Jun 17, 2011: During spring general weeding on a rockary, I left some weeds which I didn`t recognize from the first glance. We usually do not weed out the plants which we do not recognize because (a) they can turn out to be garden plants we planted some time ago and forgot, (b) they can turn out to be beautiful weeds which we would prefer to make friends.

This plant turned out to be a figwort. I can`t say that the flowers are fascinating, but instead of that the plant is almost always inhabited by funny bugs, and these bugs do not feed on other garden plants. Due to this fact the figwort together with it`s dwellers was left on the rockary until I have time to replace it with something else.

Yesterday evening, sitting with a camera near this figwort, I found out that insects, like people, have both normal individuals and mentally handicapped ones :). Two beetles were having usual hugging session. What was unusual — there was a third beetle trying to get between them all the time. He tried again and again to put his nose into the situation — from rear part, from the front, from both sides, then from rear part again. I even made a small video of his activities.

species Figwort weevil Cionus scrophulariae
species Woodland figwort, or common figwort Scrophularia nodosa