Capnodis tenebrionis it's a beetle from the large and varied Buprestidae family ...
... a family that is commonly known as Jewel beetles ... and that explains the pretty bombastic title. This is a jewel beetle ... but, although this kind of beetles often come in many glittering and colorful variations, this one doesn't look like that. It's dark, mostly black with some gray patterns and markings ... and it's considered a pest on quite a few cultivated fruit trees from the Rosaceae family ... apricot, peach, plum, nectarine, cherry, and almond.
Adult feed on buds and leaf petioles, and usually prefer weakened and diseased trees rather than vigorous ones. These adults can seriously damage young trees in nurseries, orchards and greenhouses, but rarely affect established, well-cultivated and irrigated fruit-bearing orchards. Larvae feed on wood, while digging tunnels inside the roots and trunk, and are a serious risk to the survival of the tree.
I found in one text on the Internet that "a few larvae can lead to the death of the adult tree within one or two years"
I encounter these beetles every summer, but never in big numbers ... and besides the aforementioned cultivated trees, they use quite a few wild, self seeding plant for their growth and reproduction. With no big plantations around they don't seem to create problems in gardens ... there are many almonds scattered around my hometown ... and some plums & peaches can be found in gardens as well ... and all those trees seem doing well, so ... I was glad to see this interesting insect and take a few shots, back then in summer 2016.
