The odoriferous woodborer is a nocturnal butterfly. It is also called the willow woodborer.
Appearance of the willow woodborer
Males have a wingspan of about 70 millimeters, while females are larger - their wingspan is 75-100 millimeters.
The forewings of the woodworm can be gray or grey-brown with off-white spots and dark transverse lines, creating a marbled pattern.
The hind wings of the woodworm are fragrant dark brown with dark matte lines.
The chest is dark in the upper part, and towards the abdomen it becomes lighter and becomes almost white. The abdomen is thick, dark gray in color. It is covered with hair-like scales. Females have a retractable, clearly visible ovipositor.
Habitat of wood borers
These butterflies live in Western Europe, China and the Mediterranean. They live in the forest-steppe and forest zones of the Caucasus, Siberia, the Far East, Transcaucasia and Central Asia.
The color of the woodworm is not similar to that of other butterflies - gray, pale and inconspicuous. Habitats of willow wood borers
They are found in all zones of deciduous and mixed forests, in gardens, parks and forest plantations. In the Caucasus they rise to the upper border of the forest, and in Tajikistan and Turkmenistan they live in oases.
Lifestyle of wood borers
This is a sedentary species, leading a nocturnal lifestyle. Flight occurs at the end of May - beginning of August. On the Black Sea coast, in warm weather, flights can begin in mid-April. In Transcaucasia it runs from May to July, and in Tuva and Buryatia from June to August.
Willow woodborers fly low above the ground. The flight lasts about 2 weeks, mainly at night.
Reproduction of odorous woodworms
The females of these butterflies lay their eggs, as a rule, in the crevices of trees. There can be 700-1000 eggs in a clutch. She lays them in groups of 15-230 pieces. The eggs are oblong, about 1.2-1.7 millimeters long, light brown in color. They are coated with a sticky substance that hardens when exposed to air.
Willow borer caterpillars eat wood. Caterpillars of the first instar are cherry-red or pink in color, while caterpillars of subsequent instars are darker. At the end of development, the size of the caterpillars is 80-120 millimeters. They spend the winter in passages made in wood. They close the entrance to the chamber using drill flour.
Caterpillars of the first instar create a common course and stick together. The passages are filled with caterpillar excrement and drill flour. After wintering, each individual gnaws deep into a separate passage, where they develop.
An adult caterpillar makes passages with a peg diameter of 16 millimeters. On trees with thick bark, caterpillars make their burrows only after the first winter, but on trees with smooth, thin bark, they penetrate the wood earlier, most often a month after hatching.
At the end of summer, the caterpillar leaves the tree and burrows into the soil next to the tree. She then makes a silk cocoon by adding bits of soil to its walls. The caterpillar pupates in that cocoon.
Woodworm
In mid-summer, gardeners sometimes notice huge, 10-12 cm long, naked, thick, fleshy pinkish-red caterpillars with a brown-red, lacquered back crawling around the site, usually more often in open places where they are easier to see. Their head is black or dark brown, with huge jaws, the back of the head is yellowish, with two black spots. Caterpillars are both attractive and repulsive. Moreover, younger and smaller caterpillars of the same color and shape are never found. And no one has usually ever seen adult insects of such a large size either. This is the fragrant or willow woodborer (Cossus cossus L.), or rather its caterpillar. In Ancient Rome it was eaten and considered a delicacy.
The species is widespread. This is a pest, although not very dangerous. It lives inside the trunks of various trees, gnaws wood in them, and is usually invisible for this reason. Most often it develops on willows, hence one of its names, less often on poplars, alder, aspen, birch, oak, elm, and other tree species. Sometimes it harms apple, pear, plum, bird cherry, grapevine, other fruit trees, as well as some ornamental trees. First of all, single or outermost trees of a planting are affected, usually old and diseased, but in stable lesions the species can also be dangerous for young plantings.
