Adult beetle and feeding damage
Eggs
I found these awful creatures on my fritillarias yesterday; the adults must have just emerged. They showed up in our area a year or two ago, and can completely decimate lilies and fritillarias, and possibly some other plants such as Soloman's seal and solanums. For now I am going to try to control them by squishing the adults and the eggs by hand. They are easy to spot, being bright red, but the adults drop to the ground and hide when you disturb them. Keep a close eye on your plants, because once they get going they are voracious, and the larvae that hatch from the eggs are even worse than the adults. Cornell recommends this fact sheet for further information:
http://www.umassgreeninfo.org/fact_sheets/defoliators/lily_leaf_beetle.html
2 comments:
What a timely post. Thank you. I just discovered these today on my lilies. Didn't have any idea what I was looking at, and when I pulled two off, they fell, then buried themselves in the soil. I don't have too many lilies. I will give my DH the chore of checking for them daily. He's the bug killer in our household!
I have these on my lilies too. I pluck them off and squish them too. I haven't spotted any in a while though. They seem to have deserted my plants now that the plants are older. Maybe they prefer younger plants?
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