This Forum will close on Wednesday 27 March, 2024. Please refer to the announcement on the Discussions page for further detail.
Large fat white grub eating trunk of young rowan
rosietwo
Posts: 6
Hi six years ago we planted three rowan trees (bought from different garden centres) and last year we noticed brown soft sawdust material down the trunk, when we looked above there was a hole where this stuff was coming out and the trunk was soft. We decided we had to chop the tree down as it would have fallen on our other trees and shrubs. As we started to saw it up a big fat white grub with brown head came out. We have greased an area around the other two trees and abrexed anywhere we thought these things could be laid but now we have just found the same on another of the rowans this year. Can someone please advise as we are at our whits end.
0
Posts
Is it possible to upload a picture of the larva rosietwo?
Hi Ladybird 4 thank you for your reply. I'might afraid I have not got a picture as it was last year the grub emerged from the tree we felled and can't get to this one yet as it must be way up in the trunk but the one last year was like a big white fat caterpillar with brown head over an inch long. Rosie two x
They could be beetle larvae of one sort or another - possibly even Stag beetle or Lesser Stag beetle - they will not have killed your trees as they feed on wood which is already rotting.
It sounds to me as if the rowans are dying for some other reason - can you show us some photos of the trees and their surroundings.
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
This might help http://maria.fremlin.de/stagbeetles/larva-guide/
Remember that stag beetles are an endangered species - if this is what yours are please report them here http://www.stagbeetles.co.uk/reportasighting.htm
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
Hi everyone thank you for all your replies, after all your advice we are going to wait and see what happens to the tree as we don't like using chemicals. Probably if we have to remove it we will have to find out if there are more suitable trees for our garden that are resistant to this problem. We are next to a beck and seem to get lots of bugs that we never even saw when we lived in Yorkshire think we'll move back.
Hi everyone thank you for all your replies, after all your advice we are going to wait and see what happens to the tree as we don't like using chemicals. Probably if we have to remove it we will have to find out if there are more suitable trees for our garden that are resistant to this problem. We are next to a beck and seem to get lots of bugs that we never even saw when we lived in Yorkshire think we'll move back.
It might be that the ground's too wet for your rowans - there are other trees that would be happier there.
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
The ground here is awful as there is a lot of limestone (it used to be a pig yard apparently ) but we have worked it as much as we could and added lots of nutrition but it is wet a lot of the time so I think you're right we need to find out what will be OK there