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Kermes vermilio. Cochinilla
Kermes vermilio
38.0157, -1.16849
Field Notes
Description:
Eggs inside the female cochineal.
This insect has a clear sexual dimorphism, with the males being winged and the females wingless. The females have the appearance of spherical mealybugs with a shiny cuticle of a uniform reddish color. At the beginning of summer, the laying of eggs inside the female begins; approximately one thousand five hundred, oval in shape and orange in color. The female dies and her shell containing the eggs is attached to the young branches of the affected tree. This female has a very delicate spherical body, I just touched it to feel how hard it was and it broke, staining my finger with lipstick.
Habitat:
Planta coscoja (Quercus coccifera).
Notes:
The quermes is a parasitic insect of the oaks, from which the red quermesic acid was extracted, used in European tapestries during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The Persians also used this animal in their prized rugs to obtain crimson red.
http://www.endoterapiavegetal.com/es/40/cochinilla_ramas_encina/plagas_…
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