My Honeydew List

It is SO dry. I can't remember the last time it rained. What a year! 

a crawdad chimney in the lawn

In the 14 months since we have moved here, we've had extreme weather. Last spring we were inundated with rain. We had crawdad holes all over, in the yard, in the hay field, even in the dirt floored areas of the upper barn. In order to spare our shoes and socks, we always went outside outfitted in rubber farm boots. They squelched wherever we walked and were always splattered in mud. 

We even mowed in rubber boots! We had to mow whenever it was not raining so that we were not overgrown like Sleeping Beauty's castle. But it was still so wet that even the push mower left ruts in the lawn and threw mud onto our legs!

When the three months of rain ended, a drought began. The ground became rock hard and fissured. The grass turned yellow and crunched like straw. The ferns died. Trees dropped their leaves early. And the heat stuck around into the fall. We went camping at the end of October.

When winter arrived, it didn't really. The temperatures were very mild. We got two barely-there snows. And the spring bulbs were poking up in January! Spring stopped and started in spurts with unseasonably warm days followed by frost. Many trees leafed out more than once. And the frost hardy plants had a very long jump on the growing season.

Luckily we cut hay early, because it looks like it may be a bad forage crop year. It has only sprinkled lightly once since we hayed... in May. And there's still no rain in the forecast. Everything is headed toward a repeat of last summer. The lawn is stiff. The ground is cracked. The hay is turning to yellow instead of growing. The ferns are dying again. Even the weeds are wilting! Crab apples and tree leaves are falling regularly.

tulip tree blossom

The trees that are dropping the most leaves are the yellow poplars (also called tulip poplars, tulip trees, canoe wood, saddle-leaf trees, and white wood.) After being weakened by flooding and then drought, the mild winter has lead to a large number of insect pests that didn't get killed off by a hard freeze. Then, to make matters worse, we had a couple of late frosts well into an early growing season. So some of our poplars had to put out leaves two and three times this spring, wasting their precious stored up energy. Now, since they were weakened, they are particularly hard hit by a pest called tree scale. 

Despite the name, Tuliptree scale is a large soft scale insect. This insect infests trees, multiplies at an alarming rate, and they are spread by wind and songbirds. Once established on a tree, the branches will look warty. But before a homeowner notices these, the honeydew that the insects secrete will be noticed first. 

tulip tree leaf

You see, honeydew is a sticky, sugary material that is secreted by the soft scales as they grow. It drops from infected trees in a light mist with a mild infestation- like last year. This year it falls like rain. I mentioned in my bird post that honeydew blows onto the windows of my house, coating them in sticky spatters that quickly collect dust. It coats everything with a glossy, sticky sheen. Gravel below trees sticks to tires and boots like it is coated in molasses. Sidewalks become damp and tacky. Windshields and hoods become coated in sticky "bug spit" that collects dust and obscures vision. 

But it gets worse. Honeydew gives rise to other problems. For one thing, black sooty mold grows on honeydew. It makes sidewalks slippery and black with mold. This mold gets tracked into your house very easily, and stains rugs. It also stains cement. It coats foliage and blocks sun, killing plants that are not rinsed of it. And wasps, ants, and aphids like honeydew too. So the populations of these insects increase as well. In fact, the ants will work to protect the tree scale from predators and parasitoids, so ants make tuliptree scale matters much worse. Controlling ant populations around trees in one of the few practical ways of helping to curb the tuliptree scale problem.

All this adds up to one big nuisance for tulip tree owners, and one big problem for an infested tree. Already our poplars are losing the leaves on their crowns. The lack of rain is only helping to stress the already weakened trees further, as if it is not bad enough that they are literally being sucked dry. 

Tuliptree scale is such a problem in our area this year, that some folks think poplar will be cheap soon as there may be a glut on the market. Many will choose to cull the trees before they die, as dead wood is not valuable as lumber. For example, a local man who owns a nearly 400 acre tree farm, and who won our state's "tree farm of the year award" last year is representative of the predicament. Forty percent of his property is in yellow poplar. That's pretty common, as yellow poplar's are native here and thrive here. They also grow fast, tall, and straight.

So if the market isn't flooded with poplar this year, it may be flooded with fire wood next year! While we don't raise timber for profit, we have MANY yellow poplars in our woods. More concerning, nearly all the large shade trees surrounding our home are tulip poplars, and all are infested to some degree, although some are much worse than others. Hopefully weather will cooperate this winter and our trees will recover. I shudder to think of the stumps and destruction that could be left if our trees succumb to the freak explosion of tuliptree scale.