Comptonia

Encyclopedia : C : CO : COM : Comptonia

Comptonia is a genus of a single species, Comptonia peregrina, in the family Myricaceae, order Fagales. It is a shrub, native to eastern North America, from southern Quebec south to the extreme north of Georgia, and west to Minnesota. The common name is Sweetfern or Sweet-fern, a confusing name as it is not a fern.

Comptonia is used as a food plant by the larvae of some Lepidoptera species including Bucculatrix paroptila, Grey Pug, Setaceous Hebrew Character and the following case-bearers of the genus Coleophora: C. comptoniella, C. peregrinaevorella (which feeds exclusively on Comptonia), C. persimplexella, C. pruniella and C. serratella.

Several fossil species have been discovered, showing that the genus once had a much wider distribution throughout the Northern Hemisphere.

From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Original article here. Support Wikipedia by contributing or donating.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License See Wikipedia Copyrights for details.