I thought we got rid of them all last year. 
I went out to my garden yesterday, to see how the weeds flowers and shrubs are growing, and spotted these nasty little devils on my Scotch pines again.
**sigh**
They are small right now; can you see them?
In case, you don’t remember or you weren’t a devoted fan last year and missed all the fun– we had an infestation of the sawfly caterpillar last year. It was quite a surprise one morning to walk to my garden and see more than half of my pine tree completely defoliated by these horrid, disgusting little creatures.
Click the photo and click “all sizes” for a huge, close-up photo of these ugly bugs. Have a barf bag nearby.
We had to hand-pick them off the trees. It took HOURS and was more laborious than sorting through travel insurance quotes. :-p
This is what a healthy pine branch looks like:
This is what a pine branch after the European sawfly looks like:
This is some of the damage these critters do:
They kill the pine. Destroying the needles basically suffocates and starves the tree. I have put a lot of time, money, and love into my plants and my gardens. I just cannot BELIEVE that a couple hundred bugs can destroy everything…. it’s always an uphill battle, isn’t it?! GRRR!
May 15, 2009
15 Comments