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nafex - Re: [NAFEX] bagging apples & winter moth

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  • From: Betty Mayfield <bmayfield@opusnet.com>
  • To: North American Fruit Explorers <nafex@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [NAFEX] bagging apples & winter moth
  • Date: Mon, 02 Jun 2008 11:11:24 -0700

Diane,

Tried a Google search on winter moth and came up with Operophtera brumata with a description like yours. A University of Massachusetts page said it had spread from eastern Canada to western, as you said, and then down to Washington, Oregon and New England.

But it is definitely not what I had, which local newspapers referred to as a tent caterpillar outbreak. However, as I said, my "tents" were like the fall webworm, while the heavy outbreak of adult moths noted earlier definitely resembled the eastern tent caterpillar.

One other oddity - both the winter moth and fall webworm adults are described as being attracted to lights, but not the adult of the eastern tent caterpillar.

I definitely remember the "thump, thump, thump" of heavy moth bodies hitting the windows at night when the lights were on. Daylight confirmed that the moths were brown and thick-bodied, but the fall webworm moth is described as pure white.

Betty Mayfield
Northwest Oregon

At 08:42 PM 6/1/2008, Diane wrote:
On 1-Jun-08, Betty Mayfield wrote:

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


I remember a really bad outbreak of tent caterpillars about 1944.
There has not been an equivalent infestation since. Everything was
covered with them, and the neighbours all along the street were
scooping them into containers - the women using tablespoons so they
wouldn't have to touch them, and the kids just using fingers. Then
the boxes of them were tossed into our woodstoves. Unfortunately,
ours was burning when my mother tossed them in, and when she went to
make dinner, there were caterpillars crawling all over the stove.

No, this winter moth is not a local insect. It is European, but had
been in Nova Scotia (on the Atlantic coast of Canada) before arriving
on the Pacific coast, probably on some nursery stock, though it
wouldn't have been on fruit trees as they have to be fumigated before
being sent out West. Of course, someone might have done an illegal
private importation.

It was devastating because it was new and there were no predators
here until they were imported after a number of years of total
defoliation of all deciduous trees. The leafless trees made it seem as
though winter went on for a very long time.

Diane Whitehead
Victoria, British Columbia, Canada
maritime zone 8, cool Mediterranean climate
mild rainy winters, mild dry summers




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