Trees infected with woodworms weaken, become more susceptible to other diseases, are often additionally affected by various fungal diseases, and if they are over-infested with caterpillars, they even die. Before turning into a pupa, some of the caterpillars crawl out of the trunk and look for a more convenient place for pupation. At this time, they are usually noticed. The pupa is brown, hidden in a cocoon of sawdust and plant debris, held together by cobwebs, and develops in 2-6 weeks. The adult insect is a huge moth, up to 85 mm long, with a wingspan of more than 10 cm. The proboscis is short. The coloring is modest. The front wings are brown-gray, with an unclear blurry pattern of numerous transverse black lines and small streaks. The hind ones are somewhat lighter, gray-brown, with matte dark wavy lines. The wings fold like a roof - like a “house”. The entire body of the butterfly is densely covered with hairs. The abdomen is massive, dark, with light gray rings. It flies at night, in June - July. That is why, due to its nocturnal lifestyle, it is little known to gardeners. Lays eggs in groups of 20-70 pieces. into bark cracks on trunks. The eggs are elongated, light brown, with dark stripes, covered on top with a brownish liquid that solidifies in the air. The emerging young caterpillars jointly gnaw into bark and wood, initially gnawing through a common irregularly shaped tunnel in which they overwinter. Their body is pinkish when young. They develop for two years and winter twice, but sometimes their development can take up to four years. In the first year of life, they can only be seen by chance, after sawing and splitting the trunk, which is why few people are familiar with them.
In the second year, the caterpillars separate, and each of them subsequently independently gnaws out its own wide longitudinal course in the wood of the trunk, usually from the bottom up. They pupate after the second overwintering, in wood near the entrance hole, or, if they crawl out, in other suitable places. Trees affected by caterpillars are stunted in growth and may even dry out. Possible damage to a tree by carpenter moth caterpillars can be determined by round or oval holes in the bark. And, if you sniff, judging by the characteristic strong, sharp and unpleasant sourish-acrid odor of wood alcohol emanating from the caterpillars located there, as well as the wood damaged by them, you can easily determine who is harming the tree. Because of this smell, the woodborer received its specific name - odorous. Passive protection against infestation by caterpillars is provided by whitewashing the trunks in the fall with the “Protection” emulsion, which protects the bark not only from sunburn, but also from the formation of cracks. Because only in them the butterfly lays eggs.
Active control measures include pushing cotton swabs soaked in gasoline or karbofos into the gnawed passages, followed by covering the holes with plasticine, garden pitch, or just clay. Severely affected trees are destroyed. Fortunately, this is very rarely required. Since the damage from caterpillars is usually relatively small, then if there is no stable source of damage to fruit trees, and the specific damage is invisible, without special need, it is also not worth destroying them, after all, the fragrant wood borer is the largest, most interesting, and very unusual species among our insects
Vladimir Starostin , dendrologist, candidate of agricultural sciences. sciences
26.01.16
Other publications by Starostin V.A. look at his personal page
Corrosive woodworm and odorous woodborer
Corrosive woodgrass - Zeuzera pirina
Damages all fruit trees and many deciduous trees. Distributed in the southern and central zones of the European part of the USSR, in the Crimea, the Caucasus and the Far East. This is a large butterfly with white wings (2a) with a large number of bluish-black spots. The size of females in the wingspan is 7 cm, males - up to 5 cm. Butterflies appear in June - July. Flight and egg laying continue until mid-August. Each female lays up to 1000 eggs, placing them one at a time or in groups on shoots, in bark crevices, etc. The hatched caterpillars, covered with long hairs, are picked up by the wind and transported over considerable distances. Some of them fall on the crowns of trees and bite into young shoots, causing them to die. Above the damage sites on damaged shoots, the leaves turn brown and stand out sharply against the background of the green crown.
At the end of summer, the caterpillars move to two- to three-year-old branches and gnaw holes in their wood. After overwintering, they move to older branches and overwinter for the second time. Adult caterpillars reach a length of 6 cm (2b). In the third year of life, after overwintering, the caterpillar expands the entrance hole in the trunk and pupates in its upper part. Then the pupa protrudes halfway out and in this position turns into a butterfly, after which a protruding pupa skin remains.
Control measures. In gardens sparsely populated by woodworms, caterpillars are destroyed by injecting a chlorophos solution (10 g per 1 liter of water) into their passages. You can bait the caterpillars by pushing a cotton ball heavily moistened with gasoline into the tunnels. The passage hole is then carefully covered with clay. If after a day or two the seeded passages open again, re-seeding is carried out.
In gardens where systematic control of the codling moth is carried out using organophosphorus preparations, most of the caterpillars of the corrosive wood moth also die.
To destroy caterpillars after harvesting, when eliminating individual foci of woody wood, special spraying is carried out with a solution of chlorophos of high concentration. In this case, it is necessary to first check chlorophos for flammability. From the beginning of August until the leaves turn yellow, you need to carefully inspect the tree crowns and cut off shoots damaged by young caterpillars and clearly visible at this time.
Woodworm - Cossus cossus
A large butterfly, the wingspan reaches 9 cm (1a). The life features of this butterfly are similar to the life of the corrosive woodworm.
