Okay - what's eating my iris....

Don't have a picture, but several of my iris have holes in the petals like something is eating them. I've NEVER had anything do this. And upon inspection, I can't find anything either. Any one have any ideas what it could be?

M.

I have a small, black weevil that does that to mine. It only showed up in my iris beds a couple of years ago. I have no idea where it came from.

Laurie

Did you get rid of it? and if so how?

I'm still fighting with them. The first year they appeared, they hatched out in fairly large numbers and started eating my flowers as the IBs were blooming (they missed the MDBs and SDBs). They continued chewing holes in virtually every iris flower after they hatched. I got so frustrated that I started cutting stalks on first-time bloomers just before they opened so I could bloom them indoors and get decent pics of them. Didn't work. The doggone weevils had already burrowed into the unopened buds and were feeding on them before they even opened!

The second year (last year) we had prolonged cool weather in the spring. The weevils didn't hatch until temps warmed up during mid-TB bloom (apparently their hatch is temp-dependent), and I didn't have nearly as many of them as I'd seen the year before. Still, the ones that did hatch were hungry little buggers. As I had the year before, I manually squished every one I saw.

I then set about seriously trying to ID them. That's when I determined that they are some type of weevil. There is actually a weevil known as the iris weevil, but my little things didn't seem to match the only pic I was able to find online. Even so, I figured maybe different microsystems can cause iris weevils to look a bit different. I read up on iris weevils and learned that they lay their eggs in iris seed pods. My control of the weevils was two-fold: 1) squish every weevil I saw, and 2) remove and destroy every seed pod forming on every iris - bearded, beardless (the weevils' preference), and crested.

I'll let you know how my control tactic seems to be working in a few weeks when temps warm up and TBs start blooming. I'm hoping I was 100% effective at breaking their reproductive cycle last year, but only time will tell. Of course, if they're not iris weevils and don't lay eggs in iris seed pods, my efforts will have been in vain.

Here's a pic of my little weevil, a bit smaller than a ladybug.

BTW, I use Merit (systemic pesticide) on my iris beds for borer and aphid control. The weevils were clearly unaffected by it.

This is mundane, but the slugs can get my flowers and leaves if I'm not vigilant about slug and snail control.

Thanks Laurie and Doss!

I didn't get to look closely at them yesterday as my DH has walking pnuemonia and I was nursing him. Hopefull this afternoon I can look for those little buggers......

Marcia

I had a day-glo green caterpillar that I found had eatedn almost an entire iris flower on me. I still don't know what it was... maybe it was a moth caterpillar? Maybe I should have taken a picture before I killed it. :) At any rate, it had apparently graduated from making holes in the leaves to eating the flowers!

Kelly

Hey that's the same neon green catepillar that's been eating my rose bush for the last 3 years. We pick em off & squish em. Then all the leaves turn yellow, fall off and the bush is naked. Go figure. Let me know if you figure out what it is because my very hungry catepillars are back again just not as abundantly.

Roni