Sloppy reporting

According to yesterday's Guardian, the RHS is very interested in cuckoo spit, this because cuckoo spit is produced by insects suspected of being involved in spreading a bacteria - xylella fastidiosa - which is causing a lot of damage to plants in continental Europe. The European Commission is taking action. See references 1 and 2. Cuckoo spit which I remember as being common in the grass and such like growing by the sides of the roads leading to my primary school in a village north of Cambridge. But that was sixty years ago; perhaps things are different now.

The Guardian had suggested that the RHS was wanting sightings of cuckoo spit and we have some of the same, snapped left, outside our back door. So off to the RHS website which does not seem to know anything about the matter, nor does it have an email address for general inquiries, so I phone up the number given for their Vincent Square headquarters. After the now-usual recorded messages, I get through, quite quickly, to a young man who knows all about it; I am clearly not his first call of the day on the subject.

He pointed me in the direction of reference 1, although he also pointed out that this site, some part of the University of Sussex, was having problems because of the amount of interest. Which indeed it is: 'due to the high levels of interest generated by the BBC article about insects and Xylella, our iRecord reporting site is currently experiencing difficulties. Apologies for the inconvenience. Please try again in a few days'. I also get the impression that what they are really interested in is sightings of the insects themselves, rather than their spit; perhaps they want to know which particular insect. All of which is much more complicated than pointing my telephone at the (handsome) rose outside our back door. Maybe I will get back to it mañana, as they say in southern Europe.

Reference 1: https://www.xylemfeedinginsects.co.uk/.

Reference 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xylella_fastidiosa.