While walking, one afternoon, in a park close to my home in southwest Missouri, I happened to spot a low hanging branch of a Sycamore tree nest to the path. Out of curiosity, I examined a leaf. At this time of the year (October) many of the trees have leaves that are just beginning to change color. The veins of the leaf were just beginning to show a little bit of yellow but, that’s not what peaked my interest.
As I turned the leaf over, I observed a literal community of bugs populating the lower surface. There were tiny little leaf mites crawling over the surface in addition to many spider mites and leaf hoppers. Intrigued, I took this leaf home to examine under my microscope. The drawing represents what I assume to be a leaf mite that was about the size of the head of a pin. Not being an entomologist, I’m not sure what they are. The fact was that every tree I examined had large population of this bug on the undersides of many of the leaves.
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