The cicadas are coming! The cicadas are coming!

These brood Xers have been plotting the destruction of my young ornamental trees for 17 years now. What is the best means of protecting my little guys from these monsters? Do I have to worry about my conifers (other than pines or spruces) also? I have read netting to cover the canopy, but I was looking for some 1st hand experience. I haven't been gardening 17 years yet, so maybe someone a little longer in the tooth can share their experiences.

Willis

The pic is not my kid, just my wife's worst nightmare.

This message was edited Mar 3, 2007 9:00 PM

This is the year for the 17-year horrors? Oh heck... They were a plague up in VA; anyone know if they're in western NC?

Just knock them off with a broom (it doesn't take much to knock them off), or shake them off by grabbing the trunk (they'll go sailing off in all different directions), or cover your little guys with mosquito netting or an open weave mesh gauzy (sp?) type fabric from WalMart. It's cheap enough. Were you living in this area the last time they graced us with their presence? They're kinda crunchy when they are under foot. They seem to drop down from no where which is sort of creepy but they're really not that big of a deal.

We had the 17 year cicadas here a couple of years ago. What a mess. If you have very young trees I would cover them but the larger trees will be like a natural pruning. They make a line in the tips of branches and lay their eggs and then the branch falls and they go in the ground and start all over again. We had millions of them...messy and smelly and you will be picking up twigs all summer long by the thousands. There are also certain trees they prefer to others...they do not like conifers so much. Love oaks and other hardwoods. Don't plan an out door party while they are there. BTW darling ... darling baby.

This message was edited Mar 4, 2007 6:54 AM

Equil, no I wasn't in this house last time around (but I was in the south side of Chicago) so I am not to sure how bad they will be. I might be on vacation for part of May when they are bad, so I was planning on getting some sort of netting for my young trees. I'll want the cheapest possible since I won't be holding on to it for 17 years till the next batch. Do I need to protect the trunk at all, and what about Tsuga or Chamaecyparis?

Levilyla, that darling baby ain't ours (although you already mine was perfect in the other thread, so thanks). That is just my wife's vision of what May will be like with a 2 year old and a newborn. I think she will be pushing for a vacation during the worst of it.

Bill

No need to protet the trunk..they just fly around real slow and mate alot...then the male dies and the female lays the eggs and then she dies. Can you imagine waiting 17 years to mate and then die? LOL None of my Tsuga or Chamaecyparis were damaged....if you live in a place with old trees you will have more..if you live in a new place (under 17 years old) you will have almost none immediately around you. You will see thousands of holes in the ground where they emerge...birds will choke to death on them. (LOL) Young boys will throw them at you and laugh.

It's been too long for me to remember much other than that there were gazillions of them to the extent they were hitting the floor when we undressed at night, falling onto our paper plates outside when we were barbecuing, and that kids were having a field day tossing them on people who weren't exactly giving them the rise the kids had expected because the cicadas had literally been crawling out of the earth and dropping dead from the skies for weeks. Many of us used brooms to sweep them from sidewalks and off of picnic tables and became so desensitized that we were literally picking them off our food and tossing them on the ground to continue eating. It wasn't as if it was a cockroach that fell in our potato salad. Kids were jumping up and down on them just as they would if they had been given a nice sheet of bubble wrap- weeeeeee, what fun. I think your 2 year old will have a blast. I don't recall any trees being damaged not even seedlings or saplings. I do know that I will be moving many of my seedlings into a screened in porch (just in case) and I do know that I am going to cover up some of my fruit tree saplings with that gauze from WalMart that is only about $2.86 cents a yard. If you check in the bins, you can probably find other comparable materials that could be used for .50¢ or a $1. For around $50 I figure I can cover up the species most likely to be damaged and can use what ever is left over to drape over my carnivorous plants to stop the English house sparrows from attacking them for the goodies contained in their pitchers. With all the development in the area as well as the insecticides many homeowners have resorted to using for the past 17 years, I doubt seriously if we will experience anything like the last two times the cicadas emerged. I'm not saying you won't have to use a shovel or a broom to clear your driveway where your daughter uses her big wheel but I doubt it will be anything like the last times they emerged in Illinois.

They do do damage to trees, young and old. Our brood X came two years ago. I remember seeing an allee of old red oaks along a driveway nearby, normally one of the most gorgeous things you've ever seen, just desimated. Looked like a war zone. I'm happy to report that in two years they have recovered.

Many of the trees in my yard at the time were between one year and five years in the ground, so very young. Everything got damaged, and some things, particularly my sweetbays, witchhazels, and hornbeams, all still bear the scars. Some of my snakebarks got scratched too, and I don't think they'll ever not exhibit the big, ugly scars they got from cicada damage.

