These bugs are not poisonous or venomous to humans, though their larvae can do significant damage to gardens. Sawflies are nectarivores they love to suck on flowers for their sugary nectar and help spread pollen in the garden. These insects are actually from the family of wasps. Sawflies are not related to butterflies, despite the similarity in their larvae and caterpillars. They vary in length, going from about 3/32nd of an inch to about 25/32nd inches long. These bugs are a group of seven thousand or more species, which are all characterized by their saw-shaped ovipositors (the stinger-like organ that their females use to lay eggs in plants). Let’s learn more about these bugs and what damage they can do to your garden or plantation in this blog. More importantly, you need to act quickly to get rid of these larvae because they can quickly feed on and defoliate your entire plant.
If you see a hairless green larva on your plant leaves, you might be forgiven for thinking it will grow into a beautiful butterfly.Īlas, what you have seen is a sawfly larva, and it looks nothing like a butterfly as an adult. Let’s understand how to spot and repel them. This entry was posted in Insects and tagged butternut woollyworm, sawfly on Octoby David George Haskell.Sawfly larvae are one of the biggest pests of the rose plant, pine trees, and many other species of plants like dogwoods, pears, hibiscus, and so on. Only when they reach their older years, after several molts, do the larvae grow their fabulous hair-dos. The young sawflies chew holes in leaves, often working in teams lined at leaf margins. After an egg-laying female is done, the midrib looks like an evenly-stitched hem, punctured by two dozen or more regularly-spaced holes. Eriocampa females oviposit in the midrib vein of the leaf, using the blades on the tips of their abdomens to pierce the plant and nestle sawflies-to-be in a bed of food. The “saw” in their name comes from the serrated ovipositors that the females use to lay their eggs inside plants.
Sawflies are wasps, not flies (Symphyta, within the Hymenoptera, for those playing ento-bingo).
This is no aphid, though, nor a caterpillar, but a sawfly larva, the leaf-chewing life stage of Eriocampa juglandis, the “Butternut Woollyworm.” Instead, these waxy locks are mouth-gumming defenses, reminiscent of my favorite aphid (oh the choice was hard), the boogie-woogie beech blight aphid. These photos are old - from a few weeks ago - not not so old that the 1980s might serve as an excuse. A tuft of dog hair in the tree? No, the tangle is walking, hair a-tremble.Ī closer look: legs, head, and puckered skin dotted with hair-nozzles.
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