If you live in south west England, early autumn is a good time to look for aliens – alien insects that is! There are no native stick insects in the UK, however, three species have become successfully established in Devon, Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly Three New Zealand species of stick-insects, or phasmids (from the Greek ‘phasma’ meaning phantom or apparition), have become naturalised in the UK over the last 100 years, and almost all are in south west England. This means that they live and reproduce here in the UK in the wild. The first UK record was of a Prickly Stick-insect (Acanthoxyla geisovii) found in a Paignton garden in 1909, with a further locality in 1943 from Tresco Abbey Gardens in the Isles of Scilly. The next species was the Smooth Stick-insect (Clitarchus hookeri) found in 1949, also in Tresco Abbey Gardens. The third species was the Unarmed Stick-insect (Acanthoxyla inermis) recorded at Truro, Cornwall, in 1979. Subsequently it was found that it had been established in Treseder’s Truro nursery since the 1920s, only a 100 metres from that 1979 record.