Crook, County Durham: Unnoticed in the withering roses, the overwintering aphid eggs experienced a premature spring
Virgin births took place on our dining table at Christmas. After a frost-free December, I had cut the last rosebuds from the garden and by Christmas Eve they had opened enough to make a table decoration. It was left forgotten on the windowsill until Twelfth Night, when the withered flowers, infested with rose aphids (Macrosiphum rosae) and sticky with honeydew, were about to be consigned to the compost heap.
Unnoticed, overwintering aphid eggs had experienced a premature spring. What followed was spectacular, thanks to these insects’ capacity for parthenogenesis, asexual reproduction from an unfertilised egg, without male involvement. When they emerge from an egg they are all females, multiplying via virgin birth, cloning themselves with production-line efficiency: a rosarian’s nightmare. It only takes one greenfly hatchling to start a population explosion.
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