Usually people think the damage is merely short term, and mostly I agree. But I can see some branches on my sweetbays that, although they remain on the tree, are weakened and one day will break off and fall. Hopefully, I'll either get around to pruning them before that, or they will fall before they get large enough to hurt something or somebody when the drop.

My first time around with cicadas, 19 years ago, I also had a bunch of young trees in the yard. That time I dutifully went around and protected them with some kind of fabric used in girls dresses and hats. I can't remember the name, but it's cheap, and net-like, and made of polyesther. It kept the cicadas off, but new growth inside the netting got confined and twisted all around. Made for some interestingly shaped trees, but not particularly of great aesthetic value. So you're kind of darned if you do, darned if you don't.

It's an experience. A good badminton racket is handy to have around. Your birds will be happy and your soil aerated.

Scott

Scott..I am surprised that you say they did damage to your older trees. They do not eat ANYTHING. Just make a slit in the END of a branch that eventually falls to the ground(about 12 inches). I find that (and I have seen them 4 times in my life) that they are just more of a nuisance and mess than anything else. Now young trees are a different story.


edited to say 4 times

This message was edited Mar 5, 2007 6:01 AM

Scott and I share similar memories. I remember vividly the 1987 emergence, as well as the 2004 return.

1987 was right near the beginning of my horticultural career, and I would make regular visits to the greater northern KY area (sometimes known as the Queen City, Porkopolis, and Cincinnati). The drive down River Road toward Delhi was a usual route to the greenhouses we bought geraniums from.

There seemed to be more than the average amount of road noise that day, and I slowed to a stop to see if I could determine if the kind of ringing or whistling sound was coming from my vehicle. To my amazement, the sound didn't stop when I did. It was the cicadas. To say there were millions (billions?) would not have been an understatement. That was my introduction to their ability to overwhelm.

Spring Grove Cemetery and Mount Airy Forest looked like someone had set fire to all the trees, but just on the tips. Soon, all these brown tips fell to the ground (along with next year's growth). I have observed this pattern and effect at each emergence that I have been around for since 1987. I'm fortunate (?) to live and work within the distribution of three of the different broods (X, XIV, and XIX).

What Scott and LL have noted above is right on the money, and add the following:

•Female cicadas use their ovipositor to slice open the bark on twigs (or young branches or young trunks) and then lay their eggs in the slot created
•They lay one egg per notch, and it is not uncommon to have a series of slots right down the surface of the plant
•It would not be hyperbole to say that there are usually 3-5 slots in a run, and up to 10
•I believe the eggs hatch there, and then the larvae drop to the ground, burrow in and feed deep underground on plant parts for the next 17 years
•It is true that the adult cicadas do not feed on plants after emergence

So, while feeding by adults is not the issue, the damage to the plant is the cumulative amount of breaks in the surface on all parts of the newer growth on all ages of woody plants. Yes, big old trees only have damage to the young twigs, but darn near all of them. This becomes an issue with urban trees in already stressful situations. Scott will remember what followed 1987....that would be 1988. Ring a bell?

That was by far the worst drought year in the second half of the twentieth century in the Ohio River valley. Big old trees that had to regrow lost twig growth in 1987, or that didn't put out a second flush and had reduced buds with which to produce leaves in 1988...these were put at a disadvantage in coping with the extremely stressful year of 1988. Horticulturists, arborists, and urban foresters that follow such things can relate the outwash of problems that followed that kind of one-two punch.

Young plants that had severe damage to trunks, branches, and twigs died outright. Nursery stock was so disfigured that many growers simply destroyed those plants as unsaleable. Juvenile plants that did leaf out the following year had the intrinsic weaknesses that Scott mentioned above, and were/will be always suspect as far as integrity of strength.

I have slide images of many of the instances I've mentioned above. I'm going to try to remember to get some closeups of stems/twigs of plants which currently display this cicada egg-laying damage.

To Bill's initial questions: trust no cicada. I would protect any plant that you can't/don't want to lose. Use the fine plastic netting often seen used in sod production. It is available in rolls, or purchased inexpensively by the yard. The grid openings are about ¼" (0.6 cm) which should keep out cicadas but allow normal small insect activity and for plant growth extension. Drape the netting over the top of the plant and tie off at the bottom/trunk, or wrap it around the plant cylindrically and secure top/bottom and staple the material to itself up the side.

If your wife is continuing to experience trauma (nightmares or otherwise), maybe some healin' is in order. Take two (or several) of these...

http://www.newsdesk.umd.edu/scitech/cicadarecipes.html
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1866011
http://biology.clc.uc.edu/steincarter/recipes.htm

They're great in a stir-fry. Nothing like that nice crunch. And very high in protein.

yes and chocolate covered are good....yummy.

