COTTON OR BOLL WEEVILS O 



growing, they do not lose much time in taking a meal. But if it is 

 Too early for the cotton plants to be above the ground, they simply 

 go without food until plants do appear. At this time of the year 

 active boll weevils can live without food for several days. 



HOW THE BOLL WEEVIL INJURES THE CROP 



The female weevil likes the square much better than any other part 

 of the plant for laying her eggs. The growing grubs require a lot of 

 food, and by the time they have finished feeding all the inside of the 

 square has been eaten. It will never bloom, for it is dead. Frequently 

 these eaten squares drop off the plant and fall to the ground. Even 

 before they drop they look very different from healthy squares. They 

 become whitish, and the three outer leaves, or bracts, open out, or 

 flare. In a healthy square these bracts are pressed together. The 

 difference between a healthy square and a flared square is shown in 

 figure 4. 



Figure 4. — Photograph shows how the three outside leaves, or bracts, flare out 

 when the inside of the cotton square has been eaten away by the boll weevil 

 grub. At the left is a flared square, which has been eaten out by the weevil 

 grub. At the right are healthy squares. About two-thirds natural size. 



Sometimes there are not enough squares for all the eggs, and then 

 the female has to hunt some other place to put them. If it is Late 

 enough in the season for the plant to have bolls, she will lay her 

 eggs in these. A boll is the fruit of the eotton plant and is what the 

 square grows into. The boll is not a fruit such as man can eat. This 

 word "fruit" is hard to understand sometimes because it is used in 

 two ways. Some speak of fruit as that part of a plant which one can 

 eat. A botanist — that is, a man who studies plants — calls the fruit 

 that part of the plant which makes the seeds, regardless of whether 

 it can be eaten. Many plants first form buds, which grow into 

 flowers and then into fruit. Some plants, such as the ferns and mosses, 

 do not make fruit in this way, but most of the common plants Ao. 



