American entomologist William Harris Ashmead had an eye for
detail and an infatuation with insects. He must have liked
fruit, too. Living in Florida, he founded a publishing house to
print agricultural tomes with a focus on bugs. His passion for
pests was palpable, and in 1880 he penned a book called Orange
Insects: A Treatise on the Injurious and Beneficial Insects
Found on Orange Trees in Florida. This was just the beginning of
his love affair with insects. In his career as an entomologist,
Ashmead identified and named more than 3,000 insect species,
specializing in ants, beetles, wasps and parasitic insects.
Among these, one creature has the gall to stand above the rest.
The blueberry stem gall wasp is one of his naming legacies, and
the scientific name that Ashmead bestowed upon this small wasp
is of interest. “Hemidas nubilipennis” is what he called this
insect, and its name doesn’t describe what you might think!
“Pennis” is not, as one might assume, an alternate spelling, but
rather it is a Latin root t