Re: OT: "Locusts"

Pat,
Right now it doesn't seem to do much. Just wish I knew for saure what it will turn into. It doesn't have a head on it like grubs that eat roots have. The whole thing is soft.
Wendy
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: PATSY NORVELL 
  To: Iris Talk 
  Sent: Friday, April 05, 2002 3:27 PM
  Subject: Re: [iris-talk] OT: "Locusts"


  Could this large voracious grub be a Cicada Killer?   I have seen large grubs that I thought were CKs in the past, but I'm not very knowledgeable about grubs.
                                                        Pat in Dallas  
    
  ----- Original Message -----
  From: Bill Shear
  Sent: Friday, April 05, 2002 10:54 AM
  To: IRIS
  Subject: [iris-talk] OT: "Locusts"
    
  On 4/5/02 1:08 PM, "Racheal Nekuda" <lilylvr@kansas.net> wrote:

  > Hi Bill,
  >  
  > Then I must have created my own problem. The one thing we have not had around
  > here is moist soil, except where I water. They must have all flocked here to
  > lay their eggs. At least they are not locusts. I have found a few in the past
  > and they are huge. Mom and I put one on a big head of lettuce and it consumed
  > the whole thing in an hour. Then it shed it's skin and was even larger. We
  > then put it in a box where it had no food and a moth later it was still alive.
  > I would sure hate to see thousands of those invade the countryside again like
  > they did at the end of the dust bowl.

  Lots of confusion here, Wendy.  Earlier you mentioned "17-year locusts", and
  in this message you are referring to the locust plagues in the midwest.
  These are two different phenomena and two different insects.  The 17-year
  cicada (the better name) is a large insect with a big head and clear wings.
  They make a high-pitched buzzing that characterizes summer days in many
  parts of the country.  The adults are generally harmless to vegetation,
  feeding little or not at all.  They use sword-like organs at the rear of the
  body to cut slits in twigs of trees, where they lay their eggs.  The twigs
  sometimes break but hang on the trees, so if there is heavy outbreak of
  cicadas, you see a lot of dead dry twigs hanging about.  The young hatch
  from the twigs and drop to the ground, where they burrow in and feed by
  sucking juices from plant roots.  While many species have an annual life
  cycle, one North American one spends 17 years underground.  After this
  extended stay, the larvae emerge and climb tree trunks before molting into
  adults.  The cast larval skins are commonly seen objects in summer during a
  breakout.  Various parts of the country have different "broods" that emerge
  in different years, so there is an outbreak somewhere nearly every year.
  The insects become so numerous that their shrilling drives people crazy, but
  they do little harm otherwise.  There's also a species with a 13 year cycle.
  We think these long cycles deter specialist predators, since the predators
  woulld also have to develop a 17 year cycle to catch the adults.

  Now the locusts that devastated areas of the west and midwest in the early
  days of settlement and up into the 20th century are quite different.  They
  are large grasshoppers that aggregate into huge flocks and migrate long
  distances, the flock growing larger through recruitment, and eating almost
  everything that can be eaten--even laundry left hanging out to dry!  The
  young look like the adults--like small grasshoppers--but don't have wings.

  SO--the bottom line is that if you found a larva underground that ate a head
  of lettuce, it was not likely to be either kind of locust, since the 17-year
  cicada larvae feed by sucking, and the grasshoppers don't live underground.

  In fact I'm baffled by what you had--perhaps some kind of very large
  caterpillar.....anyway, none of the insects mentioned above is likely to be
  dangerous to irises, unless another locust (grasshopper) plague comes your
  way.

  Bill Shear


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