麻豆社

Leylandii, all the charm of a green brick wall, hated by neighbours and wildlife alike. Bill Oddie decides what it really needs is a good thrashing for being so useless, and he shakes its branches over an open umbrella. He's trying to shake out the insects that live in it, but the one he finds is well disguised - it's a prickly stick insect. They鈥檙e not British, but come from New Zealand. They got to the UK in 1909, first seen in Paignton, presumably off a consignment of exotic plants, which of course - especially during the Victorian era - people were always bringing into the country. Prickly stick insects are all females, or at least nobody has ever come across a male, not even in New Zealand. So, here鈥檚 the question: do male prickly stick insects exist at all? And one thing Bill really should tell you before he gets letters from the Royal Society for the Protection of Leylandii - there鈥檚 no point in going out there shaking the trees around unless you live in Paignton, Falmouth or on Tresco in the Isles of Scilly, because those are the only places that these prickly stick insects exist in Britain.