one of my 18 new gums is being attacked by a trunk borer (?) of some description.
does anyone know what it is and how to fix it

pepe said:

one of my 18 new gums is being attacked by a trunk borer (?) of some description.
does anyone know what it is and how to fix it

Oops sorry……. Elf was giving me instructions on what to tell you.

He said if its a borer and you can locate where it is….stick a hot wire (dipped in boiling water) into the area and kill it that way.

Is the tree one we looked at on our walk around your boundary???

which Eucalypt is it?

many have the abillity to re-shoot below the borer attack. I have cut whole trees that have been standing dead for a year.. and afterwards.. they re-shoot from the base. http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3053/2868221949_d08725a08e_m.jpg

Lucky1 said:

Oops sorry……. Elf was giving me instructions on what to tell you.

He said if its a borer and you can locate where it is….stick a hot wire (dipped in boiling water) into the area and kill it that way.

Is the tree one we looked at on our walk around your boundary???

yes – its the smallest odorata (peppermint) which has been stunted by this problem.
there are no holes but a sawdust collar and sap flow from areas of the trunk.

roughbarked said:

which Eucalypt is it?

many have the abillity to re-shoot below the borer attack. I have cut whole trees that have been standing dead for a year.. and afterwards.. they re-shoot from the base. http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3053/2868221949_d08725a08e_m.jpg

Great photo roughbarked:)

pepe said:

Lucky1 said:

Oops sorry……. Elf was giving me instructions on what to tell you.

He said if its a borer and you can locate where it is….stick a hot wire (dipped in boiling water) into the area and kill it that way.

Is the tree one we looked at on our walk around your boundary???

yes – its the smallest odorata (peppermint) which has been stunted by this problem.
there are no holes but a sawdust collar and sap flow from areas of the trunk.

Damn! Hope you can save the tree.

roughbarked said:

which Eucalypt is it?

many have the abillity to re-shoot below the borer attack. I have cut whole trees that have been standing dead for a year.. and afterwards.. they re-shoot from the base. http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3053/2868221949_d08725a08e_m.jpg

e. odorata.
g’day roughbarked.
its only 2 years old and 750mm high. other peppermint gums next to it are fine.

I had a planting of Eucalyptus leucoxylon attacked severely and there were hundreds of holes the trees lost all their leaves and were standing dead trees for quite a while.. more than 12 months http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3044/2868288321_2d3cf29d8e_m.jpg

roughbarked said:

I had a planting of Eucalyptus leucoxylon attacked severely and there were hundreds of holes the trees lost all their leaves and were standing dead trees for quite a while.. more than 12 months http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3044/2868288321_2d3cf29d8e_m.jpg

so you are suggesting tree surgery roughbarked.
so is the book ‘what pest or disease is that?’
it appears to be a curl grub or longicorn lavae, jewel beetle etc. – and the sawdust is their leftovers.

how about i poke around inside the sawdust collar to see what i can find?
should i water and fertilise – because it is under stress?

Definitely water. Yes

but that may be a larger requirement rather than a smaller one.

place son metho on a coton wad and push it into any active looking holes if the tree is still managing to get a sap flow.If the trunk is completely girdled as this is what the twig girdler does.. ringbarks as well as boring. Then a lobotomy is recommended. The best place to lobotomise any eucalypt capable of regrowing from a lignotuber is just above ground level. There are many borers and removal of damaged material does not necessarily remove the borers. They could easily have left the tree before you saw the damage.

I will have to look up a book to remember if E. odorata has a lignotuber.

roughbarked said:

Definitely water. Yes

but that may be a larger requirement rather than a smaller one.

place son metho on a coton wad and push it into any active looking holes if the tree is still managing to get a sap flow.If the trunk is completely girdled as this is what the twig girdler does.. ringbarks as well as boring. Then a lobotomy is recommended. The best place to lobotomise any eucalypt capable of regrowing from a lignotuber is just above ground level. There are many borers and removal of damaged material does not necessarily remove the borers. They could easily have left the tree before you saw the damage.

