Lyctid borers - powder post borers - maybe

Darrell Mcleod

Does anyone have any experience with Lyctid borers - powder post borers

Looked at this tree this morning - it is dead so likely this is old activity

Just attempting to identify correctly - tree is Eucalyptus camaldulensis from Warrandyte in Victoria

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derwoodii

is that longhorn beetle damage?

Wood Boring Beetle Families - Cerambycidae

it close but hard to tell

Darrell Mcleod

Looked at Longhorn Beetles this morning prior to posting but thought maybe more so Lyctid

Dunno

Will endeavour to find out

Anyone else??

derwoodii

Pull away the bark look for the tell tale chewin tracks under there. The bore holes do look a wee small and not quite like longhorn. But only seen other type of borer on soft wood and fruit trees.

Darrell Mcleod

Been googling

'Lyctid borers Eucalyptus camaldulensis'

and come across some info saying - things like this

sapwood susceptible to Lyctid borer attack

as in pdf attached - bottom of page three

thanks for your help and interest as usual mate

will see what else I can find out

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eucalyptus-camaldulensis.pdf (126.6 KB, 18 views)

George Valentine

While once upon a time, I had the impression that these creatures would only attack dead trees, this has been totally dismissed when I saw what they are doing to a group of 50 odd large gum trees, that I have living in the paddock I rent to put most of my larger and green woods.

In the 7 years that I have had that paddock, I've witness perfectly healthy gums, becoming affected by these creatures and slowly eating their way through the tree. Their presence and work, forces the bark of the trees to tear out and start separating from the tree, where one can see the work of these creatures under it and, the totally separation/debarking/ring-barking resulting from their eating all the inner skin/vascular cambium and soft tissue.

The tree shows its effects quite rapidly after it lost its capabilities to move the nutrients up the tree and those affect areas will then dry off and fall. The major problem is that, these creatures normally start from the base of the tree up and when the branches start to fall off, the whole tree is pretty much condemned to die, within a short period of time.

Someone had try to convince me that, all was caused by termites but, that as not the case so, when I recently removed one of these gums trees that died off, pretty much in front of my eyes, and just before the whole tree became brown and no foliage at all, I saw the bark falling/separating in large chunks from the tree trunk all the way trough.

While in this case, these creatures only eat the soft layer under the tree bark, there are other gums next to it where I can see that, the holes are going deep into the wood (wood borers). There is obviously, 2 different creatures creating theses sort of problems, together they couldn't be more destructive, as one kills the tree and the other eats it like a Swiss cheese, making the wood useless for any wood work.

The question is in your case, which one do you have there as the entry holes of both creatures, are very identical in size and shape...!!!

A cure, I'm not aware of any, unless the entry holes are detected in the very beginning and have them sprayed with a insecticide spray can with a long nozzle attachment, killing the creature before it causes any further damage...!
This is certainly not a easy thing to do, and time consuming but, effective, nevertheless...!

Cheers
George

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Darrell Mcleod

Thanks George,

Will look into it

derwoodii

I reckon the holes are exit wounds not entry. Its the adult that lays the eggs into a wound and the larvae critters hatch n chew away finding the sweetest wood, typically the cambium under the bark but it can go elsewhere. They then pupate and changing into adult, chew out fly away to another host, evil like that bitch in Aliens.
Still not sure which critter this is, but often control is chainsaw as the harm done and decline most probable. You can treat a new patient fast with pesticide or improve in tree vigor but they are persistent buggers. Trees respond to attack buy changing growth process but this sadly seems to attract more bug issues. Like blood in the water to sharks.

Bat on, I tried corking up holes an treating trees with all manner of bug killers but in time they more often loose.

George Valentine

The ones I see/find the most in many of the woods I process are the, Arhopalus productus (LeConte) and the Graphisurus sp., but in some native timbers I get the famous these big white bastards, pic bellow (not the kid but, what he is holding...!) as big as a persons small finger.
Not that funny when I get my face full of blow up pieces from them, from a chainsaw of a bandsaw...! They may be eatable cooked but raw tastes pretty bad...!

Cheers
George

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