Even though the season for passion fruit flowers has pretty much passed, I still go out there to check for fruit a couple times a week. Once in awhile a late flower is on one of the vines, and I love to photograph them. Lately we’ve been getting a lot of rain, so I have taken advantage of that to get some shots of the flowers with water droplets on them. When I was out there a couple of weeks ago, I found some nice fruit and one flower. While looking at the flower I spotted a marginated leatherwing beetle (Chauliolognathus marginatus) crawling around on the flower looking for nectar to eat. I was pleasantly surprised by both the late flower and the late beetle. You see, marginated leather wings look very similar to Pennsylvania leather wing beetles (Chauliolognathus pennsylvanicus), also known as goldenrod leather wings. They can be distinguished mainly by the length of a dark spot on the shoulders or pronotum, but the easiest way to distinguish them is by the season when you see them. Marginated leather wings are more common during the spring and Pennsylvania leather wings are more common in the fall. I had to look closely, but the identifying mark made my subject definitely a late season marginated leather wing.

Both the marginated leather wing and the Pennsylvania leather wing are found in Florida. In fact, the two species have very similar ranges which include the eastern United States and Canada and as far west as Texas and Minnesota. The marginated leather wing can also be found in British Columbia, while the Pennsylvania leather wing’s range extends further south into Mexico. These colorful beetles are often called soldier bugs or soldier beetles because their wing colors and pattern are reminiscent of the red coats of the early British soldiers. The adults tend to crawl up inside flowers to find and feast on nectar and by so doing, they also are great pollinators. The larval beetles are carnivorous and feed ravenously on aphids, caterpillars, snails, and other plant damaging insects. Some farmers may even buy leather wing larvae to help protect and pollinate their crops. As many of you know, I try not to harm much of anything that lives around here, but this is one insect that I’m always happy to see and to have around on the property.