Plant people inspect their plants at odd hours, on holidays, and anytime they can squeeze in a quick garden visit. It’s how we relax and assure ourselves that all’s right with the world. So it was soon after the New Year when I left sleepy family members and darted into my garden for a rapid survey of my plant life. 

What met me was a scene of devastation. Almost all the large leaves of my beloved collection of biga, a native gabi-like plant also fondly called “elephant ears,” were riddled with neatly nibbled holes — as in nearly every single mature leaf appeared like it had been used for target practice. And it seemed only the biga (scientific name: Alocasia macrorrhizos) was victimized among my hundreds of species of plants. 

When I looked more closely, I saw the culprits, shiny blue-green beetles that were munching for a few moments before flying to another leaf to continue what a comrade had started. 

I took photos, posted them on a Philippine biodiversity FB page, and asked for any gentle solutions, like spraying the leaves with an organic scent that the beetles don’t like. 

The naturalists there quickly identified the creatures as “leaf beetles,” or Aplosonyx. The unanimous advice I got was simply to leave the beetles alone and just let nature take its course. 

The entomologist, or insect expert, Aimee Dupo of UP Los Baños, messaged: 

“The holes created by herbivores may seem unsightly but they create holes that allow light to penetrate down where younger leaves grow; some aroids already have these and they're called fenestrations.”

Sure enough, beneath some of the pockmarked elephant ears were young light-green leaves ready to unfurl. It turns out the beetle invasion is one of nature’s ways to enable photosynthesis, that wondrous process in which plants turn sunlight into chemical energy, one of the basic building blocks of life on Earth. 

The biga leaves can get so large and densely packed together that they could block out any light from reaching the youngsters, unless the Aplosonyx fly in to let the sunshine in. 

What was actually happening to my regal biga was a form of creative destruction. 

As my wife advised, in dealing with these beetles, just take your cue from the Beatles: “Let it be.”