose I will find out if they are a threat to my hot peppers and okra soon enough.


  • —— artist Susan A. Walton, at S. A. Walton Studio, Florida.