morning are always great information for
your garden on Tom would
you
hey i’m back with dr. david Schadler
thanks for spending some time with us
this morning here’s chadwick arboretum
this guy knows his bugs and we were
talking about an area fit might that
causes some damage on cone flowers but
we also referenced the head clipping
weevil right and let’s talk about that
guy in what we do well that one’s a bit
more spectacular and that what we can
see here is that it looks like there are
some gothic flowers in here that
something has just partially clipped the
flower off looks like they just snipped
it yeah and it looks like you know did I
have a neighbor kid that came in here
and slipped some of my flowers there no
this is a little tiny weevil it’s
usually either black or sort of a
reddish brown in color and at nighttime
it comes out the little female weevil
comes up here and she makes a little
series of puncture marks and eventually
that will cause that hit to fall over
she’ll then go down into the head
and she’ll feed inside of this head and
shall eventually stick an egg so if we
open this up they’re very possibly could
be a weevil larvae I don’t see one in
here here yet but there would be a
little weevil larvae and that we will
larva feeds on the remains of this
flower for the rest of the season
eventually this will fall to the ground
and that marva typically in late August
September will emerge from this dig into
the soil and remain as a larval all
winter long next spring if pupate comes
back out starts the cycle all over again
so that’s pretty amazing I mean the way
the adult clips it so that the flower
head will fall off and the pupa can be
in contact with the ground to to start
its life cycle all over yep and so for
every clipped flower in here that means
there’s probably a weevil larvae that’s
going to develop in there so I think to
me one of the obvious cultural controls
if pull these things off before they hit
the ground and get them disposed of
somewhere else grind them up put them in
your compost pile or something like that
and you should have fewer weevils next
year is there any spray control that you
recommend for this most of the
insecticides will kill these but
remember this is a flower that a lot of
pollinators are coming out to and so I’m
a little bit nervous about recommending
insecticides it’s really the cultural
control deadheading of the flowers when
you see him in keeping sanitation at the
base of the flowers even if they’ve
already dropped if you pull them up you
pick them up get rid of them that’s the
best way to get rid of weevils Dave
thanks for spending time with us this
