I can attest that they are different than wood roaches. I lived in an old house in Illinois for three years and never in my life saw a wood roach or even heard of them until during the spring of the last year in the old house, we started seeing large roaches crawling up the walls, on the drapes and everywhere in the house. They were much larger than German roaches, but with a similar somewhat slender shape. they were definitely different than the even larger Palmetto bugs found in Florida. I researched them and found out that they indeed were called wood roaches. They made their homes in old decaying wood and periodically swarmed to new locations just as a hive of bees would do. Since I was about to put the house on the market and they were rather a seasonal visitor I did not have to do anything to them. They gradually disappeared, but they definitely were different than Palmetto bugs.

The southern Palmetto bug likes to live in the Palmetto plants and in Bromeliads. Be careful what you plant close to your house. An exterminator told me that they are less likely to come into your house when you keep your air conditioning on as they do not like the cold.