There's a bug living in my lily

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valrita Jul 20, 2008

On my garden walk yesterday, I found this. This is a Madonna lily that finished blooming about a month ago. I cut the seed pods off it when it finished blooming.

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valrita Jul 20, 2008

As I stood there looking in horror, I saw a bug wiggling it's but out the hole.

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valrita Jul 20, 2008

Maybe it's some kind of wasp? What can I do? Do I need to kill the plant? I don't want the bug to make a home in any of my other lilies.

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valrita Jul 20, 2008

One more shot for ID purposes. I felt absolutely sick watching this. I had waited three years to see this lily bloom---this year was the first. It was pretty but not worth risking my other lilies for. If I just cut the lily down, won't the bug just go to another lily? If he kills my other lilies, I'll cry. I really will.

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ecrane3 Dublin, CA(Zone 9a) Jul 20, 2008

It does look sort of wasp-ish, but it's always possible that it was in there eating whatever it was that made the hole in the first place, or maybe it made the hole to get to something that had tunneled into your stems, so don't necessarily assume that it's the guilty party. Most bees & wasps tend to be beneficial in the garden. There are things called lily borers--I don't grow lilies so I have no idea what their damage would look like but maybe that's what the original problem was. You might try posting a pic of your bug over on the Bug ID forum, chances are someone over there will know what it is, then once you have a name for it you can look it up and see if it was the thing eating your lily, or if it was really helping you out.

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valrita Jul 20, 2008

I'll try the other forum tomorrow--thanks.
This morning it looked like something had sealed the hole. I wonder if it was laying eggs. If so, I'm afraid that the babies will be drilling holes in my other lilies to lay their eggs.

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ecrane3 Dublin, CA(Zone 9a) Jul 20, 2008

Maybe it was laying eggs in there. I'm still not sure that's actually a bad thing, you said these were done blooming and the lilies are going to die back for the winter anyway and then come back next year so it doesn't seem like it's doing any permanent damage to the plant by laying eggs in the stems now. So to me it all depends on what it eats normally--if it feeds on bad bugs then I'd let it use your lily stems as a nursery.

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