A FKW ORCHARD PRANT RICE 25 
THE STEM MOTHERS 
Plate I, Figs, i and 2. 
The lice hatching from the eggs in the spring are all females, 
and are called “stem mothers” because from them spring all the suc¬ 
ceeding brood of the year. No other lice of the year are quite like 
these that come from the eggs. The little louse upon first hatching 
is very dark green in color while other young of the year are very 
light yellowish green (Plate i, Figs, i and 4). If the buds are 
not yet open, the stem mothers are able to live a few days for the 
buds to swell enough to enable them to insert their beaks into the 
tender tissue of the young leaves for their first meal. As soon as 
the buds open enough to make it possible, the little lice work their 
way down into the folds of the opening leaves where they are pro¬ 
tected from the cold and from the lady beetles and other insect 
enemies and the death dealing sprays of the orchardist. In about 
two or three weeks, if the weather is warm, our stem-mother will 
have attained full development and will begin to give birth to living 
young at the rate of 3 or 4, to 10 or 12 a day. During their whole 
life these stem-mothers differ in appearance from any of the later 
broods of the year. They never get wings, are of a rather dark 
green color with a conspicuously dark colored head; the antennae 
are shorter and usually six, though they may be seven jointed; 
the cornicles are rather short and black and the cauda or tail is also 
black. The stem-mother is usually a little smaller than her grown 
children and grand children, measuring only .06 of an inch (1.50 
mm.) in length when fully grown. (See Plate I, Fig. 2.) 
SECOND GENERATION 
As soon as the stem mother becomes fully grown, she begins 
to give birth to living young which constitute the second genera¬ 
tion. Each female may deposit as many as 75 to 100 young dur¬ 
ing a period of two or three weeks and then she dies. These 
young are all female which, like their parent, are capable of giving 
birth to living young. We have found a very small percentage 
of the second generation getting wings. So the winged lice may 
begin to scatter from tree to tree and orchard to orchard at Grand 
Junction about May loth, and at Fort Collins about June ist. It 
is not until the 3rd. generation that the winged lice appear in large 
numbers, so that the migration of winged lice is not usually noticed 
until about the first week in June in the warmer orchard sections in 
Colorado, and two or three weeks later in the colder portions. 
After mid summer the winged lice begin to grow fewer in numbers 
and disappear entirely about September ist. 
