Rutgers Cooperative Extension
If you haven’t noticed, spring has sprung in earnest. Spring flowering trees and shrubs have popped and are already fading. The buds of many other plants are breaking everywhere. Right along with the plants come the critters.
Freshly emerged Boxwood leafminer adult and pupal exuviae. Photo: Sabrina Tirpak, Rutges PDL
I heard through the grapevine about a site with some dead boxwoods, so I went to take a look and here is what I saw.
Boxwood garden. Photo: Richard Buckley, Rutgers PDL
Samples of boxwood infected with the fungus Cylindrocladium pseudonaviculatum, the cause of boxwood blight, have been confirmed by the Rutgers Plant Diagnostic Laboratory and the New Jersey Department of Agriculture Laboratory in recent days. This is the first report of the disease is New Jersey.
Boxwood blight leaf lesion. Photo: Sabrina Tirpak, Rutgers PDL
If you have boxwoods on your property, bend over and take a listen. No, you haven’t suddenly become the plant whisperer! What you are hearing is not the boxwood talking, but the late-stage larvae of the boxwood leafminer, Monarthropalpusi flavus. It literally sounds like the snap, crackle and pop of a bowl of rice cereal. [Read more…]
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