I will have to look up a book to remember if E. odorata has a lignotuber.

thanks – will water and metho
the odorata is rated as endangered. i have five others growing but would like more.

watering .. you will have to completely soak the root zone did you ever make a well around the tree and fill it up .. I always did this when planting. fill the well if there is one or run around the tree outside the drip zone and create a dam wall.. fill the circle up and watch .. keep filling till air bubbles don’t arise or until the soil is black with water.

watering .. you will have to completely soak the root zone did you ever make a well around the tree and fill it up .. I always did this when planting. fill the well if there is one or run around the tree outside the drip zone and create a dam wall.. fill the circle up and watch .. keep filling till air bubbles don’t arise or until the soil is black with water.

Come to think of it. Peppermints will usually shoot from anywhere under the bark after fires.

roughbarked said:

Come to think of it. Peppermints will usually shoot from anywhere under the bark after fires.

your advise was right
the tree was ringbarked in three sections
i have chopped it down to above the bulbous bit at the bottom
photos coming soon

pepe said:

roughbarked said:

Come to think of it. Peppermints will usually shoot from anywhere under the bark after fires.

your advise was right
the tree was ringbarked in three sections
i have chopped it down to above the bulbous bit at the bottom
photos coming soon

This is like watching RPA without the TV on…….

photos
we are now dissecting the chopped off trunk and the pupae are right in the middle of the trunk

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3051/3032631273_ce65bd0e0a_m.jpg

pepe said:

photos
we are now dissecting the chopped off trunk and the pupae are right in the middle of the trunk

an autopsy! cool!

nasty bit of damage there. right thing to do surgery methinks. keep the water up to the stump and you may have saved it yet.

an autopsy! cool!
————————————————-
Yeah ….autopsy…without the blood……

Ah.. so this forum has image linking. What are the size limits for thumbs?

we found two culprits
the other one was too small to photograph with my camera

did you put the hose on the tree while you performed the autopsy?

pepe said:

we found two culprits
the other one was too small to photograph with my camera

Take that you bastard…….

I have hundreds of species of birds and many more species of ants yet still my trees had heaps of borers.
In many cases the ants actually farm things on the trees. Strangest looking under bark type scale insects included. One would think that ample bull ants and meat ants should stop such problems but they don’t completely. One must imagine that all life forms need to exist for your environment to be healthy.

you should have cooked ‘im and ‘et ‘im … mate

roughbarked said:

did you put the hose on the tree while you performed the autopsy?

i remember ironbarked – welcome to the refugee camp.
18 litres to the tree before the autopsy. i will water the others (6 each porosa, facsiculosa and odorata) today – thanks.

regards photobucket – tick box below image then go down to ‘generate hmtl code…’ and just copy and paste onto here.

I know photobucket well ;)

roughbarked said:

I know photobucket well ;)

640×480 is the size that my thumbs will blowup to.

roughbarked said:

Ah.. so this forum has image linking. What are the size limits for thumbs?

we have HTML and Textile. Most of us use photobucket which formats its own thumbnails but there is really no limit apart from what is practical.

Testing flickr.. under the above description for photobucket.. hope it works ;)

Hmmmm, you may have just solved a mystery for us. We have a lovely swamp bloodwood in our back yard. Beautiful big leaves (biggest gum leaves I’ve seen) and spectacular flowers; huge big globes of red. The current tree is a single, rather spindley branch growing out the side of a stump. It’s spindley ‘cause it’s had to grow a fair distance to get to sunlight.

We’ve always wondered why the previous owner cut the tree down only to let the single branch grow. Maybe it had pests. She was much more of gardener than I am, so she’d recognise such problems, whereas I wouldn’t even realise until the entire tree had fallen over.

Well, so much for figuring out the mystery of our lovely swamp bloodwood. Poor tree may not survive now :(

We had a rather fierce storm come through this afternoon and it took out a rather large (10m) tree. The tree had a fork about a metre or so from the ground. The fork seems to have just snapped off in the wind (which was quite amazing). One half landed across our lovely gum :(( The gum doesn’t seem to be structurally damaged, but I guess we will find out over the next couple of days if its been damaged internally. The tree was about a metre or two too short to hit the house :) Aside from the gum tree it damaged one of our lovely green flowering bottlebrushes and put a dirty great big hole smack dab bang in the middle of The Girl’s trampoline.

My veggie patch looks a bit woeful. I probably gave the neighbours a good laugh. Once the worst of it passed I was out there in my raincoat fixing things. Flatten my beans, and has ripped all my cucubits to pieces. But I’m most upset that it tipped over my broccoli. They finally have a fruit (flower?) on them about the size of a tennis ball. I’ve staked them back upright, so, again, I guess I’ll find out over the next couple of days whether they’ve been too badly damaged.

