Common Cicada

Lyristes plebejus · Order: Hemiptera · Family: Cicadidae

No source yet on danger. We have no source yet on whether it bites, stings or damages anything.
Common Cicada
Photo: Anaxibia, CC BY-SA

The common cicada lives in shrublands and woodlands of Southern Europe. It is often seen on olive, pine, oak, and fruit trees.

Source: Wikipedia

Where it lives

It is commonly found on olive, pine, oak, and fruit trees.

Source: Wikipedia

Where it is found in the US

Recorded in 1 of 51 states and DC. Most records: Pennsylvania.

Darker = more records. Counts are museum and citizen-science records, not population size.

Source: GBIF

More photos

Common Cicada photo 3
Photo: Trilar T, Gjonov I, Gogala M (2020) Checklist and provisional atlas of singing cicadas (Hemiptera: Cicadidae) of Bulgaria, based on bioacoustics. Biodiversity Data Journal 8: e54424. https://doi.org/10.3897/BDJ.8.e54424, CC BY

Same family (Cicadidae)

Northern Dog-day CicadaNorthern Dog-day CicadaNeotibicen canicularisSwamp CicadaSwamp CicadaNeotibicen tibicenPharaoh CicadaPharaoh CicadaMagicicada septendecimAsh CicadaAsh CicadaCicada orniScissor GrinderScissor GrinderNeotibicen pruinosusSuperb Dog-day CicadaSuperb Dog-day CicadaNeotibicen superbus

Sources

  • Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyristes_plebejus

Look it up elsewhere: GBIF · iNaturalist · BugGuide · Wikipedia

Text written 2026-10-23 from the sources above and checked sentence by sentence against them. Data fetched 2026-10-22.

How this page works

This is one bug's fact sheet. The colored box at the top says whether it is dangerous. Sections below cover how to recognize it, whether it is a pest, and how to deal with it. The US map shows which states have records; tap a state to see other bugs there.

Every fact on Bug FAQ comes from a named source (university extension sites, government agencies, GBIF, iNaturalist, Wikipedia). The source is linked next to each section. If we have no source for something, we leave it out.