Calico Scale spends the summer as crawlers attached to the main veins on the underside of leaves. Detection can be a challenge with crawlers distributed on foliage throughout the canopy. However, as fall approaches, the crawlers move onto stems where they spend the winter. Clusters of crawlers coupled with blackened stems are key diagnostic features for detecting a calico scale infestation.

Fall color is beginning in northeast Ohio. Although the Sugar Maples have not reached peak fall color, other plants including Sassafras, Sourwood, Black Tupelo, Staghorn Sumac, Burning Bush, and Dogwood have exploded in fall color.

“Roses have thorns, and silver fountains mud; Clouds and eclipses stain both moon and sun, And loathsome canker lives in sweetest bud, All plants make faults.”

I posted a BYGL Alert last week extoling the virtues of one of my favorite native trees, American Sycamore [see, Ode to the Buttonwood Tree, October 18, 2017]. I came across a soft scale that I had never seen before on sycamore while taking pictures to illustrate the Alert. I would have included my find in the Alert, but it took me a while to settle on an identification.

Boxelder Bugs were included along with several other notorious nuisance insects in my BYGL Alert titled, Fall Home Invaders are Poised to Enter (Sept. 30, 2017). They may have been poised then, but the bugs are now visiting homes en masse in southern Ohio. Indeed, I visited a home on Wednesday that was literally buggy with the bugs.

  ArborEatum is just around the corner: next Tuesday, October 24. What fun it is: a friendly no-fee gathering of people who love to grow, culinaritize, eat, and drink various foods from landscapes and gardens. Come one come all to the Miller Pavilion at Ohio State University’s Secrest Arboretum, Tuesday, October 24, from 5:00 pm on. Eating and walking. Bring your offerings or just your appetites.

 

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  Friday the 13th has just passed and in some sort of dyslexic dystopia, the 31st is just around the corner and Halloween will soon arrive. So it seems only right to write of that which is wrong - or shall we say – wicked, as in Wicked Plants. There is an excellent book by just that title, “Wicked Plants: The Weed That Killed Lincoln’s Mother and Other Botanical Atrocities” by Amy Stewart. I recommend it, but for now, let us take a little trip into the world of some plants wicked this way come, through the house of horticultural horrors, guided by myself...

I often ask students in Master Gardener classes "what is a buttonwood tree?" to illustrate the challenge with common names of plants. Unlike scientific names, there is no recognized governing body that standardizes common names of plants. Consequently, plant names may vary widely (wildly?) owing to differences in the cultural backgrounds of people living in different geographical regions, among other things.

Bristly "woolly bear" caterpillars commence their annual crawl-abouts in search of sheltered winter quarters in the fall; it's usually sometime in September in Ohio. They may be found on sidewalks, walking trails, roadways, or on the walls of homes and buildings. However, insects are sometimes made most noticeable by their absence.

I first reported on Magnolia Scale (Neolecanium cornuparvum) this season in June when the maturing females were "puffing-up" and pumping out honeydew (see BYGL Alert, "Magnolia Scale is Pumping-Out Honeydew," June 16, 2017). My lengthy BYGL post included a description of the life-cycle for this "soft scale" as well as information on management options.