Re: CULT: borer egg locations
- Subject: Re: [iris-talk] CULT: borer egg locations
- From: B* S*
- Date: Thu, 5 Apr 2001 11:56:29 -0500
Borer eggs are laid on all kinds of plant debris in the garden.
There should be a thorough cleanup of all iris foliage and other
leafy organic matter. The eggs are not easily visible--searching for
them individually would not be an effective use of time. Just
collect and burn all old iris foliage. I don't know if eggs can be
found on green iris leaves, but in my experience it seems that they
are not, or if so, very few such that they are not noticed.
The life of a borer is not very secure. They have many enemies,
especially when they are small or in the egg stage, before they reach
the relative security of the inside of an iris fan. Predatory mites
and nematodes, other kinds of insects, spiders, daddy-long-legs
(harvestmen), small birds, etc. etc., are all lying in wait. If
borers are typical of other insects, less than 1% of the eggs laid
ever give rise to an adult. When we burn old foliage, we are
drastically reducing the number of eggs present, but probably never
eliminating them all. What we do is to reduce them down so far that
natural enemies and chance take care of the rest.
One of the unanswered questions about borer life is their host range.
Can they infest other plants than irises? There is an old
observation about borers in columbines (Aquilegia) but I have had
lots of borers and lots of columbines and have not seen this. Does
anyone else have any VERIFIED observations of the iris borer in other
plants than irises?
--
Bill Shear
Department of Biology
Hampden-Sydney College
Hampden-Sydney VA 23943
(804)223-6172
FAX (804)223-6374
email<wshear@email.hsc.edu>
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