I knew cicadas feed on xylem sap. Working out how to provide suitable plant material to a cicada that couldn’t fly was another matter. I ended up going down quite the rabbit hole reading about trees and how they move water.

Cicadas aren’t chewing away at leaves. They’re tapping into the fluid carried through the xylem, which is all well and good when you’ve got an entire living tree to work with. Flicky didn’t have that luxury, and I couldn’t exactly bring a tree into the house.

That raised another question. If I provided cut branches, how long would they remain suitable for feeding? Leaves might still look green, but that didn’t necessarily tell me what was happening inside the wood.

What started as a question about looking after one little cicada had turned into a fair bit of reading about how trees work. I was going to need more than a passing understanding of xylem if I wanted to get this right.

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