The caterpillars of the woodworm are pinkish-fleshy in color and reach a length of 10 cm. They eat away the wood of all types of fruit trees, as well as willow, poplar, aspen, and grapevines. Figures 1b and 1c show the caterpillar and pupa of this pest.
Control measures. The same as with corrosive woody wood, except for spraying with chlorophos after harvesting.
From the book: G. Vanek, V. N. Korchagin, L. G. Ter-Simonyan. Atlas of diseases and pests of fruit, berry, vegetable crops and grapes. "Nature" - Bratislava, VO "Promizdat" - Moscow. 1989.
Sometimes in the summer on meadow paths, or even in the city, you can meet large caterpillars slowly crawling. Someone will say “ugh, what a disgusting thing!”, and someone, on the contrary, will pick it up with interest. The caterpillar, of course, doesn’t like this, it begins to wriggle and curl up into a ring, because it has eaten itself for several weeks and is now looking for a secluded place to pupate. The caterpillar shown in the photo wine hawkmoth(lat. Deilephila elpenor) light brown, with a greenish tint; on the sides of the front part of the body, near the head, it has dark spots with a white border on top and a small horn on the tail. If the caterpillar is frightened, it retracts its head, inflates the segments with eye patterns, making them look like the head of a snake with eyes, which should scare off unwanted predators. This caterpillar feeds on fireweed, better known among us as fireweed, bedstraw and grape leaves (for which it received its name). After pupation, the following year it will hatch into a wine hawk moth, a rather large twilight moth, which is very similar to a hummingbird in its flight and feeding habits. Even in English it is called elephant hawk moth, which can be roughly translated as “elephant moth.”
Wine Hawkmoth(lat. Deilephila elpenor) - a butterfly from the family hawk moths (Sphingidae). Wingspan 50-70 mm. The coloring of the forewings and body is olive-pink with transverse oblique pink bands on the forewings. The hind wings are black at their base. Widely distributed in the Palearctic. Flight time is from mid-May to mid-August, one, sometimes two generations. The caterpillar stage is from mid-June to August. The color of the caterpillar varies from light green to brown and almost black; on the 4th and 5th rings there are “eyes” with a dark core and a white border. The horn is short, black-brown. The caterpillars' food plants are fireweed (Epilobium angustifolium and E. hirsutum) and fireweed (Chamerion); less often bedstraw, impatiens, grapes. Pupation on the soil; the pupa overwinters.
Below is a photo (not mine) of what an imago (adult moth) looks like:
Photo by jean pierre Hamon, Wikipedia
Wine hawk moth belongs to the genus Deilephila. These are large and medium-sized butterflies with a wingspan of 40-80 mm. Medium Wine Hawkmoth is an olive butterfly with a pink pattern. The base of the hind wings is black. Wingspan 50-70 mm. The head, chest and abdomen of the moth are olive green. The pinkish stripes on the back in the abdominal area merge into one longitudinal line. The antennae are thickened, grayish-pink. The eyes are large, complex, covered with scales. Insects have excellent vision; they see objects in low light. Insects are common in Europe, including the south of the Urals. Found in Turkey, Iran, Central Asia, India, Korea, Japan and China. It lives in gardens, at the edge of the forest, and on roadsides. Settles on honeysuckle bushes, petunias and iris flowers. Moths living in gardens and parks pollinate 5-10% of nearby trees and shrubs.
The wine hawk moth caterpillar can be green or dark brown, almost black in color. On the 4-5 body segment there are round black eyes with a white border. The tail horn is short, black at the base, and the tip is white. Due to their large size (70-80 mm), the caterpillars make a terrifying impression on people. They are actually not dangerous. The larvae do not even cause serious harm to plants.
In case of danger, the wine hawk moth caterpillar is capable of inflating a segment of the body that has eyes. She draws her head in and assumes a sphinx pose, lifting her front legs off the surface. At the same time, she becomes like a snake. Given the impressive size of the body, enemies such as birds prefer not to engage in combat.
The summer time of butterflies is from May to August. They are active in the evening until midnight. Moths feed on flowers and mate. Depending on the region where they live, they give from one to five generations. For plants that open their buds at close intervals, they are excellent pollinators. During the mating season, they often fly to light sources.
Hawkmoths are excellent flyers; during migration they cover thousands of kilometers. Butterflies are able to hover in one place, feeding on the nectar of flowers, and move vertically up and down.
