FW: Vic -- Iris Insect Pests [2 Attachments]

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Iris Insect Pests

The irises, mostly Louisiana types, that I grow in my garden appear be fairly free from damage from animal pests.  Whitetail deer will occasionally sample an iris leaf during mid-winter when green forage is in short supply and then quickly decide that the taste is not to their liking. During the summer, the Eastern Lubber Grasshoppers (Romalea microptera, syn. Romalea guttata) will sometimes wander into my irises batches and much on iris leaves.  I control them using the foot-stomping method.  Other than the above, irises in my garden have been fairly free of insects pests unti! l to this fall in November and early December. Then I begin noticing big somewhat- round holes being eaten in the upper part of the leaves of my irises with some appreciable damage to a few of the plants. The holes are sometime large enough that a portion of the upper parts of the leaves break off from the plant.  I narrowed down the culprit to the approximately inch-long Salt Marsh Caterpillar (or Salt Marsh Moth or Acrea Moth), Estigmene acrea (see attached photos).  Since my discovery of them, I have aggressively used foot-stomping on them. I don’t recall ever having seen them before on my irises. In a somewhat quick review of the literature and internet, I found no mention of the Salt Marsh Caterpillar being a pest on irises. My questions: Is this something unique to my garden?  Have other iris growers had problems with this insect?  According to the literature, despite their name, the! y are common in habitats far from salt marshes and are found a! ll across the US, southern Canada, Mexico, and into Central America.  Furthermore, they are reported to eat a wide variety of plant leaves, including cabbage, cotton, walnut, apple, tobacco, peas, potato, corn, clover, etc.

Vic