Chocolate would gross me out.

Anything with them in it would gross me out....even stir fry. They are really kind of beautiful in their own way...as long as I don't have to touch them...they are slow and I feel sorry for the women who come out of the gorund and just sit there waiting for a husband ...It is sad to see them just waiting......they just lie on a leaf waiting for a man. So what else is new?

Men don't like being 'bugged'. 17 years to commit is just about right.

LOL

LL, The damage to the big trees is all in the twigs. Nothing to main branches. As VV noted, in bad years in heavily infested places, virtually every twig is slit, dies, and falls. Of course, what is a small branch now, becomes a big branch later, and weaknesses caused by cicadas now can lead to failure later.

The fabric mentioned earlier, which I could not recall the name of, is called tulle. I would like to thank my homemaker sister Sandy for that bit of information.

Scott

Thanks Scott & Viburnum. So I am assuming all my young (and they are mostly young) trees & shrubs, except for the spruces and pines, should be covered. Maybe I'll leave out my two good-for-noth'n Chicago Lustre and Autumn Jazz Viburnums to test the potential damage.

Now, for their culinary uses. Do you think the tree they have been sucking off for the past 17 years affect their taste. In that case, I would opt for the sugar maple suckers. Plenty of ideas for uses there.

If you see pictures of my daughters in fencing helmets, that was da wife's idea. :)

Willis

http://www.maryrose.org/lcity/woodwork/images/coppice.jpg How come these trees seem to do okay? When the power companies coppice trees to keep them off of power lines .....alot more than 12 inches every 17 years. I can see if it were every year ...but every 17 years??? give me a major break.

This message was edited Mar 5, 2007 8:47 AM

There's a large wasp species that hunts cicadas. Around here you can see the wasps carrying adult cicadas back to the underground wasp nests to feed the larvae.


http://ww2.lafayette.edu/~hollidac/cicadakillerhome.html

We had cicadas last year, and I didn't notice significant defoliation of anything...but they sure were noisy!

Oh yeah - and my cats thought they were the GREATEST toy and treat ever invented! To the utter gross out and horror of my mother - see, the cats thought they'd share and brought a lot of them indoors. :o)


This message was edited Mar 5, 2007 2:15 PM

cheap fabric from walmart: I use polyester voile which is in with the wedding fabrics to protect my rabbit from mosquitos. Last year he got baby blue.

Claypa,

Funny story about those cicada wasps. I was walking down a path in my garden when I could see this black thing flying fairly slowly and laboriously towards me. As it got nearer, I could see it was a cicada wasp carrying a load of one paralyzed, but living, cicada. Because I was on a path, my lateral escape options were limited. Because the wasp was carrying an insect probably twice its size, its ability to change direction was also encumbered. Well, like an American, my natural inclination to avoid a head on is to veer to my right. This I did. The cicada must have been British, because it veered to its left. Consequently, we're still on a collision course and getting closer. So I dodged to my left at the exact moment the wasp decided to go to its right. But, alas, we were out of time and new options. The wasp, carrying its cicada, smacked me right in the chest and fell to the ground. I swear it looked up at me like with an expression that said, "You stupid m&%$#&^!" Then it dutifully went over, re-acquired the cicada, which likewise looked ticked, and proceeded to haul its load up a nearby ornamental grass blade from which it could launch back on its way.

Later that summer, I found a hole where cicada wasps stored their paralyzed charges. Pretty awful stuff. They use them as live hosts for their eggs and the hatched larvae.

Scott

The wasps are big and scary-looking, but they don't sting people as far as I know. I wish I knew that when I was a kid, there was a big nest of them in our yard and lots of cicadas, too.

By the way Decumbent, Happy Birthday!!!

Scott...what a funny story. And Happy Birthday and many many more.

Thanks everyone! Got my birthday wish, sort of. My wife got a job that starts Thursday! Not a great job, much lower pay than what she made before, but better than what she's been making lately. She still has got a few lines in the water for really good jobs. We'll see what happens.

Scott

That's good news Scott. My husband and I started over 3 yrs ago next month. He isn't in his chosen field, but it's a job none the less..... and Happy Birthday!

I have a question regarding cicadas. Why does it seem that they're in larger "cities" and not in small rural towns like my own? I've only seen them once. In a large city over in Iowa. Same with Japanese beetles, I've never seen any around here. But I can drive East about 40 miles and they're in a friends yard?

Happy Birthday Scottie! So what 're you bringin' to the cookout? LOL Looking at travel brochures as we speak...

Happy birthday Squatty.

I like the story about the wasp, bet it was in slow motion. I had the same kinda thing happen, but I was the wasp driving my a Cherokee and you were a dumb deer that decided to try to walk backwards while I swerved behind you.

Willis