Participants at yesterday's Greater Cincinnati BYGLive! Diagnostic Walk-About observed Elongate Hemlock Scale (EHS) on its namesake host. This non-native armored scale has a wide conifer host range beyond hemlocks. It may be found on firs, Douglas-fir, spruces, cedars, and occasionally pines and yews. I first came across EHS in southwest Ohio in 2010 infesting a Cilician fir in a high-profile landscape.

Participants at yesterday's Greater Cincinnati BYGLive! Diagnostic Walk-About observed second-generation Fall Webworm nests on a number of hosts including baldcypress. All of the nests were relatively small and populated with 1st or 2nd instar caterpillars.

As I was strolling through the crabapple fields in Wooster at Secrest Arboretum, I began to notice that something was significantly different than the last time that I had evaluated the trees.  Since I was evaluating the trees for apple scab, it suddenly struck me that I was also looking at a lot of polka-dot covered trees!  What in the world was going on?  As I looked closer at the foliage, the thing that stood out the most were the number of yellow-orange dots.

 

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I've had a long fascination with Turkey Vultures (Cathartes aura) starting when I was a kid in West Virginia. I liked to lay on the ground observing these avian gliders catching thermal updrafts to stay aloft for hours without flapping their wings. This stopped when one of my uncles observed that I looked dead.

I attended a meeting last Thursday on plant pollinators at the Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Garden (CZBG). One focus was on managing pests by increasing the abundance and diversity of flowering plants in a landscape. Many beneficial insects were two hats be serving as both plant pollinators and enemies of other insects.

I've observed sawfly larvae skeletonizing leaves on the same American bladdernut trees southwest Ohio in 2015, 2017, and again late last week. I've concluded they must cause little harm to the overall health of their bladdernut host because the trees continue to flourish despite providing some great photo ops of sawfly damage over the years!

We teach the importance of identifying a pest in order to develop an effective pest management plan. An accurate ID leads to learning about the pest's lifestyle including host range and numbers of generations per season. Occasionally, a significant insect pest somehow continues to fly below the radar of insect taxonomists.

I posted an Alert yesterday that stated Elm Yellows (EY) has been confirmed by Ohio State University C. Wayne Ellett Plant and Pest Diagnostic Clinic (PPDC) in a park in Greater Cincinnati. This not correct. The PPDC only detected a phytoplasma in an elm sample.

As Oriental lilies are about halfway through their “bloombastic tour”, simply walking near them causes one to be stunned visually and in the olfactories too!  After drawing in the noticeable, spicy scent wafting all around and through the air nearby the plants, it gives the feeling that breathing the regular, old normal air seem stale!  That was just one of the differences between Asiatic and Oriental lilies, which I alluded to in an earlier BYGL article this year.

 

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