That may be bad news for your tree, but fascinating nevertheless - I shall store that bit of info in case I come across a hole in a fruit tree again! Good luck with saving your tree
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
Yesterday I did some tree excavating, in search of some sort of borer. 45 mins later and 26cm of tree damage I found the culprits. Two very fat looking borers. Having done some more research I originally thought they were apple tree borers but they have got black dots on their bodies and all the images I have found were of plain cream bodies. Fingers crossed my tree will now survive. Thanks very much for all your help. Enjoy the photos!
You might like to think about staking your tree firmly with a stake that comes well above the hole. The hole will be weakening the trunk, and you don't want it to snap.
I have also found out what the bugs are....<span class="yiv1365101254st"><span style="color: #1f497d;">Zeuzera pyrina<span style="color: #1f497d;">(Leopard moth) which <span style="color: #1f497d;">isn’t a notifiable pest and is<span style="color: #1f497d;"> widespread in the UK (mainly in the southern England and South Wales)<span style="color: #1f497d;">which<span style="color: #1f497d;"> feeds on a range of <span style="color: #1f497d;">deciduous trees.
<span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: 'sans-serif'; font-size: 11pt;"> So it seems that they are nothing unusual, thanks for all the suggestions and help.
Excellent work in both digging them out and identifying as Leopard Moth grubs, Nicole! As it is a relatively young tree it will probably heal itself with bark eventually growing over the damage. As Alina says, best to stake it to prevent wind damage, now trunk has been weakened at that point.
Copy and paste from web pages doesn't work well on this site - if you paste into Notepad first, then copy from there, it will work as expected.
A trowel in the hand is worth a thousand lost under a bush.
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Thank you everso much, I shall get researching borer grubs.
That may be bad news for your tree, but fascinating nevertheless - I shall store that bit of info in case I come across a hole in a fruit tree again! Good luck with saving your tree
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
Yesterday I did some tree excavating, in search of some sort of borer. 45 mins later and 26cm of tree damage I found the culprits. Two very fat looking borers. Having done some more research I originally thought they were apple tree borers but they have got black dots on their bodies and all the images I have found were of plain cream bodies. Fingers crossed my tree will now survive. Thanks very much for all your help. Enjoy the photos!
You might like to think about staking your tree firmly with a stake that comes well above the hole. The hole will be weakening the trunk, and you don't want it to snap.
Thanks for the advice about staking.
I have also found out what the bugs are....<span class="yiv1365101254st"><span style="color: #1f497d;">Zeuzera pyrina<span style="color: #1f497d;">(Leopard moth) which <span style="color: #1f497d;">isn’t a notifiable pest and is<span style="color: #1f497d;"> widespread in the UK (mainly in the southern England and South Wales)<span style="color: #1f497d;">which<span style="color: #1f497d;"> feeds on a range of <span style="color: #1f497d;">deciduous trees.
<span style="color: #1f497d; font-family: 'sans-serif'; font-size: 11pt;"> So it seems that they are nothing unusual, thanks for all the suggestions and help.
Oh dear, I have no idea what has happened to my text above! Sorry
Excellent work in both digging them out and identifying as Leopard Moth grubs, Nicole! As it is a relatively young tree it will probably heal itself with bark eventually growing over the damage. As Alina says, best to stake it to prevent wind damage, now trunk has been weakened at that point.
Copy and paste from web pages doesn't work well on this site - if you paste into Notepad first, then copy from there, it will work as expected.