![]() Xylella fastidiosa is a rod-shaped, gram-negative bacterium which attacks the xylem, or water-conducting material, in a plant. The bacterium Xylella fastidiosa causes the deadly Pierce’s disease in grape rootstocks. If California’s grape growing areas reach levels of infestation throughout the state in the future, the GWSS will have played a pivotal role in spreading Pierce’s disease throughout the vineyards of California, devastating the state’s $33 billion-a-year wine industry. ![]() The result is lethal: the plant’s main rootstalk dies in one to three years. The plant’s response to this invasion is to choke off the arteries, which move the nutrients around the plant. Bacteria logged in its gullet are deposited into the central core artery system of the attacked vine. If that were all it did, it would simply be a nuisance. In the case of the grapevine, the GWSS feeds on the plant by inserting its needle-like mouthparts into the plant’s xylem, sucking out the nutrients. The GWSS produces two generations a year in southern California where the counties of Kern, San Bernardino, Santa Barbara, Venture, Los Angeles, Riverside, Orange, and San Diego have reached infestation levels. It can consume 100 times its body weight in plant material per day during its three- to nine-month life span. The glassy-winged sharpshooter has a voracious appetite. The GWSS also appears in greater numbers since it has an extensive host plant range of 73 species of plants in 35 different families. ![]() Other sharpshooters simply do not fly as far as the glassy-winged and seem to be more susceptible to temperature variation. Most leafhoppers are weak flyers, but the GWSS can travel miles during its life span. The underside of its abdomen becomes charcoal in color as the insect ages. It is twice as large as other common species of sharpshooters. While sucking out the plant’s fluid, insect deposits bacteria into the vine, causing Pierce’s disease.īuilt like a stealth bomber, this sleek insect is about half an inch long with a mottled dark-brown body and yellow speckling about the head. The GWSS drills into the main rootstock of the vine and penetrates the nutrient canals of the xylem. Vines, which produce grapes for wine and table consumption, are delicious targets for the xylem-sucking insect. Strong insecticides may kill natural predators of Japanese beetles.This leafhopper lives up to its name and moves from one plant to another. ![]() Effective insecticides for use on crape myrtle may include lambda, permethrin, carbaryl, acephate, cyhalothrin, neem oil, cyfluthrin or inidacloprid - the types and amounts of products to use depend on your growing landscape. Traps, containing milky spore (Bacillus popilliae), placed at least 50 feet away from crape myrtle kill larvae but usually not adult Japanese beetles. To control Japanese beetles, you can pick them off by hand or use a water spray, but homemade or commercially available products may be more effective, suggests Clemson University Extension. From May to August, Japanese beetles eat crape myrtle flowers and leaf tissue between foliage veins. Female Japanese beetles lay their eggs in the soil, overwintering deeply into the ground. Larvae feed on roots and grasses but adult Japanese beetles mostly eat leaf tissue, especially when exposed to direct sunlight. Japanese beetles (Popillia japonica) are oval-shaped, metallic-green and copper colored insects, about 1/3 to 1/2 inch long.
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