Oxythyrea funesta – ‘deadly oxythyrea’

This beetle or the roze chafer family with an evocative Latin name, alas, made its appearance in our garden only in the last two years the size of a small fingernail; it is virtually invisible because entrenched in the depth of the newly opened rose. Only when the lovely fresh flower begins wilting prematurely does one wonder what’s the matter, but then it’s already too late, exactly as  described in the Blake poem. poignantly set to music by Benjamin Britten. :

Poem O Rose
O Rose, thou art sick,
The invisible worm
That flies in the night
In the howling storm
Has found out thy bed of crimson joy
And his dark secret love
Dose thy life destroy.