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periodical cicadas 2024

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posted 1 year ago

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We think they're past their peek here after maybe a two week increase there are not nearly as many but we are now seeing some damage.

They seemed to be attracted to the apple trees mostly.
A few on the pears and less on the peaches.
Had not noticed many on small maples but that seems to be where most of the wilt and busted twigs are.

I tried to get good pictures of the slits made to deposite the eggs.
We can see this mostly on the weakest apple tree and expect it to lose some small branches but so far no wilt like on the maples.

Has been interesting to experience.

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"We're all just walking each other home." -Ram Dass
"Be a lamp, or a lifeboat, or a ladder."-Rumi
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John F Dean

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posted 1 year ago

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None in my area…yet.

To be is to do …Kant
To do is to be ..Nietzsche
Do be do be do…Sinatra

May Lotito

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posted 1 year ago

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Here we are having brood XIX for a couple weeks now. We don't have lots of trees but the neighboring wooded area sounds deafening. Some stray cicadas land on my trees and they are indeed the red-eyed periodical cicadas.

Sorry to hear about the damage to your trees. Can you pick them off by hand or with a sticky pole? I would feed them to my chickens if I find more. My husband went by a friend's house the other day and was amused to see his chickens gathering underneath a tree all looking up, waiting for cicadas to drop. Have you tried eating this high protein snacks? I heard they are tasty fried or roasted.

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Judith Browning

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posted 1 year ago

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Lots of rain lately but that doesn't seem to bother them.

Just another reason to miss our flock of chickens

Once we started looking more closely there is much more damage than we expected. The maples are the most obvious but a few twigs are breaking on the apples and peach...not the asian pears though.

Found broken twigs on a small ash and wilted tips on some flea bane that had the same egg slit damage.

Looks like nothing that might kill a tree but definitely not how I would have chosen to prune them.

We knew that their sap sucking would probably not do damage but had not anticipated this.

Seems like a lot of egg laying so do we expect an even bigger surge in 13 years?
I'll try to remember when I'm 87 years old

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"We're all just walking each other home." -Ram Dass
"Be a lamp, or a lifeboat, or a ladder."-Rumi
"It's all one song!" -Neil Young

Tereza Okava

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posted 1 year ago

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Inquiring minds want to know if there are any lynx spiders feasting on cicadas!

(I was disappointed to learn my trip up to the US this year will probably not overlap Cicadapocalypse 2024. I was there for it in.... 2021, i think it was? and it was interesting, although my garden was safe and sound 5,000 miles away otherwise i probably would have found it a bit more troublesome....)

Judith Browning

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Tereza Okava wrote:Inquiring minds want to know if there are any lynx spiders feasting on cicadas!

Haha! I've been looking for them in the elderflowers but no luck...I wonder how big they might be now?

"We're all just walking each other home." -Ram Dass
"Be a lamp, or a lifeboat, or a ladder."-Rumi
"It's all one song!" -Neil Young

Judith Browning

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Wikipedia has a good article about periodical cicadas and a troubling quote

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Periodical_cicadas

"After mating, the female cuts V-shaped slits in the bark of young twigs and lays about 20 eggs in each, for a total clutch of 600 or more."

So each female could be making up to 30 of the slits in the bark that we are seeing.

"We're all just walking each other home." -Ram Dass
"Be a lamp, or a lifeboat, or a ladder."-Rumi
"It's all one song!" -Neil Young

Judith Browning

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Location: Ozarks zone 7 alluvial, clay/loam with few rocks 50" yearly rain

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May, have not tried picking them off nor eating them...there are so many and they fly away if the tree moves much...they don't fall down but fly up.

I would probably try them fried if someone else prepared them and they weren't so obviously a winged bug

"We're all just walking each other home." -Ram Dass
"Be a lamp, or a lifeboat, or a ladder."-Rumi
"It's all one song!" -Neil Young

May Lotito

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posted 1 year ago

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I finally have lots of cicadas flying in from somewhere else and they like my apple and peach trees. I can see sap oozing out of the trunk. Hopefully the tree won't get infected with fungal disease from all these lesions.
I am able to pick them off some lower branches to give my chickens some treats!

