Thanks to Diane, I stand corrected on my pest identification exposed in the June 21 Duchess of Dirt column. The damage to my bishop鈥檚 hat plants was more likely caused by leafcutter bees. Not the black vine root weevil as I claimed.
Admittedly, I did have a niggle of doubt because of the size of the crescent moon cuts on the leaf edges of my plants. Some seemed a tad large for weevils. But I ignored the thought and concentrated on the fact adult black vine weevils would be emerging from their pupae imminently鈥ccording to my garden discoveries I noted in last year鈥檚 journal.
This is a good example that one should 鈥渁ssume nothing鈥� when it comes to pest identification until you can catch the culprit, or culprits, in the act. But this can be hard sometimes. Root weevils prefer to launch their attacks under cover of darkness. To catch them doing their dastardly damage, one must become a night stalker armed with a headlamp or flashlight. Even then, the weevil鈥檚 black bodies tend to blend into the shadows cast by the stalker鈥檚 light source.
And truthfully, I have never 鈥渃aught鈥� leafcutter bees in the act of cutting any leaves on my plants. I am assuming this is a daytime occurrence since bees are diurnal鈥nd there I go, assuming again.
From what I have read to date, it is the female bees who cut up the leaves on our plants because they use the material for lining their nests. And it seems their nesting habits are quite similar to those of mason bees.
And like mason bees, leafcutter bees are also excellent pollinators, ensuring their place on the beneficial insect list. The fuzzy underbelly of these bees acts as a magnet for pollen collection which is then abundantly distributed to other flowers the bee visits on its route.
Hard to stay mad at the leaf damage to my plants with all the good work this industrious bee does in the garden. And I guess I get some kudos too for providing good habitat which enticed this insect species to make its home in my garden.
But scouring through the many, many bee photos that I have taken over the years, I am not sure I can accurately label even one as a leafcutter bee. There are one or two possibilities, but I have been wrong before!
However, I hazard I am not wrong in identifying the culprit who wreaked damage to one of John鈥檚 tomato plants in the greenhouse - cutworm and it completely chewed the leader shoot far enough through that it was hanging limply by a thread. The first time that has happened on a tomato plant stem measuring half an inch in diameter.
The one niggling doubt is the size of the cutworm that was caught in the act. Could a larva that is little more than an inch long cut through a half-inch stem? Or was it a bigger cutworm who did the damage and the smaller one was simply enjoying the sappy fruit of another鈥檚 labour? Who knows? Scouting for further clues turned up nothing so fingers are crossed John has squished the right culprit.
Heck, it needed to be terminated anyways鈥ven if it was not the villain in this mystery. Leaving it in the greenhouse would have put our tomato crop at risk. Cutworms have quite a healthy appetite for juicy, soft-skinned fruits.
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