I wasn’t too worried when the blossoms on my 3 year old Potomac pawpaw fell off because it’s probably too young to be bearing fruit yet anyway. But this morning I saw the signs of ambrosia beetles, and I’m worried about my other trees. This is the first time I’ve had any damage from ambrosia beetles on pawpaw. I lost three jujube trees two years ago after they were attacked by ambrosia beetles, but that was right after a hard frost in late April killed back all the new growth. This year, there weren’t any late frost issues, and I would’ve thought this was one of my healthiest pawpaws. There are about 20 boreholes like those in the photo (I painted the trunk to prevent cracking, and I thought the paint might deter borers too, but I guess not). Should I cut it down and regraft to the root suckers that come up, or is there a chance if I leave it that it could survive? Should I stick a needle in each of the holes and skewer the little buggers, or is the damage already done?
for scale, the tree is about 5 ft tall and 1.5 inches in diameter at the base.
If you see or feel squishy gooey beetle guts it’s worth it. If the needle just comes out dry it’s not. I figure you want to kill any boring worm and that they eat until they turn into something else. I’d probably be spraying the trees with Lorsban.
I had this last year and put all kinds of wires and needles and everything I could think of into those holes trying to kill the beetles, but my pawpaw died anyway. As I understand it, the fungus introduced by the beetle is what kills the tree, so I’m not sure killing the bug has any effect.
The silver lining is that after my tree died, it sprouted back from the roots with a vengeance. I pruned it back to one sucker only and it grew 6’ tall that year.
I sprayed the trunks of all my pawpaws with Triazicide this year, I’m hopeful that will keep the beetles out.
Yeah, it’s frustrating not to be able to save the tree once you see the evidence of borers. I had been keeping a close eye on my jujubes since I’d had previous borer damage on them, but I guess I’ll have to add pawpaws to that list. Nothing is bulletproof! Thanks for sharing your experience. Another pawpaw of mine died back for mysterious reasons, and I had the same experience as you with vigorous suckering. And fortunately pawpaws seem relatively easy to graft, so it’s not a total loss.