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What eats rhubarb (besides us)?

josusa47josusa47 Posts: 3,530
in The potting shed
It's not important, but I'm just curious.  I just went to pull some rhubarb, not having been near it for a while, and found several of the leaves chewed to ribbons.  I couldn't see any critters that might have been responsible.  I live in a built-up area so it's unlikely to be vertebrates.  I thought the high levels of oxalic acid would render them toxic, or at least unpalatable, to most things.  Is there a rhubarb specialist, like the cinnabar moth larvae and the ragwort?

Posts

  • ObelixxObelixx Posts: 30,090
    Slugs?   I used to find hundreds hiding under the leaves in my old rhubarb patch.  When I picked stems I'd leave the leaves on the ground as traps.   The blighters nibbled the stems too.
    Vendée - 20kms from Atlantic coast.
    "The price good men (and women) pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men (and women)."
    Plato
  • DovefromaboveDovefromabove Posts: 88,147
    Slugs and snails

    Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.





  • ButtercupdaysButtercupdays Posts: 4,546
    Does that make them poisonous to predators, like the rodents that eat deadly nightshade?
  • LynLyn Posts: 23,190
    Those little green shiny beetles, I think they start off on sorrel, at least the do here.😀
    Gardening on the wild, windy west side of Dartmoor. 

  • josusa47josusa47 Posts: 3,530
    Slugs eh?  Oh dear, I hate to think of them poisoning themselves. >:)
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