been in the ground about a month and it is being nibbled. anything I should be concerned about?
The only thing here in West Virginia, that seems to eat Pawpaw leaves is the zebra swallowtail, larva ,and slugs.
If you don’t see a Caterpillar larva on the leaves, it’s likely slugs.
They can be rough on small trees.
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I have noticed a lot of slugs around lately. I have baits I can put down.
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Yep, second the slugs. They love mine.
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just dropped some slug magic around them and in the shadier spots I’ve been seeing slugs.
Most of the ones I see here are dusky slugs. They’re native to Europe, but they’ve been in New England for almost 200 years.
I’ve never had them do major damage to any of my plants and they’re a part of the decomposition process so I always just let them be. I can understand how it looks worse than it probably is since it’s on a healthy, little sapling like that.
ours are all spotted garden slugs
Probably not what you have, but last year i had a couple of these twig mimicking caterpillars defoliating one of my young pawpaws. Took me a long time to spot it. I know it looks easy to find in this photo…
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I would’ve said zebra swallowtail since that’s my most common leaf eater, but those holes mostly don’t look like what they leave behind. I’ve never seen slug damage on mine, so that’s a new one on me. Sounds like the most likely suspect for you.
Good luck!
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The caterpillar above is one of the geometrid moth larva. Spanworm, inchworm, looper, etc.
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My first spring growing pawpaws here in Seattle, the slugs completely defoliated one tree so badly that it is still half the size of the other trees I planted at the same time, two years later. I came out with a flashlight at night and it looked like a slug apocalypse.
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I use slug copper tape to wrap around the bottom of tree trunk. That could prevent slug/snail from climbing the young tree to eat leave or buds.
the slug magic baits did the trick. no additional damage.
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