Lionstailing

On my travel route today: more lionstailed trees.  (See June 10).  Again in Pottstown.  Maybe Pottstown has an epidemic.  Or would that be called an infestation (2-legged pests)?

Bagworms and Bagworm Predators

This morning we did a pest monitoring visit for a good client, a 250unit townhouse complex.  Historically the worst pest here (invertebrate that is) has been the bagworm, because of the preponderance of arborvitae and juniper in the landscape.

A big problem with bagworms is that to the untrained eye they are not easily seen, so they’re often not noticed until late summer when they are no longer easy, or possible, to control, and the tree has been killed or severely damaged.

But early instar (young) larvae are EASILY controlled, you just need to know when and how to spot them.

Cocoon of early instar larva. Can you see it? The caterpillar has camouflaged itself by attaching juniper needles to the cocoon!

 We examined all the important host plants today, and only found one very small bagworm outbreak (thus the lousy photo-not a lot of subjects from which to choose.)

But what we DID find was lots of assassin bugs!  That’s a good thing!  They’re a predatory insect – one of the few predators of bagworm.

Assassin bugs

The bagworm larva’s cocoon protects it from most predators, but the assassin bug can attack it successfully because it has a long, pointy mouth part (rostrum) that it can insert right into the cocoon.

See the rostrum? It’s the reddish brown spike curving down and rearward from the head

Anyway, the point of this story is that this clients landscape has very few pest problems.  And it is because they DON’T use regularly scheduled pesticide cover sprays.  When we encounter a pest problem that reaches a threshold requiring an intervention we just target the actual pest population, we don’t blast the whole landscape with pesticides.  And we use a control measure that can do the job with the least  impact on non-target species.  Bagworm can be easily controlled with Bt if caught in time.  Bt only kills Lepidoptera, no other insects.

So natural predators control almost all the pests for this client.  The bagworms rarely get out of hand anymore.  There are never any mite problems on the spruces or arborvitae or junipers.  This job is really easy if you know what you’re doing.

More insect eaters we saw today:

Damsel fly

Predator mite (eating an earwig)

 Unfortunately a lot of companies still manage pests with regular sprays, whether needed or not.  This is stupid.  It’s like bombing the hell out of an entire country just to try to get one terrorist bad guy when you don’t even know if he’s there or not!  It’s a huge waste of money and ammunition, there’s loads of unnecessary collateral damage, and a lot of the casualties turn out to have been your allies!

The lesson : diagnose before you treat.  (treatment without diagnosis is malpractice)  Monitoring plants is the first and most important step.  It is the key element in an IPM (integrated pest management) or PHC (plant health care) program.

Wonderful example of horrible pruning!

Sometimes in the course of my travels something catches my eye and I am compelled to pull over and snap a picture.  This is one of those things.

Somebody stripped out all the inside branches of this pin oak!

This is unfortunately a pretty common malpractice – the ignorant tree pruner sometimes claims to the unsuspecting tree owner that “thinning” the tree will let wind through and lessen the chance of storm breakage, and they do THIS.  But this is not thinning – the name for it is LIONSTAILING.  It doesn’t achieve the effect claimed because all the leaf surface area is now at the end of the branch where the wind force has the most leverage on the branch, instead of evenly distributed as “nature intended” (as evolution perfected).

And then, all that light let in on the previously shaded bark causes the tree to waste valuable stored energy putting out sprouts, and it can’t make the needed amount of food (sugar) (energy) because of the reduced amount of foliage.  This could likely be the beginning of the irreversible decline of the health of this mature tree.  What a shame.

Actual thinning is not harmful, it can be good.  It takes skill to get out to the ends of the branches where the thinning cuts need to be.  And if the cuts are made correctly, according to ANSI standards and using the 3 to 1 rule, you probably won’t even notice it was pruned if you are driving by.