The fertilized female lays individual or paired round eggs on the leaves and stems of food plants. Green masonry with a glossy surface. The embryo develops in 7-10 days. Young larvae are yellow or light green in color. As they mature, most become gray-brown with black streaks. This stage lasts about a month.
The wine hawk moth caterpillar can be both beneficial and harmful. It depends on her diet. The larva that settles on the weeds helps get rid of the grass without weeding. The insect does not harm agriculture. Hawkmoth food plants are flowers and ovaries of fireweed (willowherb), bedstraw, and impatiens. In rare cases, it feeds on grape leaves.
Having reached the fifth instar, the larva descends to the ground and prepares for pupation. She chooses a place at the foot of the plant on which she fed and forms a cocoon. The pupa is brown, length 40-45 mm. They overwinter in the litter or upper layers of soil.
Hawkmoths fly at speeds of up to 50 km/h. The wind interferes with their flight and while feeding on flowers. When the wind force is 3 m/s, insects do not fly out to feed.
Medium wine hawk moth is listed in the Red Book of Karelia and the Belgorod Region as a rare species.
The wine hawk moth received the Latin name Deilephila elpenor in honor of the hero of mythology: Elpenor is a friend of Odysseus, returning with him from Troy; died after falling from the roof of the palace of the sorceress Circe.
There is an assumption that these spots on the caterpillars of wine hawk moths imitate the “glasses” of a cobra. However, it is unlikely that birds would confuse a small caterpillar with a snake, especially since wine hawk moths are widespread in areas where cobras are not found. And simple experience has shown that birds very willingly eat ocellated caterpillars. There is no clear answer to the question about the reason for this coloring. The horn of the caterpillar of the average wine hawk moth is weakly expressed.
The hawk moth family (Sphingidae) is one of the fastest flyers not only among butterflies, but also among insects in general. Some reach speeds of up to 60 km/h! Narrow and long front wings and a streamlined, aerodynamic body make their flight swift and maneuverable. It was they, like some birds, that became the prototype for the creation of jet aircraft, thanks to observant designers. Hawkmoths make from 37 to 85 wing beats per second, while the swallowtail, for example, makes only 5-6 beats.
You can hatch the wine hawk moth at home from the pupa yourself, but to do this, after pupation, it must be stored in the refrigerator for some time, otherwise the adult insect will hatch somewhere around the New Year, when it will have nothing to eat. Detailed information about their breeding -
The fragrant wood borer lives everywhere and harms not only field-protective plantings, but also various fruit crops, damaging alder, oak, birch and numerous fruit trees. Walnut and maple suffer slightly less frequently from its attacks. Most often, the odorous woodborer inhabits weakened trees growing in unfavorable conditions. Damaged trees become sick, noticeably stunted in growth, and are also characterized by a sharp decrease in the yield of fruits and seeds and often dry out.
Meet the pest
The odoriferous woodborer is a fairly large butterfly: males reach a length of 70 to 75 mm, and females are even larger - from 85 to 95 mm. The dark gray front wings of the pests are decorated with a large number of black strokes and grayish-white fuzzy patterns. And the color of their hind wings is usually light brown. The funny antennae of woodworms are comb-shaped, and their entire body is covered with short hairs.
Caterpillars are characterized by a double wintering: individuals of the first year of life overwinter in winding family passages under the tree bark, clogged with dust and numerous stubs, and individuals of the second year - in their own passages carved into the wood. Moreover, the passages being machined are mainly longitudinal. At the end of the second wintering, approximately at the end of May or beginning of June, pupation of harmful caterpillars occurs in silky and very dense cocoons located in rotten stumps and tunnels, as well as near the bases of tree trunks in the surface soil layer. Pupae develop from twenty to forty days. The butterflies that emerge in June and July are particularly active in the evenings.
Malicious butterflies do not need additional nutrition at all. Fertilized females lay from two to seven dozen eggs. They place them mainly on the lower parts of the trunks in crevices of the bark, covering the oviposition with sticky secretions that quickly harden in the air. On average, the total fertility of each female reaches a thousand eggs. After ten to twelve days, the voracious caterpillars are reborn, which immediately bite under the bark and together gnaw through the joint surface tunnels, which are distinguished by their irregular shape.
Over the entire period of development, caterpillars go through a total of eight centuries: from four to five centuries in the first year of development and from three to four in the second. Thus, odorous woodworms are characterized by a two-year generation.
Trees severely affected by woodworm are removed and burned. If the trees are not particularly severely affected, then insecticides are injected into the caterpillar passages using thin tips.
