North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

[Betty Mayfield <bmayfield@opusnet.com>]

During my recent Google search on caterpillars, I found the 
description of the forest tent caterpillar (Malacosome disstria) 
similar to your description.

"Anyone who has been in the woods during a FTC outbreak knows not to 
eat an open faced peanut butter sandwich there. It might sound like 
rain but it's really insect frass (excrement). This frass serves as 
fertilizer just like any other manure."

Betty Mayfield
Northwest Oregon

At 02:22 PM 5/31/2008, Diane wrote:
> On 31-May-08, Ginda Fisher wrote:
>
> >  I had very poor fruit set as a %
> > of bloom, probably some combination of the effect of winter moths,
> > which damage the fruiting parts well before the buds open, and the
> > sprays for winter moths, which probably took out some of my
> > pollinators.*
>
>
> I can remember some of my apples didn't start bearing for about 12
> years - almost as bad as seedlings.
>
> In the 1970s we had several years of winter moth which had been
> inadvertently imported from Nova Scotia, on the Atlantic coast of
> Canada.  Every deciduous tree would start to leaf out and then be
> completely stripped.  The air was full of little caterpillars on long
> long silk threads, swinging out on a search for a tree still with
> leaves.  The frass dropping sounded like rain falling.  Of course, we
> got no fruit at all as the flower buds were eaten out before they
> opened.  My opinion of earwigs and birds changed -  I saw earwigs
> carrying the caterpillars down the apple trunks, but I never noticed
> birds eating any.
>
> We used tanglefoot to prevent the females from climbing up the trunks
> to lay eggs, since they can't fly.  This may have helped a little, but
> what really changed our landscape back to green was the importation in
> 1979, '80 and '81 of some natural predator of the winter moth.  By
> 1985 their population had crashed. It was so great to have fruit
> again. I suppose we still have some winter moths but they aren't
> noticeable enough for me to do anything to prevent them.
>
> Diane Whitehead
> Victoria, British Columbia, Canada
> maritime zone 8, cool Mediterranean climate
> mild rainy winters, mild dry summers
>
>
>
>
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