To: "North American Fruit Explorers" <nafex@lists.ibiblio.org>
Subject: Re: [NAFEX] A plague of locusts!
Date: Thu, 15 May 2008 08:31:16 -0500
Uh, Ginda, I think you didn't have fruit trees when the cicadas came out
that time. Their ovipositors do severe damage to twigs, which in young
trees means the future main branches. And whenever and wherever a pear tree
is damaged, you increase the possibility of blight entering the wounds. I'm
very, very serious about how much my young trees can be hurt if I don't do
as much as I can to protect them. And "17 year locusts" is a commonly used
term, though it is not technically correct. I read an article years ago
about the 17 year cicadas, the author talked about all the twigs that fell
off from the damage and how he thought the trees looked greener the next
year, he thought it was sort of like they'd been pruned. I wonder if it's
because they were now stuck with only little bitty larvae chewing on their
roots instead of big ones. About 5 years ago someone told me some of her
trees were looking bad when they first leafed out, and then the cicadas
emerged, so she thought they'd really been doing a job on the roots. We
kind of forget what's going on down there sometimes. Donna