The good side? The tree that came down was blocking my view of the flowers on a near by palm. I got to watch our squirrel glider in the flowers tonight. I’ve never been able to see him before, except as a shadow that launches itself across the sky on the rare occassion that I wake up at dawn.

wow Sue, that sounds like some storm! glad that the tree was too short to hit your house!

I’ve staked them back upright, so, again, I guess I’ll find out over the next couple of days whether they’ve been too badly damaged.

> keep the water up to them

The good side?

>

there are good sides to everything.

roughbarked said:

I’ve staked them back upright, so, again, I guess I’ll find out over the next couple of days whether they’ve been too badly damaged.

> keep the water up to them

Oh, they’ve had plenty of water! I will make sure they keep getting it this week though.

roughbarked said:

The good side?

>

there are good sides to everything.

I have a tendency towards negativity, pessimism and cynicism (F7 all those). I try to remember to find something good for every negative.

yes it is the days afterward that matter
.

I have a tendency towards negativity, pessimism and cynicism

>

you sound like a scientist ;)

roughbarked said:

I have a tendency towards negativity, pessimism and cynicism

>

you sound like a scientist ;)

Hahaha. I have a science degree by accident; certainly not through delibrate plan or desire; and yet you are not the first person to make that remark! I do wonder – did I fit the degree because I’m like that, or am I like that because of the degree?

SueBk said:

roughbarked said:

I have a tendency towards negativity, pessimism and cynicism

>

you sound like a scientist ;)

Hahaha. I have a science degree by accident; certainly not through delibrate plan or desire; and yet you are not the first person to make that remark! I do wonder – did I fit the degree because I’m like that, or am I like that because of the degree?

;:)

I’m just observant .. you’ll have to make the scientific assessment from your end ;)

SueBK said “ Well, so much for figuring out the mystery of our lovely swamp bloodwood. Poor tree may not survive now :( “

—————————
Awww SueBK,
I hope the brocoli survives, and the S bloodwood.
Change is inevitable innit. That was some storm.

Storms often bring new benefits. The only problem is that sometimes the benefits of change from catastrophes like storms and fires etc are not noticed for quite some time later.

roughbarked said:

Storms often bring new benefits. The only problem is that sometimes the benefits of change from catastrophes like storms and fires etc are not noticed for quite some time later.

Absolutely Roughbarked. A rater odd shaped garden bed under my kitchen window had a wattle tree and various shrubs , a storm broke the tree and shubs laying flat ..so I took it all out out and filed with many dwarf fruit trees. It’s perfect :)
I can be found at times wandering about my mini orchard with a jar of port…for codling moths. Yer yer lol

My veggie patch looks a bit woeful. I probably gave the neighbours a good laugh. Once the worst of it passed I was out there in my raincoat fixing things
———-
lol – you’re obsessed – join the club
i hope it all recovers and, if its any consolation, it was on the news down here in adelaide. apparently a lot of homes without power.

lovely green flowering bottlebrush

Callistemon pinifolius?

I have this plant.. It is rather unassuming until it flowers.

roughbarked said:

lovely green flowering bottlebrush

Callistemon pinifolius?

I have this plant.. It is rather unassuming until it flowers.

I’ve never ID’ed it. Until recently it was in the shadow of a Neem looking thing (weedy horror that spreads seedlings for miles). The non-Neem has been removed, and suddenly there’s trees and bushes flowering that we’ve never seen in the 6 years we’ve been here.

The tree has finished flowering now. Wasn’t very long, but fairly heavy. The flower bracts are about 2, maybe 3, inches long, not much thicker than a finger, and a pale, yellowy green. Didn’t get much bird or insect activity. But still very pretty.

C. pinifolius should explain to you that the plant has very fine pin or needle leaves.

C. pinifolius also has green brushes that far outweigh the size of the leaves.

yours sounds like Calistemon saligna

sorry.. Callistemon salignus. ;)

two more of my e. porosa (black mallee box) gums have been ‘pruned’ because of borers.
fortunately i have been able to leave one major growing branch in tact for the latest two.
i will try and give more water to these specimens asap.