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Zone 6, 45 inches precipitation, hard clay soil

Judith Browning

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May Lotito wrote:I finally have lots of cicadas flying in from somewhere else and they like my apple and peach trees. I can see sap oozing out of the trunk. Hopefully the tree won't get infected with fungal disease from all these lesions.
I am able to pick them off some lower branches to give my chickens some treats!

I hope your chickens can keep up May!

I've quit trying to document this as it appears the actual damage is slow to appear. We are seeing many more broken branch tips on more and more trees and bushes...apple and peach mostly but not asian pears so far (maybe because the stems are thicker and the egg laying doesn' t damage as much of the cadmium layer?) ...just seeing some damage to hazelnuts.

Most of the damage here close by has been to young maples and now I see more of the young redbuds with dead leaves and egg slits up the young branches.

We think they begin laying the eggs about two feet or so from the branch tip (last years growth?) and then it eventually gets too thin and small to take all of that cutting and just bends.

We're seeing more dead tips in larger trees at a distance.

I don't expect anything to die except maybe the young redbuds that had already had to releaf earlier this spring from a late freeze.

"We're all just walking each other home." -Ram Dass
"Be a lamp, or a lifeboat, or a ladder."-Rumi
"It's all one song!" -Neil Young

John F Dean

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posted 1 year ago

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Odd. I was 30 miles to the south of me and found 2 Cicadas on my windshield…. but I could not hear any.

To be is to do …Kant
To do is to be ..Nietzsche
Do be do be do…Sinatra

Judith Browning

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I wonder, if the damage we are seeing on our 'less than an acre' here on the edge of town is due to our youngish fruit trees and berry bushes that are attracting them where much of the surrounding area is fields, mowed lawns and quite large trees?

They are definitely going for last years growth for egg deposits and they cut deep into the pith or center of those branches on the underneath side, usually at just less than half inch intervals...as they get to the newest and smaller diameter growth the slits kill the last several inches.

We are seeing damage on all of those young branches on fruit and maple trees. And blueberries. And hazelnut bushes. And red locust. And fleabane! And mugwort of all things???

So far, not on the elderberry or young mimosa or echinacea.....or fig.

"We're all just walking each other home." -Ram Dass
"Be a lamp, or a lifeboat, or a ladder."-Rumi
"It's all one song!" -Neil Young

May Lotito

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posted 1 year ago

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I saw the same broken young twigs on redbud and peach too. If you want to control the number of cicadas, dawn would be a good time. There is still twilight but the cicadas can't see. I simply pick them off the tree trunks and branches by hand. Some get disturbed and dropped to the ground to play dead and they usually turn into chicken snacks the next morning. I caught hundreds of them just from a few trees that are within reach without a ladder.

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Judith Browning

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There is a lot more damage appearing.
Fortunately,so far, the worst is an the young silver maples.
I was counting on them for future shade but they pop up everywhere and grow fairly fast so maybe by the next 13 year cycle more will be large enough to withstand the egg laying.

Apple, peach and hazelnut damage also but not fig, persimmon or elderflower and not much on the pears.

After the slits made to deposit the eggs it appears the larvae burst the bark even more (or eat a bit?) before falling to the ground.

This photo is of branches I pruned from a young maple at different stages of deterioration.
The left hand ones are farther along where the bark is split almost continuously.

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"We're all just walking each other home." -Ram Dass
"Be a lamp, or a lifeboat, or a ladder."-Rumi
"It's all one song!" -Neil Young

May Lotito

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Cicada season is over for me. Some damage wasn't obvious until the trees got hit by a hail storm last week.

My apple tree lost quite a few of the leaves too. I was only able to keep up picking cicadas off a few lower fruiting branches. In the peak days, I checked every few hours and the twigs were reloaded. On the bright side, my chickens got a protein boost. I tried a few too, they tasted somewhat like peanut.

