Our reader spotted the true bugs. They sent us the following letter:
I would like to draw your attention to insects (parasites) from those exotic species that you wrote about some time ago. Does the city intend to do anything about this? There are a lot of them in various parts of the city, e.g. Jana Pawła II, Starzyńskiego, as well as other areas. There are a lot of them on fruit trees. The bark is practically teeming with life. The tree trunk, from top to bottom, is covered with hundreds of these black-and-white bugs. It is disgusting. A child could accidentally brush against them and become covered with this nasty vermin. Some intervention by the city is needed here, because there are more and more of them every day. I know from my own sources that the Bolesławianka housing cooperative has already submitted a letter to the city on this matter, but as we can see, without some publicity our authorities apparently do not notice the problem?
We checked this information. Indeed, there are quite a lot of these true bugs on trees in Bolesławiec. We took photographs on Jana Pawła II Street.
The true bug is the lime seed bug. In Poland, it is found near human settlements or even within them—mainly on the trunks of small-leaved lime trees.
“No economic damage in plant production has been found. Officially, there is no registered product for it in Poland. By sucking sap, the true bug probably damages reaction wood, which is responsible for plants’ response to factors such as wind,” says Michał Jagielski from Ogrody Jagielski.