Viburnum leaf beetle

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lmelling Ithaca, NY(Zone 5b) Oct 27, 2004

Warning! These nasty little beetles have invaded the region. If they attack your viburnum in spring, they can reduce it to a leafless wonder in about a weeks time! It happened to us. One week we had a wonderful bush, bursting with health, the next week or so, most of the leaves are gone and whats left have these tiny "worms" on the underside of the leaves. Sevin helps but you must keep after them. By July the worms have gone underground and the beetles emerge and they start on the leaves that have managed to come back.

We live in Ithaca, NY (Fingerlakes region) and this is a warning that the Viburnum leaf beetle is here! Evidently, it's migrated from Canada (I've been told) and has gotten as far this year as Pennsylvania. Cornell has pulled many of their lovely, fragrant viburnum and this year they attacked and nearly destroyed our snowball viburnum and several others. The wild ones that were in the back of our property are all dead.

I have to start early next spring with a systemic pesticide around the snowball, in hopes of saving it. If that doesn't do the trick then I'll have to pull and destroy it. It was a beautiful bush!

Here's a link to some information about this pest, or just do a search for viburnum leaf beetle: http://www.ento.psu.edu/extension/factsheets/viburnum_leaf.htm
http://www.entomology.cornell.edu/Extension/DiagnosticLab/IDLFS/VLBfactsheet2003.html

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