In
fall, you may find twigs littering the ground under hardwood trees that
are neatly trimmed almost completely through the twig, with just a tiny
central portion twisted off. They're the handiwork of a female twig
girdler beetle. In late summer, she lays a few eggs in the branch tips
of hardwoods such as hickory and persimmon. Then she crawls along the
twig a foot or two toward the trunk and cuts a groove almost completely
through the wood, girdling the twig. This apparently creates conditions
in the twig favorable to the development of her larvae, which spend
the winter in the fallen twig and emerge the following summer.
In
fall, you may find twigs littering the ground under hardwood trees that
are neatly trimmed almost completely through the twig, with just a tiny
central portion twisted off. They're the handiwork of a female twig
girdler beetle. In late summer, she lays a few eggs in the branch tips
of hardwoods such as hickory and persimmon. Then she crawls along the
twig a foot or two toward the trunk and cuts a groove almost completely
through the wood, girdling the twig. This apparently creates conditions
in the twig favorable to the development of her larvae, which spend
the winter in the fallen twig and emerge the following summer.