Description: Adults are dull, gray-brown, about 1 cm long, with an inconspicuous, pale gray V-shaped mark near the end of each wing cover. Larvae are pale green, slender, legless and about 10 mm long when fully grown. Adults feign death when disturbed.

Hosts: Various vegetables and weeds

Damage: Both adults and larvae do damage. They feed, mostly at night, on the buds, foliage, stems and roots of many vegetables. The stems of some plants may be cut off at the soil line, the damage resembling that of cutworms.

Life Cycle: In Georgia, vegetable weevils are usually active throughout the year but may estivate during the hottest summer months. Only female weevils are known. Reproduction is by parthenogenesis. Individual adults have been known to live for two years. Eggs are laid in the autumn on plants or nearby soil. Eggs hatch after about two weeks and larvae feed for 23 to 45 days, depending on temperature. Pupation takes place in the soil and may last from a few days to two weeks. The life cycle may take from a little over a month to nearly four months. There is one generation per year.

Vegetable Weevil Adults on leaf
Photo by: Mr. David Jones,
UGA Extension Entomologist.

Vegetable Weevil Larva on tobacco leaf
Photo by: Mr. David Jones,
UGA Extension Entomologist.