Jun 19th, 2012

Beetle Bugaboo

by Jonah Holland

Photos & text by Albert Brian Vick,  Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden, Community Kitchen Garden Coordinator 

Scary scarab, or just another neighbor in the Community Kitchen Garden? One of our brave volunteers hosted this brief visit by a Grapevine Beetle (Pelidnota punctata), generating quite a bit of excitement from surrounding volunteers. Our approach to insects is: “Friend or foe? Magnitude of the threat? Any possible mitigants?”
The Grapevine Beetle adults will eat foliage, and the larvae will eat roots, but the threat is considered minor and no controls are generally necessary. We’ll be watching for any effects from the grubs.

Scary scarab… but didn’t bite.

 

Grapevine Crawler
About Jonah Holland

Jonah Holland is Digital Content Manager at Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden, where she has worked for 14 years overseeing social media, the blog, and the website. She is also a mom, yogi, open water swimmer, gardener, and seeker. She's been known to go for a walk in the Garden and come back with hundreds of plant photos, completely inspired to write her next blog post.

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