2024 Author: Gavin MacAdam | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:38
The mountain ash moth harms not only mountain ash - it loves to feast on apple trees, especially in years of poor fruiting of mountain ash. The most active pest butterflies are distinguished from eight to nine o'clock in the evening - during the day they hide in the tree foliage, so they can be seen only in the evening. And the voracious caterpillars of the mountain ash moth intensively eat away the pulp of the fruit. The fruits attacked by them acquire a bitter taste and very quickly deteriorate or shrivel and subsequently mummify
Meet the pest
The mountain ash moth is a small and rather funny gray butterfly, whose wingspan can reach 13 mm. And the length of her body very rarely exceeds 6 mm. The front wings of the pests are painted in grayish-brownish tones and are decorated with bizarre white-silver spots, and their hind light gray narrow wings are framed by a rather long fringe.
Approximately on the ninth to tenth day after the flight (the flight of butterflies always falls on the flowering period), the harmful females begin to lay eggs on the rowan ovaries, placing them between the drying stamens. Butterflies lay eggs on rowan berries one by one. In addition, pest eggs can be seen on young apple fruits.
The duration of the egg-laying process of the mountain ash moth is about five to six weeks. And voracious scoundrels place most of the eggs in the middle or upper tiers of tree crowns. Moreover, each butterfly manages to lay up to eighty eggs. Caterpillars that appear a little later are endowed with dark heads, and their color can vary from reddish to pale yellow shades.
The hatching larvae begin to damage the surfaces of the forming apples, making a huge number of tiny holes located close to each other. And some time later, they take root in the apples from the shaded sides. Often, several caterpillars can be seen in one fruit at once. At first, they spend several days directly under the skin, and a little later they delve into the pulp of the fruit and make many narrow, multidirectional winding corridors there, which soon turn into rusty-brown tones. By the way, some of these corridors can be seen through the translucent skin. The tissues of the damaged peel begin to slowly die off, and transparent droplets of juice ooze from the formed wormholes. A little later, the dark areas of dying tissues become even more extensive and take on the appearance of characteristic slightly depressed plaques.
Rowan also gets pretty strong - harmful caterpillars feed on its pulp for thirty-eight to forty days. Having satiated enough, caterpillars are painted in greenish-gray tones with a slight reddish tint and leave juicy fruits, going to wintering places for subsequent pupation. The pupae that appear overwinter in the upper soil layer or in the debris, as well as under fallen leaves or in dry grass.
How to fight
From time to time, you should dig up the soil under the fruit trees, clean the bark of any growths and lichens, and also rake and burn all fallen leaves and eliminate all carrion in a timely manner.
The same drugs are effective against mountain ash moth that are used to carry out treatments against codling moths. In addition, during the period of mass hatching of harmful caterpillars, both mountain ash and apple trees are treated with "Chlorophos" (ten liters of water will need only 20 g) or with a decoction of tomato or wormwood (such treatments are carried out in three stages, repeating them every week - one and a half).
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