2024 Author: Gavin MacAdam | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:38
The odorous woodworm lives everywhere and harms not only field-protective plantings, but also various fruit crops, damaging alder, oak, birch and numerous fruit trees. Walnut and maple are slightly less likely to suffer from its attacks. Most often, the odorous carpenter populates weakened trees growing in unfavorable conditions. Damaged trees get sick, noticeably lag behind in growth, and are also characterized by a sharp decrease in the yield of fruits with seeds and often dry out
Meet the pest
The odorous tree borer is a fairly large butterfly: males reach a length of 70 to 75 mm, and females are even larger - from 85 to 95 mm. The dark gray front wings of the pests are decorated with a large number of black strokes and grayish white fuzzy patterns. And the color of their hind wings is usually light brown. Amusing antennae of odorous woodworms are comb-like, and their entire body is covered with short hairs.
Oval eggs of gluttonous parasites reach one and a half millimeters in size and are distinguished by a light brown color with black oblong stripes. The caterpillars of the odorous carpenter grow in length up to 85 - 105 mm. At the same time, caterpillars of younger ages are painted in pinkish tones, while caterpillars of the last instar are characterized by black-brown shades. The occipital plates are yellowish-brownish, the shiny medium-sized chairpersons are black-brown in color, and in the abdominal part all caterpillars are painted in black and yellow tones. Pupae of dark brownish shades grow up to 30 - 35 mm and hide in cocoons fastened with cobwebs from wood bits.
Caterpillars are characterized by double wintering: individuals of the first year of life overwinter in winding family passages clogged with dust and numerous stubs under tree bark, and individuals of the second year - in their own tunnels cut through the wood. Moreover, the machined passages are mainly longitudinal. At the end of the second wintering, approximately at the end of May or at the beginning of June, harmful caterpillars pupate in silky and very dense cocoons located in rotten stumps and tunnels, as well as near the bases of tree trunks in the surface soil layer. Pupae develop from twenty to forty days. Butterflies flying out in June and July are especially active in the evenings.
Malicious butterflies do not need additional food at all. Fertilized females lay from two to seven dozen eggs. They place them mainly on the lower parts of the trunks in the cracks of the bark, covering the ovipositions with sticky secretions that quickly solidify in the air. On average, the total fertility of each female reaches a thousand eggs. After ten to twelve days, voracious caterpillars are reborn, which immediately bite under the bark and together gnaw through joint surface passages that differ in an irregular shape.
Over the entire period of development, caterpillars pass a total of eight centuries: from four to five centuries - in the first year of development, and from three to four - in the second. Thus, two-year-old generation is characteristic of odorous woodworms.
It will not be difficult to identify trees inhabited by gluttonous parasites: they are given out by brownish excrement and flour, as well as brownish juice flowing from the holes, characterized by a pungent smell of wood vinegar.
How to fight
Perhaps the surest way to significantly reduce the number of odorous woodworms, and sometimes completely get rid of them, will be to attract insectivorous birds to the sites. Sivoraksha, jay with woodpecker, rook and cuckoo, magpie, oriole and a number of other feathered helpers will not refuse to feast on these harmful parasites. Riders and tahina flies also infect woodworms. And in seasons with high humidity, a substantial part of the pests perishes from bacterial and various fungal ailments.
Trees heavily affected by odorous woodworm are removed and burned. If the trees are not particularly affected, then insecticides are injected into the caterpillar tracks with the help of thin tips.
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