Thanks! That’s the Spicebush- thankfully haven’t seen that kind of damage on the pawpaws (yet?)
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The cicadas are damaging a crape myrtle next to my newly grafted persimmon. They don’t seem to have any interest in the persimmon but I decided not to risk it. Got some netting as insurance.
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Smart move. They could easily kill the grafted portion of a small tree like that if you allowed access to it.
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Granny Smith apple - first year fruit set too 
My plan now that it’s finished thunder storming is to spray all the fruit trees and grafted trees with sevin (new formula).
A few peach trees are oozing clear sap from a number of the brances also.
Oh man, sorry. I was just going to post about how the branches just snap like that.
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Thanks man, I appreciate you.
I just got done spraying a little while ago, which gave me the sense at least I did something…
Crazy how many I run out of the young pink lady apple.
I suppose its still early enough in the season for fruit trees may heal before dormancy. Good thing is I believe we are on the down side, if the decibel levels during the sunshine is any indication they are on the decline.
I’ve read a female cicada can lay upto 600 eggs. I dont know if thats true or not. But i’m still interested to see what happens when the eggs hatch out of the branch work.
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I want to think we are on the back side of the cicada explosion. We can actually have a conversation outiside now. Its kind of disheartening to see what they done though. I guess i’ll have to go out with pruners to try and clean up what is left. They seem to perfer horizontal growth and seem to know to lay eggs on the bottom side of the branch, which causes them to break and hang there dangling by the little bit of attached bark.
Yes exactly.
Well, the plague has passed here now.
Answered prayers in that I seem to have no visible damage to any pawpaws.
All over town and on other plants you see the telltale sign of brown and/or broken branch tips. But none on my pawpaws.
I’m sure eggs were laid in some pawpaw branches but the trees have shrugged it off for now.
Now I just have to keep the groundhogs from chewing the trunks to death and the possums and coons from eating the fruit 
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Still on going somewhat here my wife was still complaining about them after she mowed. Here is the underside of a fresh kill apple branch
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Man I’m sorry. That’s pretty heavy damage.
I appreciate the sympathy…
There really wasnt much I could do, though. The only thing I can think of would have been to cover with fine mesh netting. Netting would have to be tied up tight around the base of the tree, since cicadas both fly and crawl. For a few small trees netting would have practical, but I have more than a few trees planted, so wasn’t practical for me.
The odd thing I was told by a self proclaimed expert “cicadas are harmless”. Needless to say, he was wrong. But then again… it’s not my job to challenge his beliefs, so i’m not even going to even try.
We’ve had a wet spring so far, a d a good amount
of growing season ahead. My hope is the trees heal up and continue to grow without any major problems. If not, there’s always a grafting knife come late winter, early spring.
Thanks again for the replies.
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Same here.
Sounds good- good luck
You still pruning dead branches like I am?
Well, there is some damage that’s just now manifesting. Like some have said, pawpaw seems to be more resilient.
Some small tertiary branches have died but it’s very minimal. One smaller graft of a really important variety may have been victimized- had to cut back about 10 inches of central leader.
I was cutting some hackberry limbs and found they were completely covered in cicada “slits”. It seems the cicadas preferred these trees - which I’m surrounded by- to my pawpaws.
Little dead branch tips are raining down from these and elms.
Peaches and aprocoits were hit heavy. Clear sap along the branches has dried up. Every day I prune off new dead that shows up overnight. The trees are resonding by sendind up new vertical growth along the scaffolds. In hindsite… I would have covered aprocoits and peaches with fine mesh netting.
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