Spring! and borers.
- To: Multiple recipients of list <i*@rt66.com>
- Subject: Spring! and borers.
- From: "* E* &* S* E* <a*@sympatico.ca>
- Date: Tue, 3 Feb 1998 08:12:48 -0700 (MST)
Lloyd, springs sounds lovely but I would keep the Canada Geese down
there in North Carolina for a few more weeks as they would not enjoy it
up here just yet!
As to the borer discussion, you are right in saying that borers are very
tolerant of cold and apparently less so of heat. Following Kay's
comments, I believe that versicolor is a (the?) natural host of borers
as wild specimens from around here are infected and sometimes heavily
infected. The borer is also quite common in untended garden collections
of irises.
It would not be unreasonable for an insect and a plant to evolve
together so that the plant has some protection at the time of heavy
infestation. This protection might well be the ability of some stands
to live in water where the larvae of the borer can not survive. Insect
larvae are air breathing and those insects that live underwater, of
which there are quite a few, have usually developed special breathing
systems. The borer larvae do not appear to be adapted in any physical
way to breathing underwater. We can test this idea if someone would pull
up some of their versicolor that are infested on land and some that are
nearby in the water - are their larvae in both or only one? Obviously,
the more plants one compares the more accurate information that we would
obtain.
Ian