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Mk Neal

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posted 1 year ago

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I have only seen a few live ones here in the city, but am finding wings lying around. I guess the birds are eating the few that do emerge?

To day we walked down to the beach (Lake Michigan) and there was piles of dead cicadas pushed up by waves on the sand, though. I don’t know how far they came from or what possessed them to fly out over open water.

Out in the suburbs the brood is much more apparent, loud droning everywhere, big clumsy cicadas bumbling into windows and crawling all over the pavement.

Weeds are just plants with enough surplus will to live to withstand normal levels of gardening!--Alexandra Petri

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Judith Browning

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posted 6 months ago

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Once the trees lost their leaves the damage has been glaring😟
I suppose it could be called 'natural pruning' although it's not what I would have chosen to prune.

Young maples were hit the worst then apples.
Pears seem less damaged but even the blueberries are losing some twigs.

The egg deposit goes all of the way to the pith of the twig so clearly that is how they chose where to lay them...all of the damaged twigs are similar sizes Then when hatched the twig just bursts open as they are laid at amazingly regular intervals.

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"We're all just walking each other home." -Ram Dass
"Be a lamp, or a lifeboat, or a ladder."-Rumi
"It's all one song!" -Neil Young

May Lotito

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posted 6 months ago

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Are the apple blossoms affected this year? My tree seems fine with the fruiting buds on 2nd year wood. However, the lesions are near the base of 1 st year wood so presumably next year's apples will break those twigs. I am considering pruning the damaged shoots now Than later. Also, I don't know to what extent all the cicada larvae are going to harm the root system in the next 12 years.

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greg mosser

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posted 6 months ago

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i wouldn’t expect larvae to have much effect you’d notice. the baseline for that brood, except for ’above ground’ years, is to be present in your soil, underground. if anything, i’d have expected to see more effect from larvae the year before the big hatch-out, as they’d be at their biggest then.

we may be getting brood XIV here this year, so we’ll see how the orchard likes it…

May Lotito

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posted 4 months ago

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I have to cut down a 6 ft section of the central leader of my peach tree because too many branches are damaged. But it is a "chicken or egg" question too because the branches were weak in the first place due to crowded canopy. Anyway, a few peaches are growing on twigs that have cicada wounds and I don't if the twigs can hold the weight later.

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Judith Browning

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posted 4 months ago

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yes, we are also seeing more and more damage that is from the larvae hatching..
Some not so apparent until leaf out, bloom and fruit set.

We probably would not do anything different had we known how serious the larvae hatch would damage so many trees and shrubs.
It is not the impression we were given when reading about what would happen as a result of this event.

I think it is effecting already weak twigs and branches but not only those.

We are planning to plant every tree we can soon so that they are older for the next round of cicadas.

Of course, I'll be pushing 90 by then and may not care at all

"We're all just walking each other home." -Ram Dass
"Be a lamp, or a lifeboat, or a ladder."-Rumi
"It's all one song!" -Neil Young

Judith Browning

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posted 4 months ago

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greg mosser wrote:i wouldn’t expect larvae to have much effect you’d notice. the baseline for that brood, except for ’above ground’ years, is to be present in your soil, underground. if anything, i’d have expected to see more effect from larvae the year before the big hatch-out, as they’d be at their biggest then.

we may be getting brood XIV here this year, so we’ll see how the orchard likes it…

The only damage we notice is the burst bark from the larvae hatch.
That is major.
The eggs are laid so close together that in some places after hatch it is a continuous slit for several inches through the cambium layer.
At first the damage looked like it would all heal and some has, but many wounds are very fragile and deep and with the extra weight of leaves and fruit are bending and breaking.

greg mosser

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posted 4 months ago

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well, we’ve got brood xiv going now, so i guess i’ve got some of that to look forward to.

I suggest huckleberry pie. But the only thing on the gluten free menu is this tiny ad:

permaculture bootcamp - gardening gardeners; grow the food you eat and build your own home

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