The term wood wasp is a colloquial name applied to various unrelated families of Symphyta, whose only shared feature is that the larvae are found in wood. The name is thus applied to "wood wasps" (family Xiphydriidae), "parasitic wood wasps" (family Orussidae), "cedar wood wasps" (Family Anaxyelidae), or, at times, to "horntails" (family Siricidae). The female in the latter two of these groups has a long ovipositor at the back of her body which gives her a dangerous look, but they cannot use them to sting.
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Famous quotes containing the words wood and/or wasp:
“If the axe is not sharp, it doesn’t matter how hard the wood is.”
—Chinese proverb.
“Why should the generations overlap one another at all? Why cannot we be buried as eggs in neat little cells with ten or twenty thousand pounds each wrapped round us in Bank of England notes, and wake up, as the Sphinx wasp does, to find that its papa and mamma have not only left ample provision at its elbow but have been eaten by sparrows some weeks before we began to live consciously on our own accounts?”
—Samuel Butler (1835–1902)