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  • From: Ginda Fisher <list@ginda.us>
  • To: North American Fruit Explorers <nafex@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [NAFEX] winter moths?
  • Date: Mon, 2 Jun 2008 07:28:42 -0400

Winter moth is neither a tent caterpillar nor a fall webworm. It leaves some visible silk on the trees, but it doesn't build tents. We get minor damage from both tent caterpillars and fall webworms form time to time, but neither is an alarming problem at the moment. I don't do anything to avoid either other than keep an eye out for tents.

I'm pretty sure my "winter moth" is the same European invader than Diane Whitehead writes about, and I'm very glad to hear that importing its predators eventually brought it under control.

Ginda

On Jun 1, 2008, at 10:09 PM, Betty Mayfield wrote:


I had assumed that the discussion concerned tent caterpillars, which
on rare occasions have nested in my apple trees and had to be cut out
because they were eating leaves.

But a quick check with Google sounds in part like two complete
different kinds of web spinners. The eastern tent caterpillar
(Malacosoma americanum) spins tents at the crotches of limbs and the
trunk in the spring. But something called the fall webworm (

Hyphantria cunea

) spins tents at the end of branches and works down toward the tree
in late summer and fall.

The behavior of the tent-spinners was like the fall webworm, but a
picture of an adult tent caterpillar was exactly like the moths that
preceded the caterpillar outbreak.

Have had only one severe attack, but the most of the leaves on apple
trees were saved by cutting out and destroying the tents and branches
as soon as they appeared.

Betty Mayfield
Northwest Oregon

At 08:02 AM 6/1/2008, you wrote:
Alan Haigh wrote:
The alleged epidemic of winter moths in the northeast has me a bit
perplexed. I've always had a minor problem on some sites where trees
with a light flower set will loose the potential very light crop to some
kind of flower eating caterpillar. On the same sites trees with a heavy
set are unaffected by whatever reduction may be taking place. The
problem just isn't big enough to bother with.

I subscribe to a couple of the trades like "Good Fruit Grower" and
"Fruit Grower News" the first published in Washington the other Michigan
and have never seen mention of this particular pest nor is it mentioned
in Cornell's "Pest Management Guidelines for Fruit Production" in the
2007 edition or earlier. Given the unique timing of its emergence it
makes no sense that it would be overlooked if it is such a potent
threat. Can anyone clear this up for me?

I'm not sure which moth is being referred to as winter moth in the last
few posts. Are we discussing the mainly European moth, Operophtera
brumata, which invades Canada and the northeast US every so often?

Or...are we referring to the collective group of a good many moths in
various families that overwinter as adults which tend to feed on petals
and new leaflets of early flowering/leafing trees? Usually when
lepidopterists refer to winter moths, they refer to this group of moths,
mainly in the family Noctuidae, and typically members of the genera
Eupsilia and Lithophane. I do not know of this group really ever having
been a true pest as these species are usually legion and fruit and nut
set seem unaffected.
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